I doubt it will matter. Here in Iowa, where deer are almost a pest, there are maybe 100 per section. There are several families per section, by and large.
A deer can feed a family of four for four days. That's all the calories there are in there. Now, you don't eat just meat. But say, 10% meat. So that's 40 days, that's 9 deer per family per year at least.
That means all the deer will be gone in a few years. If they let hunters shoot them all, which they don't.
I don't think it can matter. Folks have some romantic idea about hunting your own food, but that hasn't been practical for a century by now.
Are you saying that every family in in the the section is a hungry family of 4 in need of help from the food bank? Obviously you aren't going to meet 100% of everyone's protein needs from wild game. The point the article was making is that a little bit can go a long way, supplementing other resources. Those who are donating are giving selflessly to help others.
Spot on. I come from the Midwest, and the romantic notion of hunting/small time ag was definitely established a long time ago when game numbers and variety were astonishingly high compared to the modern era. Even then, we hunted most of that game to near extinction - sometimes intentionally so.
Last I checked deer numbers are has high as anytime in the past, maybe even more. There are less predators (they can eat humans so we don't want them around) and deer have figured out how to live around humans just fine. Deer numbers were way down in say 1960 (as you say they were hunted to near extinction) but with stronger hunting and environmental laws they have come back.
Of course hunter/gather lifestyles never supported large concentrations of humans like ag did.
Deer are an outlier. Most other game species (like buffalo, elk, bear, beaver, various birds and fish) have seen significantly reduced number and fitness relative to pre-1900 levels. “Game” in my previous comment was referring broadly to any animals hunted for food or other sustenance (e.g. pelts, oil, etc).
Right, most of what you list either hasn't figured out how to live with humans, or is a predator that will kill humans, so humans kill them (illegally!) or otherwise chase them out to protect their children.
> A deer can feed a family of four for four days. That's all
Citation super-duper needed!
For a 150 pound deer, if you get 35% back as meat, that's ~55 lbs of meat. I don't know any families of four going through 11 pounds of meat a day, do you?
> But say, 10% meat. So that's 40 days, that's 9 deer per family per year at least
Maybe this was added after your comment, but that's ~1.25 lb / d for a family of four. A quarter pound hamburger every night, and snack sticks with lunch. Much more reasonable.
A deer is like 50 lbs of venison on average, which can make a huge difference for a family in need. My dad has given a deer to people on occasions such as when he harvested a moose and a deer in the same season.
And elk/moose have a lot more meat than a deer as well. I harvested a moose 3 years ago and still have some meat in the freezer to get through, so a donation program like that would have probably been a good outlet for me to use.
Well, as the deer die off there are more resources left for the remaining deer, and so it is easier for them to have kids and the birth rates might increase. So it could potentially converge to a predator-prey equilibrium
Which were intentionally hunted to near-extinction and the carcasses wasted as a method of suppressing Native Americans.
Compare to whitetail deer: most hunters are interested in big trophy bucks and only bother to shoot does because they're part of a game management system. Killing does is for population management, and a lot of hunters aren't doing it just for food, though the does have milder flavored meat. They don't want to kill one, drag it out of the woods, take it to a processor, pay for processing, and then go back and pick it up a few days later just for the meat. Hungry people, OTOH, might not care so much where they get meat if it's free or very low cost to them.
One problem that can occur - and why these programs can be challenging to run - is that there is no control over the time between killing the animal and having it given to the processor. In colder climates, this is not a big issue as many will field-dress the animal to reduce weight and allow it to cool naturally. In warmer climates, it might be well above freezing even during winter hunting seasons. Killing the animal, dragging the carcass to a point where it can be field-dressed, and transporting it to the processor could take hours, increasing the risk of contamination.
> a lot of hunters aren't doing it just for food, though the does have milder flavored meat.
I know both hunters. Some want the trophy, some want the meat. Those who want the meat prefer does if they can get them for the milder meat.
