Bill Cochran

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Let’s just come right out and say it: Hunters for the Hungry is struggling.

Yes, this great organization that processed and distributed 356,054 pounds of venison for the needy last year -- that’s 1.4 million servings -- is finding it increasingly challenging to keep up financially with the demands being placed on it.

Next year is going to be a real test. That’s when more liberal doe hunting regulations are expected to take effect as the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries grapples with stabilizing the deer herd. The result will be additional pressure on Hunters for the Hungry, which already is close to being maxed out.

Where is the money going to come from to process all these deer?

Right now, with a few notable exceptions, funds coming in are dimes and dollars collected at outdoor shows, or through raffle ticket sales or golf tournaments entry fees and banquets (see this week's Cochran Field Reports).

All this is worthy, even pretty spectacular, but it hardly is the financial foundation required to maintain a program of this magnitude.

Hunters get much of the credit for the program’s success, which, since its modest beginning in 1991, has set records each year in pounds of venison distributed to the needed. I can think of no other program that gives hunters and hunting a better image.

Yet, hunters need to do more. They have the option to check off $2 for Hunters for the Hungry each time they buy a hunting license, but few do.

This huge disappointment often is blamed on the license agents who fail to ask the license buyer if he or she would like to make a contribution. Now there is growing evidence that two out of three hunters aren’t contributing even when asked.

At the recent Virginia Outdoor Sportsman Show in Richmond, the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries set up a license-sales booth where it purposely asked hunters if they would like to use the Hunters for the Hungry $2 check off. Only one-third did, said Virgil Kopf, assistant director of administration for DGIF.

Thus a check-off system that has potential to fund a large portion of the Hunters for the Hungry program is bringing in pocket change.

The same weekend of the Richmond show, I was one of several Hunters for the Hungry volunteers and staff at the outdoor show in Roanoke. Many of the attendees proudly told me that they contribute a deer to the program every year.

“That’s great,” I would say. “But do you know it costs about $40 to process that deer? Where are we going to get that kind of money?”

Let me answer my own question. I believe Hunters for the Hungry is due major new funding. A likely source would be to make the $2 check off mandatory. I was opposed to that a few years ago, when it came up in the General Assembly, but after working more closely with the program I have changed my mind.

If a mandatory check-off isn’t approved, then the DGIF needs to begin making significant monetary contributions to Hunters for the Hungry on an annual basis.

You might ask, why should hunters be forced to support a benevolent program? The answer is that the state’s deer management plan simply can’t work unless there is a system to deal with the excess of deer. Hunters can’t eat them all. So why not share the bounty by feeding the needy? It is the right and noble thing to do, and it is vital to the well-being of hunting.