FHFH. It doesn?t exactly roll off the tongue. It is not a pronounceable acronym. It stands for Farmers and Hunters Feeding the Hungry, a group that allows you to continue your avid interest in deer hunting, yet be helpful and benevolent ? all while getting a tax write-off. Man, you can?t beat a deal like that.
Let?s say that you are one of those skillful (or lucky) hunters referenced in Tuesday?s column that, in our eastern zone, takes a bunch of deer each season. You can take two antlered and 10 antlerless with muzzleloader and firearms. In suburban counties, you can take any number of antlerless deer with a bow (season opening Sept. 15), but let?s not go overboard.
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Donate unwanted deer to FHFH, even if you can?t pronounce it. Donate the whole deer, and they pay all processing costs, leaving you with a full wallet, a tax write-off and a warm fuzzy feeling for all the good that you are doing. Or, pay for processing your deer but donate a few pounds of meat. Farmers get in on it by donating deer shot with crop-depredation permits.
The idea all began in 1997, when Williamsport, Md., hunter Rick Wilson stopped on a Virginia road to help a woman retrieving a road kill. (Illegal to do, but she and her fatherless children were hungry and did not care about police citations.)
Wilson developed the FHFH idea and still heads it, now a growing organization in 27 states that from 1997 through 2005 has donated nearly 1,725 tons of venison (345 tons in Maryland) and provided about 13.8 million servings (2.76 million servings in Maryland) for food banks across America.
FHFH director of operations Josh Wilson notes that they often run out of processing money late in the season and suggests that hunters donate deer early and often.
“This means that we miss out on thousands of additional deer that could be donated, processed and distributed if additional funding to cover the butchering expenses were available,” pleads Wilson.
Much of the Maryland venison goes to charitable groups.
“Farmers and Hunters Feeding the Hungry provides a superb source of protein for us,” notes Bill Ewing, executive director of the Maryland Food Bank.
This isn?t any small potatoes outfit either. Sponsors include corporate types such as Buck Knives, Easton (arrow shafts), Knight Rifles (muzzleloaders) and Mossy Oak (camouflage); clubs such as Pope & Young, Whitetails Unlimited and North American Hunting Club; and retailers such as Bass Pro Shops, Gander Mountain, and Wal-Mart.
To help, contact their Web site (www.fhfh.org) or call 866-GET-FHFH for details on how to give without it hurting at all ? and helping a lot. Then again, there is always that tax write-off.
C. Boyd Pfeiffer is an internationally known sportsman and award-winning writer on fishing, hunting, and the outdoors, and he has more than 20 books to his credit. He can be reached at [email protected].
