BOONE COUNTY -- Every year, Missouri hunters bag thousands of white tail deer. Many hunters have little or no use for the meat.

"Protein is the hardest thing for us to come by on a consistent basis,” Central Missouri Food Bank Peggy Kirkpatrick said. “Deer meat is some of the most nutritious meat that you can give.”

This morning, nearly a thousand pounds of ground deer meat, venison, left crane's meat processing in rural Boone County for the Central Missouri Food Bank. It's meat donated by deer hunters under the "Share the Harvest" program.

Gov. Nixon today announced an expansion of the "Share the Harvest" program.

"We run through about 6,000 pounds of meat out of this little plant alone each year that our hunters donate too us,” Meat Processor Bill Crane said.

Last year, nearly 4700 Missouri hunters donated almost 263,000 pounds of venison to the program to feed hungry people.

"This is also an opportunity for us to help in a small way with maintaining a healthy and stable and well-balanced deer herd,” Missouri Conservation Federation Dave Murphy said. 

And there could have been more, had there been more money for processing.

"In some cases, processors have been forced to turn potential contributors away,” Gov. Nixon said.

Gov. Nixon said the state will put an extra $200,000 over the next three years into tax credits that go to people who donate money to feeding programs in Missouri. Nixon said that will nearly double the number of deer processed annually by "Share the Harvest" to more than 8,100.

“We expect the number of pounds of venison distributed each year to increase by 75 percent,” Gov. Nixon said.

In the past, "Share the Harvest" has survived on the generosity of corporate sponsors such as Shelter Insurance.

Shelter Vice President Joe Moseley today joked that the company has a selfish interest in wanting to see fewer deer on Missouri roads, getting hit by cars and generating insurance claims. 

Missouri's firearms deer season opens this weekend.

See a map of participating processors