Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Anti-hunger group reaches out to general public
Mark Taylor
Mark Taylor's Outdoors column and notebook appears regularly in The Roanoke Times.
Recent columns
Names sometimes don't tell a whole story.
Take Hunters for the Hungry, a group whose reach extends far beyond sportsmen.
"This is not about hunting," Robert Harper said. "This is about feeding the needy."
Harper, a resident of Botetourt County and co-owner of Dave Sarmadi Mitsubishi in Salem, said he's been working on spreading that message.
"Most people get it once you educate them," he said. "Education is the key."
Along with fundraising, education is a big reason the group will hold a dinner Saturday in Salem. Harper offered up his dealership's showroom for the event.
And, no, venison is not on the menu.
"That's the question I've been getting the most," Harper said.
But venison is on the menu at a lot of facilities serving needy Virginians.
"In many cases, it's the only meat these groups can get," Harper said.
Hunters for the Hungry provides Virginians with more than a million servings annually of high-protein, low-fat red meat. Last year the group collected and distributed about 350,000 pounds of venison.
Virginia's needy aren't the only ones benefitting, either.
Keeping the state's whitetail population in check helps reduce deer/vehicle collisions, and damage to residential gardens and shrubs.
The program provides hunters with incentive to take advantage of Virginia's liberal deer regulations, and perhaps take an extra deer or two a year.
Hunters are a key component of the group, obviously. But many localities that have urban deer problems donate deer to the program, as do farmers who kill deer on damage permits.
Processing and distributing a single deer costs about $40, and that's only because many processors give the group a price break.
That adds up.
And while hunters and the hunting community play a key role in providing the funding that supports the program, it stands to reason that they really shouldn't shoulder the entire financial burden.
Like many conservation group fundraisers, Saturday's dinner will include raffles and live and silent auctions.
Items include a Texas turkey hunt, youth-and women-only guided deer hunts, guns and more.
One thing it doesn't include is a high ticket price. Tickets to Saturday's dinner are just $20 each, or $35 for couples. Kids under 12 will be admitted free.
Gary Arrington of Hunters for the Hungry said he hopes Saturday's dinner will draw about 200 people. As of Monday, the ticket count was about 100.
Tickets are available at the dealership, which is certainly one of the more unusual venues for a fundraising event such as this. Tickets may also be ordered through Hunters for the Hungry at (800) 352-HUNT.
Jeff Fletcher (985-6523) and Fred and Phyllis Wells (992-3874), who are helping coordinate the event, can help with ticket needs or other questions.
Soggy opener doesn't deter archers
After nine months of waiting for the opening day of Virginia's archery deer season, Jim Ramsdell wasn't about to let Saturday's miserable weather keep him home.
As the Roanoker got soaked in his stand, he had second thoughts.
"Saturday was no fun," said Ramsdell, a 40-year HVAC supervisor at Virginia Western Community College. "I was out in it all day."
And he didn't even see a deer.
Monday was a different story.
About 7:30 a.m. three does walked by Ramsdell's stand on a friend's place near Boones Mill. The deer winded him and bolted.
Thirty minutes later a big eight-point buck appeared from the same direction. Fortunately for Ramsdell, the wind had shifted.
"It was about a 40-yard shot," he said. "I had a 1-foot window to shoot through."
Ramsdell's crossbow is an inexpensive model he bought over the Internet, but he'd practiced with the thing enough to know that it shot well. It did the job, and not much later Ramsdell was hauling the best buck of his life off the mountain.
I heard of several other bowhunters who scored Monday morning.
Amazingly, despite the weekend's horrible weather, the Saturday kill was pretty decent.
The Department of Game and Inland Fisheries call-in checking system recorded 1,279 kills over the weekend. That was down 25 percent from last year.
Internet deer gallery
As usual, we'll be posting reader-submitted deer pictures this fall in an Internet photo gallery.
Last year was the first time we've used an automated system that enabled users to post their own photos. It also allowed viewers to post comments.
That can be good and bad.
Pictures got up more quickly because there was no need to wait for a content producer to post them. But some posters wrote vulgar or rude comments.
We are tweaking the system this year. Users will be able to post their own pictures, but comments won't appear until they're approved.
The bad news is the new system isn't yet ready to roll. Our computer folks tell me it should be up by early November, which is when pictures really start to come in.
In the meantime, if you have a picture, e-mail it to me, along with details of the hunt, and I'll post it in my blog at blogs.roanoke.com/wildlife/.
