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Some hunters share harvest with those in need

By Christine Haines chaines@heraldstandard.Com 3 min read
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Increased sponsorship this year is making it affordable for area hunters to share their harvest with those in need.

The Hunters Sharing the Harvest program has been in operation in Pennsylvania since 1991, according to the nonprofit group’s website, www.sharedeer.org, with local participation coming and going over the past 23 years. The program involves hunters donating their deer for use by area food banks and other programs to feed those in need. Vital to the program are hunters with deer they don’t plan to use themselves and certified processors willing to take the deer.

Ben Moyer, the Fayette and Greene County coordinator for the program, said there are two deer processors in Fayette County and one in Greene participating this year. The processors are paid for their work, receiving their normal processing fee.

“For several years in the statewide program, the hunters paid that, but now Consol Energy has stepped up and is paying that, at least in southwestern Pennsylvania,” Moyer said.

Moyer said the sponsorship started last year, with hunters still needing to pay $15 of the estimated $75 fee. This year the entire cost is covered.

“All you have to do is take the deer to a participating butcher, and you don’t have to pay anything,” Moyer said.

For quality control purposes, only venison processed at a certified butcher is accepted, Moyer said.

Fayette County participants are Harper’s Country Meats in Vanderbilt and Haines Meat Processing in Gibbon Glade. In Greene County the Hungarian Smokehouse in Carmichaels is accepting deer for the Sharing the Harvest program. Additional processors are available in Westmoreland, Washington, Somerset and Allegheny counties as well, with the complete list available at the website.

Moyer said his organization has been working in cooperation with another nonprofit, the Quality Deer Management Association, which has helped to underwrite this year’s program and also encourages its members to participate by donating deer. Moyer said any hunter can join the program.

“There’s no advanced sign-up. They do need to know where a participating butcher is,” Moyer said.

An average deer provides enough meat for 200 meals, according to the Sharing the Harvest website. The organization’s annual goal is to provide 100,000 pounds of processed venison to the state’s 20 regional food banks.

According to the website, the meat is then redistributed through 4,000 local facilities such as food pantries, churches, homeless shelters and others serving those in need.

“All the meat is ground up as hamburger. It’s the most versatile form of venison,” Moyer said. “White-tailed deer are an abundant local renewable wild resource that offers high quality nutritious, and delicious, protein. We hunters are privileged to be able to hunt and use this natural product as food. Hunters Sharing the Harvest gives hunters a way to share that natural resource with the less fortunate in the community.”

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