Donated venison helps feed the hungry | The Courier-Journal

By C. Ray Hall • crayhall@courier-journal.com

When Clint Blackburn graduated from taxidermy school in Minnesota, he returned to his home in South Dakota, hoping for a job offer.It came — from south Louisville.Blackburn got a job. In return, Kentucky got a movement that has wed country folk and city folk, fed thousands of hungry people, and inspired similar programs in other states.“I packed up everything I owned,” Blackburn recalled, “and moved to Kentucky in 1987.”Everything he owned included a love of hunting — with a gun, a bow and arrow or anything else allowable.“I’d throw rocks if they made it legal,” he said a few days ago. “I like to hunt.”Blackburn owned something else — a generous spirit that caused him to ask a simple question that eventually created Kentucky Hunters for the Hungry. It works like this: Deer hunters who have extra venison donate it so that it goes to homeless shelters, soup kitchens and other places that feed the poor.Hunters bring a field-dressed deer to a processing station associated with Kentucky Hunters for the Hungry. There, the deer is usually turned into ground venison. In Louisville, Dare to Care volunteers pick up the packaged meat and distribute it to relief agencies.The processors’ fees come from charitable donations; the hunters pay nothing.In the past eight years, Kentucky Hunters for the Hungry has contributed enough meat for more than 5 million meals, said chairman Mike Ohlmann.Ohlmann owns Mike’s Custom Taxidermy, on Cane Run Road. Blackburn, 44, is his shop foreman.Ohlmann recently recalled a 1988 conversation in which Blackburn said something on the order of: “I’m just a single guy. I don’t have the space for a whole deer, no place to put it. I’d like to help. Is there any way we can give this to the poor?”’Ohlmann recalls his own reaction. “It was like ‘DING!’ We researched it and found out it could be done, and sounded like a great idea.”Ohlmann and other taxidermists, including Damon Kustes, joined with deer processors and hunters’ organizations, and Kentucky Hunters for the Hungry was born. The name would come later, but the idea was off and running.

“I think that’s a really, really wonderful idea — a special idea,” said the Rev. Tim Moseley, president of Louisville’s Wayside Christian Mission, which serves 2,500 meals a day.

“Sometimes we’re pretty surprised at how much comes in. It’s not a drop in the bucket. I don’t know if the hunters really know how much it impacts our people. It is providing some good meat for our folks that they just wouldn’t get otherwise.”

Before the organized effort called Hunters for the Hungry, free-lance philanthropists with extra deer might show up at the Wayside mission.

“Probably the health department wouldn’t like this — but we would have whole deer brought in,” Moseley said. “I can remember helping some of the guys skin and gut deer that we hung up in the laundry room in the back of the men’s shelter.

“We never knew whether that was right or wrong. It probably wasn’t right, but we did it anyway just to be sure people got served.”

That hasn’t been an issue for a long time. Hunters for the Hungry works with 46 USDA-approved deer-processing operations across the state, from Ashland to Mayfield.

The processors charge the organization $60 per deer. Ordinarily, Ohlmann said, processing a deer would cost $85 to $95. On average, a deer yields 55 pounds of ground meat, he said. Donations from churches, businesses, individuals, and the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources cover the processors’ fees.

One of the organization’s high-profile supporters is Southeast Christian Church, whose members contribute not only cash — $65,000 over the last three years — but field work, so to speak. Through the church’s Sportsman’s Challenge, hunters take to the woods in service of Hunters for the Hungry.

Ralph Swallows, one of the leaders, says “hundreds” of hunters from the church are involved. By year’s end, he said, it’s likely the church’s effort will have contributed to more than a half-million meals since 2007.

Ohlmann said it’s unclear how many hunters statewide go afield hoping to help Hunters for the Hungry, since only those who bag a deer are generally known.

Ivan Schell, the organization’s treasurer, said Hunters for the Hungry annually contributes 50,000 to 80,000 pounds of meat — deer and elk — to the needy.

Some of the meat goes to The Healing Place, which serves the homeless and those in recovery addiction to drugs and alcohol. The Healing Place serves 475,000 meals a year, said operations director Stephanie Schaefer. With a food budget of only $52,000, donations are welcome — and vital.

“Obviously when … meat falls from the sky, that’s a tremendous thing,” Schaefer said. “Getting the venison is an enormous lucky piece for us.”

The venison is usually ground, “which is probably the most versatile way for us,” she said. “Then I can turn it into spaghetti sauce or meat loaf or hamburger patties or soup or chili.”

And how does deer meat go over with the diners?

“Most are fine with it,” she said. “I don’t always announce that it’s venison — just like if I get buffalo, I don’t always announce that it’s buffalo.”

Tuesday night, Cajun-flavored pulled venison was on the menu at The Healing Place men’s shelter on West Market Street. To the eye, it was barbecued pork; to the tongue, it was different.

Margaret Lewis, executive assistant to CEO Jay Davidson, noted: “The texture of the meat was closer to beef than it would be pork. Tender. The flavor was richer, fuller. Very tasty.”

A bit later, when Lewis offered a similar appraisal, three diners looked up from their tables, then smiled and nodded in agreement.

Venison got the same reception during the program’s test roll-out, at the Wayside mission in October 1988, Ohlmann recalls.

“It surprised me how many rural people were frequent customers of Wayside,” he said. “People that had been displaced from the country, were in need of employment, or lost housing … a number of rural people readily identified with venison — ‘Oh, I ate this growing up as a kid.’ ”

Hunters — those most likely to know how to prepare venison — acted as cooks and servers at that 1988 dinner. They prepared for 250 people. About 190 showed up.

One diner, in particular, stands out for Ohlmann.

“That guy is probably the reason I’m still doing this,” he said.

He was a young, one-legged man getting about on a crutch, with surprising grace.

“When we announced seconds,” Ohlmann said, “he grabbed his tray and just hopped up there on one leg, all the way up, in a hurry, to get back in line. He said, ‘Man, this deer has put some hop back in my step!’

“Everybody — just so many smiling faces — it was so well received. We said, ‘We need to do this.’”

C. Ray Hall can be reached at (502) 582-4662.

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