Sportsman’s Challenge
By Brent Adams | .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
When more than 3,000 people sit down next month to enjoy venison sausage and barbecue at Southeast’s annual Wild Game Feed, many will take time to remember
the homeless and hungry in Kentucky.
Aside from the food and fellowship, the Wild Game Feed is held to draw attention to the Kentucky Sportsman’s Challenge, a program sponsored by Kentucky Hunters
for the Hungry and Bass Pro Shops. It was created to encourage hunters to harvest deer and donate the venison to feed the homeless and needy.
Since the Sportsman’s Challenge became associated with the Wild Game Feed in 2007, area hunters have provided enough venison for more than 732,000 meals.
The group had set a goal of breaking the 1 million-meal mark by the end of the hunting season, which ended Sunday. As of press time, the effort was about 200 deer
short of the goal.
The program started with the fledgling Hunters for the Hungry donating venison to Wayside Christian Mission in Louisville. It since has spread across the state, with
satellite chapters involving churches, nonprofit organizations and even business and civic leaders.
The meat that has been donated to homeless shelters over the years has been invaluable.
“When we first started, (Wayside CEO) Tim Moseley was so enthusiastic because, as he explained, they had people who were eating out of dumpsters, so for them to
get the necessary protein from the venison was welcome,” said taxidermist and Kentucky Hunters for the Hungry chairman Mike Ohlmann. “The venison has become a
vital part of their food program.”
Venison used in variety of ways
Moseley’s wife, Wayside Chief Operating Officer Nina Moseley, said Wayside receives venison shipments about every week. The meat is served as steaks or in chili, stew and other dishes.
“The venison we receive is very important to us because meat is so hard to come by these days,” Nina Moseley said. “There are so many different ways to use it and
people seem to like it.”
The protein found in venison is important to the well-being of the homeless people served by shelters such as Wayside, Nina Moseley said. The shelter currently
serves as many as 650 people a day.
“A lot of the homeless population suffers from illness and disease because of a lack of protein,” she said. “The venison is a good source of that protein.”
That protein is important for adults, but even more vital for children, which unfortunately are a sizeable portion of the clientele at local shelters.
It is estimated that the average age of homeless citizens in the United States is 9 years old. Louisville is no different. Nina Moseley said all of the family shelters in
town are full, and there is a great demand for meat.
“We have the impression that the homeless are guys on the street with signs and beggars who ask us for money,” said Ralph Swallows, the volunteer organizer of the
Sportsman’s Challenge and the Wild Game Feed at Southeast. “The reality is 90 percent of the homeless in the U.S. are between the ages of 1 and 14. Providing for them is what the Challenge is all about.”
Hunter, family see purpose in harvesting deer
In 2007, when Mike Matthews and his sons learned about Kentucky Hunters for the Hungry, they made a pledge to contribute a portion of their annual deer harvest to the program.
Matthews’s sons, Jason and Jonathan, now 16, are students at Christian Academy of Louisville, and Mike, now 29, lives in Alabama.
Over the past five hunting seasons, the four men have combined to donate 60 deer to the cause, including 11 this hunting season. Matthews estimates that based on
a 4-ounce serving, each deer yields about 440 meals. That is a total of 26,400 meals the family has provided since 2007.
“There is no doubt that God is blessing this ministry,” Matthews said. “We consider this our mission field. It’s a way of serving the church and the community.”
After each deer is harvested, Matthews and his sons stop in the woods to give thanks to God and pray that the meat will be used to bless homeless men, women and
children in the community.
Matthews said he occasionally is asked by people how he could kill God’s creation. He politely explains that Kentucky has a rapidly growing deer population, which
threatens agriculture and can become a safety hazard on roadways. Thinning the population benefits the state in addition to providing a much-needed food source for shelters.
How the process works
When a hunter harvests a deer that will be donated to Kentucky Hunters for the Hungry, it is taken to one of nearly 50 processors across Kentucky who prepare the
meat at the hunter’s cost. Participating processors typically discount their fees by about 40 percent for the donated meat, Ohlmann said.
The meat is picked up from the processors by various distribution agencies, including Louisville-based Dare to Care Food Bank, and taken to homeless shelters.
“The shelters always show an overwhelming amount of gratitude when they receive the venison,” Ohlmann said. “And the fact that Southeast has been such a big
contributor through the Sportsman’s Challenge is something that’s talked about throughout the state.”