At what point do you donate the meat?

That's typical, but once a year ill have a buddy wjth a MLD (managed deer land in Texas with quotas for population) call me and the most we've done in a single day was 16 doe. Yeah we're donating to food banks (actually it's paying about $100/each for them to handle/process it).
 
If we agree hunting is the means by which we regulate herd numbers and the F&G say John Doe is allowed to legally harvest X number of animals and all the meat is consumed by someone, I fail to see any problem ethically or morally.
 
I sometimes kill more than my family alone will eat in a single year, and I frankly prefer to have that "excess." Rather than paying a processor to give it away for me, I share it with friends and family. Most of them aren't hunters but like and appreciate the meat, and some share eggs, pork, beef, etc. that they've raised. I also cut a deal with a good friend last year where I gave him a cooler full of meat, he made a boatload of tamales out of all of it; he kept half the tamales and I got half of them. Aside from the logistical difficulty of me eating over 200 tamales by myself, it worked out well for both of us. If I were hunting a state, or specific areas, where deer numbers couldn't handle what I wanted to take, I'd have to make changes. But as it stands, I can't kill enough to make a dent, legally or logistically.
 
Since I process my own deer I can’t donate it to a food bank. In our household we reach a point each year where things are overflowing so we have “freezer only” weeks - preparing meals only from stuff we have in on hand, minus a few grocery items like onions.
 
Donate?
I have 4 freezers full and still picked up a fresh roadkill 7 pt this morning on way to work. Skinned him in the parking lot and meat is in trash bags in work frig.
 
I would if i ever found myself in that position, but I have enough friends who don’t hunt but like venison that there’s always more to share. Some years im stingey with them but I’d love to drop of a whole elk at a buddies house.
 
I've gifted 2 deer this year. There are some food insecure folks in our church/community so I helped them out. Our freezer is 'near' capacity so as of this moment I don't need deer meat. i have couple more tags and will probably donate at least 1 more to someone in need.

I've donated to Hunters for the Hungry over the years, but currently, I'm uniquely positioned to be able to provide directly a family in need. Hunters for the Hungry is free, but direct giving cost me a few bucks for butchering, but i don't see that as much of a hurdle to help someone long term
 
I was raised to only kill what we were going to eat. But with 6 kids in the family, that meant we still had a lot of killing to do!

But as an adult, I realized and and am perfectly ok with it, that I hunt primarily for the pure joy and fun of it. Yep, I really like killing things when I hunt. And, over the years I've gotten pretty damn good at killing stuff most every time I go out. I'm not going to apologize about it, and I'm not going to tell myself to stop having fun because I've already reached some arbitrary threshold of 'enough' meat that I need. That is entirely unrelated to the question of whether I feel like I've had enough fun.

I easily kill more meat every year than my family would probably be able to eat in 3-4 years. I've got 4 large freezers, mostly dedicated to storing big game, fish, and birds.

But I also give away about 75% of what I kill to folks that I know or randomly meet that aren't as lucky as I am in the woods, or who can't for whatever reason go get it themselves. My fun hobby puts meat and fish in the freezers for about a dozen different families in any given year, and I'll never feel bad about that.
 
First elk I took out west was the only animal I brought home because my dad drove. We still donated some because 2 of us were successful and we did t have the cooler or cargo space for it.

If you fly the cost to get it home isn’t feasible. Baggage and weight fees are outrageous. To ship it post also isn’t worth it.

The last 2 deer I got on an out of state hunt were both given away. My Montana deer was given to the guide and my Wyoming deer was given to the landowner of the land we hunt on.
 
I’m unable to hunt this year so I’ll take any meat anyone wants to donate. 😁
 
I donate when I need to kill a bunch of deer in short order. A couple spots I hunt (my FIL's and another family piece of land) suffer from the "no doe" rule to "keep bucks around" from properties around us. This obviously doesn't work. We will kill 6-8 does in a weekend either early season or late and after gutting them sorry not also breaking them down. Our one 80acre piece I muzzle loader hunted last year and had 65 deer in a 20 acre field last week of NOV. absolutely unacceptable.

When we do that I bring them in and donate them. Other than that we take 6-7 deer a year for ourselves. Sometimes less but supplemented with fish, birds, etc.
 
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