At a hunting ground in Butler County, Don Boling walked down an overgrown wooded path, littered with fall foliage. It’s one of his favorite spots to hunt deer in southwest Ohio.
Although there are no bucks or does in sight, the lifelong hunter still saw signs of them everywhere.
“This is usually riddled with tracks here,” he said following a deer trail through a dense brush. “I can actually feel underneath my feet their hoof prints.”
Deer hunting season is underway, meaning a host of Ohio hunters are heading into the woods with their gear in tow. But, for some, the hunting season is more than just an opportunity to fill their own freezers.
Boling works with the nonprofit, Farmers and Hunters Feeding the Hungry, to take their deer harvests and turn them into meals for their communities.
Two birds, one stone
Ohio’s deer population has multiplied 40-fold in the last 50 years, according to an estimate by Cuyahoga Valley National Park. The large herbivores are encroaching on city limits – meandering into people’s yards and bounding across roadways.
“You have big city parks that [are] just overpopulated,” Boling said. “Then it messes up the whole ecosystem, 'cause they're eating everything from six feet down.”
At the same time, food insecurity is rising. Grocery costs are up nearly 30% since 2020, while food banks face federal cuts.
There’s too many deer and not enough on people’s plates. It’s an imbalance that hunters, like Boling, are trying to even out.
“There's no need for anybody to be hungry when we have a resource like this. Why not use the resource?”
How it works
Farmers and Hunters Feeding the Hungry takes deer carcass donations from hunters and covers the $100 or so it costs for butchers to turn deer into ground venison.
That meat then goes straight to food pantries, free of cost.
“It gives hunters – who often have bag limits beyond what they could use themselves for their freezer – an option to get another deer or two and donate it to help other people,” said FHFH executive director Josh Wilson, referencing the Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ individual limits on deer harvests.
Boling is one of 25 Ohio coordinators that connect the hunters, processors and food banks. He said the simple idea has changed the way communities manage their herds. Some Ohio parks and municipalities used to cull deer without thinking about the next step.
“They would just shoot deer and basically they were just disposing of them. And it's like, ‘Whoa, hold on.’ I can take one of those deer and feed 200 people with it.”
Feeding the hungry
The nonprofit has been in Ohio for more than two decades. Last hunting season, hunters donated more than 80,000 pounds of deer. That’s around 300,000 servings of meat for Ohio food pantries, like the Community Meal Center in Butler County.
“At first people were like, ‘Ew, venison, Bambi,’” said Lauren Marsh, executive director of the center. “And now they say, ‘Do you have frozen chubs of venison we can take home with us?’”
Thanks to the program, they almost always do. In addition to sending people home with frozen meat, Marsh has spent the last two decades serving up ground venison casserole, stews and chili to anyone who’s hungry.
Meat is difficult for food pantries to source, especially as beef prices have risen 50% since 2020. Marsh said the center’s partnership with hunters is vital to bringing protein to those who can’t afford it.
“No one person alone can help people in our community. When we all gather together to help the most vulnerable, then there’s love at the center of that,” she said.
Connecting to community
Boling donates his first deer of every season to the nonprofit. It’s his way of channeling his love of the outdoors into a love for his neighbor.
“You just have that connection with the outdoors. The world waking up, the wildlife waking up. You hear owls, you hear a lot of stuff that you don't [usually] hear – if you just get quiet,” he said.
Right now, only around 1 to 2% of deer harvests in the state are donated to the program. Boling hopes, in the stillness of the hunt, more people like him will hear the call to serve their community.
