by Brian McCombie - Thursday, November 7, 2024
Supporting the efforts of hunters statewide in calling attention to the state’s vital Hunters for the Hungry program, Virginia Hunters Who Care, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin proclaimed November Virginia Wild Game Meat Donation Month on Nov. 1 in conjunction with the NRA’s National Wild Game Meat Donation Month celebration to encourage even more hunters to donate their surplus venison and for all Virginians to consider making a financial contribution to the state’s HFH program as we celebrate the holiday season.
Now in its 33rd year, Virginia’s Hunters for the Hungry (HFH) program, also known as Virginia Hunters Who Care, was launched in cooperation with the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources in 1991 to provide hunter-donated venison to people in need. To date this 501(c)(3) charity has provided more than 7.9 million pounds of venison to dozens of state food banks and related charities, which translates to more than 31.7 million quarter-pound servings of lean meat for Virginians most in need of help and support.
The 2024-2025 hunting season is already off to a fine start for the program. As of the end of October 2024, HFH had already processed and distributed 37,591 pounds of venison to food banks. This equated to 150,364 quarter-pound servings of protein-rich venison that fed men, women, children, the elderly, the homeless and veterans struggling with food insecurity. The program makes the donation process very simple. Virginia deer hunters take their legally harvested and field-dressed deer to one of the HFH collection points or to one of the groups’ many affiliated processors. HFH has signed up scores of meat processors across Virginia, all of which provide their services at a discount.
Still, even with the discounted processing fees, it takes a good deal of money to pay the processors and to then distribute the venison. The NRA and the NRA Foundation have been and continue to be major supporters of the HFH program in Virginia and across America.
“Since 1991 the NRA has provided financial gifts totaling $50,050 toward the Hunters for the Hungry feeding efforts throughout the commonwealth of Virginia,” said Gary Arrington, Director of HFH. “This has afforded the program the ability to process approximately 36,400 pounds of essential lean high protein venison, which equates to approximately 145,600 quarter-pound servings. All NRA grant dollars have been utilized to cover processing bills received from participating processors for deer donated to Hunters for the Hungry.”
Arrington added, “The grants received from the NRA have helped us to feed many needy Virginians, all the while helping to promote our hunting heritage and responsible firearms ownership in such a positive way.”
Virginia’s HFH program began life in the summer of 1991, thanks to one David Horne, then general manager of the Society of St. Andrew. He held a meeting to determine the feasibility of the Hunters for the Hungry concept in Virginia. At that meeting were representatives of the Virginia Department of Game & Inland Fisheries, the Virginia Association of Meat Processors, the Virginia Deer Hunters Association and the Virginia Federation of Foodbanks. The participants reviewed Horne’s proposal and decided that such a program was within the laws and regulations of the state of Virginia and would clearly fill a need.
It was then decided that the program should be administered by a certified 501(C)(3) organization and that to function best, funds should be raised to cover the costs of having professional meat processors accept, cut, wrap and freeze the deer donated by hunters in Virginia. Distribution would be handled through food banks and other charities.
That very first year saw 33,948 pounds of venison donated, processed and distributed. The program expanded, and year No. 2 recorded 68,000 pounds of meat provided to the needy.
In documenting the NRA’s support of HFH, during those early years, then-NRA Hunter Services’ Karen Mehall Phillips, now communications director for the NRA Hunters’ Leadership Forum (HLF) and senior editor of American Hunter in the NRA Media division, organized statewide media tours for Virginia’s David Horne to promote the efforts of Virginia hunters and their vital HFH movement. Mehall Phillips and then NRA-ILA Director of State and Local Affairs, now NRA-ILA Executive Director, were both involved in fundraisers with then-Virginia Gov. George Allen and governors in other states to raise awareness of the HFH movement. During this time, the NRA launched its Hunters for the Hungry Information Clearinghouse to put interested individuals in touch with local programs while assisting with public awareness and fundraising.
In looking to the Virginia program’s future, Arrington noted that the Virginia HFH program’s annual goal is to process and distribute 200,000 pounds of venison. “In the last five years we have averaged 195,408 pounds or 741,631 servings of venison,” he said. “Last year we were up 30 percent from the previous year at 185,685 pounds.”
The venison is very much needed, too.
“We continue to enroll numerous feeding programs requesting to participate and receive the venison produced,” Arrington explained. “Meanwhile, existing programs working with HFH are requesting additional venison over previous years as they are seeing a steady increase in the number of people coming to them for assistance. Some have indicated they have experienced as much as a 300 percent increase in the number of clients coming in for assistance.”
As noted in Gov. Youngkin’s proclamation and in a recent article by Karen Mehall Phillips, the need for wild game meat donations continues as recent NRA HLF research shows that while hunters share 119 million pounds of harvested wild game meat with those outside their families each year, in 2022 some meat processors reported that they did not receive enough donations to fulfill their missions. While promoting hunting as a common-sense solution to fighting hunger, it also promotes hunters’ ongoing contributions to wildlife conservation, resulting in $16,664,000 in Pittman-Robertson funding going back to the commonwealth of Virginia in 2024 alone for its critical wildlife and habitat conservation programs.
Arrington emphasizes how the Virginia Hunters for the Hungry program appreciates the ongoing support of the NRA and Gov. Youngkin, who believes hunger is a problem Virginians can help to solve together.