Indiana hunters have donated enough venison for 2M meals

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – When Debra Treesh’s children moved away, she and her husband didn’t need as much venison, but they didn’t know what to do with the leftovers. That’s when she contacted a local food bank. ‘œAnd they went nuts,’� said Treesh, who owns a small butcher shop with her husband in northwest Indiana. ‘œThey said they don’t get many meat donations and it’s one of the most important things.’� That spawned an idea: Could hunters donate some of their deer to help feed hungry individuals across Indiana? And so it began. What at first was just a one-time donation has since turned into a passion project. She officially launched her nonprofit, Hoosiers Feeding the Hungry, in 2011 – making this year its 10th anniversary. Treesh’s group now works with nearly 85 meat processors and 500 hunger relief organizations statewide to help the deer meat that hunters provide get to those who need it. All told, they’ve donated enough venison to provide millions of meals. Her organization isn’t the only one with this mission; it partners with a hunter’s club in southwest Indiana doing the same thing. A program in the state’s Department of Natural Resources also provides grants to these groups and processors to help cover the cost of making the deer edible and fit for donation. ‘œWe all fall on tough times and someone is there wanting to help,’� said Capt. Jet Quillen, who is in the DNR’s law enforcement division and runs the Sportsmen Benevolence Fund that provides the grants. ‘œWhether that’s hunters or a state law enforcement agency, someone is there for them.’� Since Treesh first started her group, she estimates they’ve been able to donate about 500,000 pounds of venison. Each pound can provide about four meals, she said, meaning they’ve provided nearly two million meals over the last decade. Their partner group, Hunters for the Hungry out of the Dubois County Sportsmen’s Club, has donated roughly 72,000 pounds of venison. That equates to a quarter million meals, according to Gene Kuntz, who runs the group across four counties in southern Indiana. That’s no small thing from either group, Treesh said. ‘œWhen I look at the numbers, it’s hard to believe that I said two million meals of venison. That’s a lot,’� she said. ‘œBut also it unfortunately doesn’t even scratch the surface, especially during COVID times.’� In Indiana, nearly 850,000 people are facing hunger and more than a quarter of them are children, according to Feeding America, the nation’s largest hunger relief group. That amounts to one in every eight people in the state being food insecure – and that was in 2019. Across the country, and including here in Indiana, the coronavirus has caused millions of Americans to newly experience food insecurity. Projections from Feeding America showed the rate of food insecurity increasing in every single Indiana county in both 2020 and 2021. ‘œThere are a lot of people unemployed and COVID has hurt a lot of folks,’� Kuntz said. ‘œThey are focused on keeping the lights on’� and food becomes an afterthought. Not only that, but shortages in labor and a slowed supply chain has the price of meat going up. Treesh recalled a recent grocery trip when she saw it was $6.99 for a pound of ground beef, the cheapest meat. ‘œI can see why people can’t afford to get meat,’� Treesh said. ‘œThat’s expensive.’� And local food banks and nonprofits are also seeing fewer donations, which can be attributed to the pandemic, said Quillen with the DNR. But there’s another thing that’s come out of the pandemic, he added: People are spending more time outside. The agency has seen record use of state properties and even more hunters and fishers signing up for licenses. That’s an opportunity to help more people, he said.