Ohio's deer gun season poses problems for rural butcher shops, meat processing centers
NEWARK — The "deer guy" of Licking County is in a bind.
A little over a week before Ohio's deer gun season kicks off, Matt Gayheart sits in City Barbeque, a Newark smokehouse restaurant, monitoring his phone and scratching his beard, wondering where he's going to direct hunters to get their meat processed.
"Look, here's another one," he says, gesturing to a paragraph-long text from a 740 number, the local area code.
The Army veteran and long-time volunteer was born and raised in Licking County, and became the Newark chapter coordinator for Whitetails Unlimited and Farmers and Hunters for Feeding the Hungry (FHFH), nonprofit groups dedicated to the preservation of hunting and donating excess deer meat to the hungry, respectively.
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He got roped in 13 years ago, after in-city hunting regulations in Heath, Gayheart's hometown east of Columbus, required hunters to harvest a doe before they could shoot a buck, in order to cull the deer population.
"There was just so much meat, people didn't know what to do with it," he said.
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Hunters can donate deer, but there are regulations on processing meat
The solution was to connect with Whitetails Unlimited (and eventually FHFH) which helped him coordinate with Chuck Moore, the executive director of the Food Pantry Network of Licking County.
The result was an abundance of donated venison in the form of ground deer for the county's neediest.
But over the last several months, a labor shortage wrought by the pandemic has left rural butchers and processing centers in Licking County and elsewhere with far too much meat on their hands and far too few employees to match the pace of demand.
And that's before the start of gun season, which opens Monday, Gayheart said.
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When it comes to donating deer meat, there are strict regulations that butchers must follow: Beef and deer must be separated at all times and carved under the watchful eye of a state inspector. They are rules that, when adhered to, grant butchers certification status, which allows Moore to accept their donations.
It's a process that is even more important to follow given that COVID-19 virus was found in about 35% of wild Ohio deer captured by Ohio State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine last year. While it's a possibility that whitetails can infect humans, no evidence suggests that's happening. Still, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources recommends that hunters wear gloves while field-dressing a deer.
But the most-pressing concern for hunters is capacity for processing.
With so many folks in the processing industry unable to retain employees, hunters across Ohio are begging Gayheart to find them someone to process their meat.
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Since bow hunting season kicked off in September, archers have harvested nearly 67,000 deer, and ODNR projects about 300,000 hunters will participate in the upcoming gun season, said Brian Banbury.
Banbury, executive administrator of information and education for ODNR's Division of Wildlife, said 2020's gun season brought in more than 92,000 deer, which was a 10% increase over the three-year average.
So what will happen when this year's season starts while butchers in Licking County and across the state are strapped for resources?
"If somebody calls, and I've had a handful," Gayheart said, "we work through it and I try to send them to a trusted butcher who has the capacity to take on a deer."
But not all of the meat processers have the manpower and financial incentive to tackle venison in addition to poultry, beef and other traditional meat products. And if people want to donate meat they need to find an accredited butcher.
In Pataskala, Kirk Hall runs a short-staffed, high-visibility storefront and butcher shop off of Broad Street, and is turning down processing requests every day.
"It's very demanding to run," he said. "We have interruptions all the time, and we make way more money catering to those requests than the $100 gained by cutting up a deer."
Hall blames that shortage on a combination of the pandemic and welfare. He tried to hire an extra set of hands to help run the store's register over the summer for $12 an hour. Not a single high-school or college student applied, he said.
"Only person that responded was a 40-something-year-old guy who still works here," Hall added.
If hunters are looking to donate, Gayheart calls Moore and tries to find other outlets.
But donations were slim last year, Moore said, and the meat situation is down this year — they don't expect much to pick up. Most of this year's donations have come from out of state and the network of food banks has relied on soy hamburgers and chicken allocated from the federal government.
"There's nothing coming into the food banks from Matt," Moore said. "The lack of deer meat will hinder us a lot, but we'll make do with what we have."
Oiler's in Utica 'trying to take on the deer overflow'
There is one butcher, or rather, family of butchers "trying to take on the deer overflow."
Off the Main Street on the corner of Central Avenue in Utica, Travis Payne and his son-in-law/co-owner Zach Frazee have been pulling 12 to 14 hour days, seven days a week for eight weeks straight.
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"Farmers are struggling to get beef booked in," Payne said. "We got a big family of employees, but it seems a lot more than normal — we're getting a lot of hunters from all over Ohio because a lot of places aren't taking deer at all."
A typical day starts at 5:30 a.m. and can last until hours after the sun goes down, said Payne's wife, Veronica.
"We’re on deer 353, and we also did 95 from the Metro Parks," she added, as of Nov. 18. "We're well over 400 and we haven’t hit gun season yet, and we're still doing beef."
Payne and Frazee used to work for Linda Oiler, the matriarch of the meat-processing hub, and kept the name when they took over the business in February. As first-year owners, they are taking on anything and everything they can get their hands on.
That includes fulfilling requests for hunters from Delaware County all the way to Dayton. They had to turn down a desperate caller from Indiana because they can't take a deer to be processed across the state line.
Payne is a pro — a fourth-generation butcher after his great-grandfather's heart — and while the slog of work has been brutal, it also has been the most rewarding.
"All the hunters that have been turned away by all these places, they’re so grateful," he said. "They're so appreciative, say, 'Thank you guys for being open, staying open.' It does make you feel good, like we’re making a difference."
While the line of work is difficult, which Payne suspects might contribute to the labor crunch so many butchers are facing, giving back to the community is critical.
Oiler Meat Processing is involved with FHFH, and while they don't coordinate directly with Matt Gayheart, they have cut up and donated more than 3,000 pounds of deer burger to the organization, which distributes the meat to nearby churches and food pantries on the eastern edge of Licking County and into Franklin County.
Despite the assist from Payne and Frazee in Utica, Gayheart is still concerned about the spike in hunters pinging his cell in an attempt to find a butcher willing to process their deer meat after gun season hits.
Back in City Barbeque, the smell of brisket wafts through the dining room as Gayheart rings his hands.
"Where is the relief?" he asked. "I'm not sure what the end game is for this?"
Céilí Doyle is a Report for America corps member and covers rural issues in Ohio for The Dispatch. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation at https://bit.ly/3fNsGaZ.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio's deer season poses problems for rural butchers, meat processers
