Despite supply, venison doesn't show up on Michigan menus

At first blush, you’d think venison would be more widely available in Michigan.

Richer than beef and gamey in flavor, deer meat is high in nutrients such as protein and iron and lower in calories, cholesterol and fat than most cuts of beef, pork or lamb.

It mixes well with other meats and lends itself to a variety of processing into steaks, salamis, sausages, burgers and, of course, jerky.

And, some say, it's a product that embodies the Pure Michigan ethos: It comes from local producers and evokes positive images of fall in the Mitten State’s vast, forest-covered countryside.

o, why don’t more restaurants or meat markets offer it in a state where an estimated 654,100 hunters harvested about 418,000 deer last year?

“It’s kind of a Catch-22,” said Colin Kelly of Kelly’s Deer Processing in Big Rapids.

Earlier this fall, Kelly processed 150 deer culled from game ranches and sold it over his retail counter and through a wholesaler to butcher shops and restaurants.

Kelly averages about 1,500 deer per year though the processing facility, and some of the processed meat is sold online and shipped to states including Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, where he said the price is “outrageous.”

“The demand is growing,” said Kelly. “There’s more product being made out of this.”

Kate Lane manages a similar operation in Traverse City called Michigan Venison. She attributes part of the increasing demand to a growing desire among conscious consumers to know the provenance of the food they’re eating.

Michigan Venison’s online presence includes recipes venison chili, meatloaf, bean salad, lettuce wraps and other dishes. In addition to the various meat cuts for sale, the company also sells spice blends and kits for making sausage with the ground meat.

“Anything and everything to help make venison more mainstream,” said Lane.

Ground meat is the most common form of venison due to its versatility — it can become burgers or be added to tacos, chili, pasta, etc. Not including shipping, Kelly sells bulk ground venison for $4 per pound, Lane sells it for $8.98 per pound.

Derek Sanders of Sanders Meats in Custer buys a couple thousand pounds of venison from Kelly every year and processes the meat into salami, which he sells for about $16 per 3-pound stick.

He stocks the meat year-round, but said hunting season is when demand pops.

“A lot of customers will come back just for the salami because they can't get it anywhere else,” he said. “Especially people who don’t or aren’t able to hunt.”

Although demand may be growing, there’s a natural limit on supply that generally makes venison a seasonal product.

Deer are wild animals and that poses a natural obstacle to mainstream venison consumption. Deer that are killed for meat outside of hunting season generally come from herd culling at Michigan game ranches.

Ranchers cull deer on their own schedule, said Kelly, because culling for meat is secondary to a ranch’s primary goal of catering to hunting clients.

The in-state domestic meat supply has dwindled as the number of game ranches has declined over the past decade. After hitting a peak at more than 800 in 2003, the Department of National Resources now licenses only 394 such facilities in Michigan.

The increasing price of grain, corn and other feed crops coupled with stricter regulations on fence height and fee increases in the early 2000s are likely the main factors in the decline, said DNR biologist Ryan Soulard.

Diseases such as Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease (EHD) have killed captive deer in Michigan, said Soulard, but most game ranches have shrugged off those losses and continued on without much issue.

Of the game ranches in operation, a smaller percentage have the number of deer within their borders to warrant culling the herd for meat, said Kelly.

Although everyone seems to know someone who had venison for dinner last night during hunting season, it’s usually from a deer that was shot privately and the meat stored in the freezer and shared informally with friends and family.

State law prohibits unlicensed sale of wild game. Officials say only about a dozen or so standalone meat processors in Michigan are licensed to resell venison, although the total number of establishments licensed to process wild game is much higher.

In Birch Run, “Dixie” Dave Minar, executive chef and owner of Oscar & Joey’s Roadhouse, said wild game meat such as venison, bison, duck and others make up about 40 percent of the menu.

Minar, who has been serving venison for 26 years, tries to buy Michigan venison whenever he can, but said domestic whitetail supply can be more expensive than fallow deer meat imported from New Zealand.

Minar uses venison in a variety of dishes including meatballs, steaks, stews and chilis.

He will cater a dinner in Lansing next month featuring venison, and even eventually plans to open what he said will be the world’s first cannery that specializes in wild game soups.

“It’s a wonderful flavor,” he said. “To me, it’s way superior to beef. My wife and I very seldom use beef at home. It’s mostly ground venison.”