For those facing food insecurity, protein is one of the hardest food types to come by.

But Kentucky Hunters for the Hungry is getting meat into food banks across the Commonwealth through the help of local hunters.

It's one in six Kentucky children go to bed hungry and I think that's completely unacceptable.

And I want to give back.

In one way we can do that is by donating.

Dear me, the way our program works.

A hunter will take a legally harvested deer field, dress it, and drop it off at one of our 60 plus processors throughout the Commonwealth.

And then they there's there's no cost to the Hunter.

What Hunters for the Hungry does is pay the processor to process and make it into 1 to £2 packages, all ground and frozen.

And then once the processor has that done a local food bank or the community mission will come and pick the meat up and distributed throughout the community.

Or if there's none available, we work with partners such as Feeding Kentucky to come pick the made up and distribute with their network.

One thing that the food banks are lacking is protein, and we're blessed with having a very large deer herd.

Overpopulation of a deer herd.

It poses many challenges from increased vehicle collisions to agricultural crop damage to disease.

One of the biggest challenges with managing a deer herd at a statewide level is really keeping the population at a manageable level, not allowing it to grow too much.

And that's really where our hunters come into play.

Most deer hunters, you know, they go out, they harvest 1 to 3 deer to feed their family, and they they get what they need.

They fill their freezer.

And then there's not a lot of incentive for them to want to go back out and hunt.

That's really where our partnership with Kentucky Hunters for the Hungry comes into play.

And it incentivizes those folks to get back out in the field and pursue one of their favorite hobbies, but then gives them an outlet to be able to donate that meat to a very worthy cause.

It goes very quick.

The food banks can keep it in stock.

It goes it goes out as quickly as it goes back in.

Everyone seems to like it.

And we've partnered with the University of Kentucky and they're cooking Cook Wild Kentucky program that we distribute recipe cards so people know how to cook cooked to make this given to on with it being ground any any way that you can cook hamburger you can cook this deer.

So the way it goes, you know anything from chili to meat loaf, sloppy joes make balls, you name it.

TOURIST 3023 Deer donated it last year season, which is the most we've ever had.

The average yield of a deer is about £40 per, per deer, which equates to £4, four servings per pound, which is 160 per deer.

So that works out to a lot of meals to feed the hungry.

Kentucky Hunters for the Hungry also partners with Ken's animal nutrition to provide venison meat sticks as part of a food backpack program that feeds over 800 children a week.