Randy Ferguson describes deer hunting as a social service. He’s not talking about hunters’ mutually beneficial relationship with farmers in his native Pennsylvania, or the social and economic fabric that’s knit by hunters and their traditions in rural communities around the country.
Instead, he’s talking about the million pounds of venison that Pennsylvania hunters have donated to public food banks in the Keystone State over the last 5 years.
“We’ve been breaking records every year with the donated portion of the deer harvest,” says Ferguson, executive director of Pennsylvania’s chapter of Hunters Sharing the Harvest (HSH) program, now in its 34th year. “Last season, hunters donated 262,000 pounds from about 6,900 deer. That’s an all-time record for us, topping the 235,000 pounds from the year before. When you compound the…