This is somewhat cultural though. I grew up in MN where limited amounts of doe permits were always given up - thus every hunter made sure they applied for the yearly lottery for doe permits and so a culture of hunters preferring doe meat when they could get it developed. Next door in Wisconsin they never gave doe permits and so hunters learned "don't shoot the doe, one buck surviving can breed it thus resulting in deer for next year's hunt". Now that population control is important MN had no problem giving out more doe permits, Wisconsin had to force the issue (no shooting bucks until you shoot a doe) as even when hunters were told they could shoot does they didn't.
And all the food donated to my local pantry isn't enough to meet current demand either. Does that mean it doesn't matter and everyone should stop donating to them? Since we can't currently meet 100% of demand, why should we bother to contribute anything toward hitting that goal? That's what it looks like you're saying here.
The key word is "Help". Are donated calories good for needy families? Almost surely yes. Are deer (and other wildlife) essentially zero maintenance? Also yes. And will people _pay_ to hunt them, then donate the food for free? I do!
There's no downside here - so yes, I believe it can 'help'.
700kc/lb is probably right, but I got ~50 lbs off my last deer ~= 35,000. Still order of magnitude, you're right.
However, there's no need to just hunt where you live. I travel to two different remote parts of my state where deer problems are worst - again, at my own expense because I enjoy it. That "Free transportation of calories" shouldn't be ignored either.
Exactly correct. It just can't scale to the level need without just being literal deer farms. A poor family with access to hunting may be able to feed themselves here and there but not systemically. Even hunters forget that when you kill a doe, you are killing 4-8 future deer, not just the one today.
Roughly 250k are harvested each year in Michigan, and the state practically begs hunters to take does to prevent those 4-8 future deer. That's a significant volume of meat, but there's 2 problems.
1) Many hunters are already what most on HN would think of as rural poor. That meat isn't going wasted. The food pantry would just be an extra step.
2) Processing a deer in the garage is common, but definitely a learned skill and time consuming. Professional processing is available, but results in $/lb higher than most industrial proteins available.
There needs to be a process for food pantries so have people who will come to your garage to process your deer for the share of the meat. Many poor would be able to come to your garage on a Monday night (you get home Sunday night and process them on Monday) for a share of the harvest. Processing deer goes better with extra hands and some of the work is very easy to teach.
I'm not sure how many poor are really able to take a Monday night to learn how to butcher a deer, but...
This is the wrong way to think about it. With reasonable game management, killing a doe has no impact on future deer because the population is at carrying capacity. In that case, killing a doe means one less deer starves over winter.
Where I live, government biologist have recommended several times to issue doe tags to increase the population and been rejected. Over the winter, old infertile does outcompete the young deer who starve.
Yet the topic was all about non-reasonable game management. What would be required to feed people routinely. It was in fact the entire purpose of the conversation to 'think about it' like that.
The post I responded to stated "Even hunters forget that when you kill a doe, you are killing 4-8 future deer, not just the one today." as if this was a general truth, outside the context of your thought experiment.
The article is about if some game (specifically unwanted meat) can help feed some people.
If the conversation is about if we can feed the entire US population on wild deer, then of course not. The numbers dont work. The numbers don't work out because there isn't enough carrying capacity, not because it is impossible to kill a doe without lowering yield per sector.
> Even hunters forget that when you kill a doe, you are killing 4-8 future deer,
Hunters ... Do not forget this.
This is why, for instance, many states have antlerless weekends. Florida Zone B (where I grew up and which I'm familiar with) only allows you to shoot does (antlerless deer) during general gun season December 27-29 this year.
A deer can feed a family of four for four days. That's all the calories there are in there. Now, you don't eat just meat. But say, 10% meat. So that's 40 days, that's 9 deer per family per year at least.
That means all the deer will be gone in a few years. If they let hunters shoot them all, which they don't.
I don't think it can matter. Folks have some romantic idea about hunting your own food, but that hasn't been practical for a century by now.