PITTSBURGH — For five months a year, venison from local hunters arrives each week in frozen, 5-pound tubes at Mission: Agape in White Oak, Pa., feeding over 1,200 families monthly.

Deer meat is welcome and necessary for the food pantry, which pays a premium for any meat.

The venison is courtesy of local hunters participating in the Hunters Sharing the Harvest program.

The latter is a Mercer County-based nonprofit that works with hunters who donate their white-tailed deer bounty, while nonprofit Mission: Agape picks up the tab for the butchering.

The free venison is a boon for Mission: Agape, said Kelly Doyle, co-founder and president.

"As a food pantry, you still have to purchase food from the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank and so if your pantry is where there's a lot of food insecurity, it's expensive to feed that many households."

Venison from Hunters Sharing the Harvest saves the nonprofit tens of thousands of dollars annually, she said

"That allows us to provide meat we could not normally afford to give," Doyle said.

During the deer offseason, Agape provides meat, sometimes canned meat, she added.

Helping food pantries with donated venison is at the heart of the Sharing the Harvest program.

"It's a tremendous thing for hunters who are out there not just hunting but performing a service at the same time," said Randy Ferguson, of Greenville, Mercer County, executive director of Hunters Sharing the Harvest.

"It paints a more accurate picture of hunters who are a generous group of people who care about their neighbors."

Nutritionally, venison is good stuff — high in protein and low in cholesterol.

"The food banks and hunger relief agencies that receive our venison are so appreciative. They rarely see good protein sources come into their programs," Ferguson said.

Deer donations keep trending upward, with Sharing the Harvest breaking records in recent consecutive years.

Last year, Pennsylvania hunters donated 261,672 pounds of venison from 6,905 deer and six elk statewide during the 2023-24 hunting season.

The donations resulted in 1 million servings of the high-protein and lean food source, according to the nonprofit.

Ferguson said 2024-2025 deer donations were running at the same rate as last year with two months still to go.

In Allegheny County, where resident hunters contribute the largest deer donations in the state, donations are up from last year, said Kip Padgelek, owner of Kip's Deer Processing in Collier and a board director for Hunters Sharing the Harvest.

Last year, Allegheny County-based hunters donated just under 50,000 pounds of venison.

Padgelek is one of two deer processors in Allegheny County working with the program.

"We keep seeing more donations every year. The word continues to get out among hunters," he said.

"In Allegheny County, there's lots of deer here," said Padgelek, who estimates that at least half of the deer brought to him are taken from surrounding areas.

Because of the increasing donations, butchering expenses are up as well.

Last season, those reimbursement costs reached an all-time high of approximately $500,000.

Ferguson said corporate sponsors and individuals stepped up financial support this year.

He is expecting continued growth in the program.

Last year's hunting season yielded 7,000 deer for the program, accounting for about 2% of the total deer harvest in the state.

"I think the sky is the limit for this program. It's better known each year," Ferguson said.

Hunters interested in donating a deer need only to harvest legally, tag and field dress the deer and take it to a participating processor near them. The Sharing the Harvest website, sharedeer.org, provides a list of participating processors by county.

(c)2024 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.