Like most farmed meat, the venison Hank Dimuzio raises in Middlebury is available year-round. But over the three decades he’s sold his deer cuts to local restaurants and stores, Dimuzio has noticed that Vermonters’ appetite for the lean, iron-rich protein spikes when leaves turn crimson and woodsmoke starts to tendril from chimneys.

Not coincidentally, those sights and smells also herald Vermont deer-hunting season, which generally runs from October 1 through December 15.

Nonhunters in the mood for venison-and-mushroom stew or loin medallions with cranberry sauce may find a hunting neighbor willing to share. Vermont permits the sale of wild-caught deer during hunting season and for the 20 days following, but that effectively applies only to private transactions because of restaurant and retail food-safety and meat-processing inspection requirements, according to Nick Fortin of the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department.

“Hank is truly unique in both his staying power and his consistency.”

Dr. Kaitlynn Levine

When it comes to farmed deer meat, anything local in a butcher case or on a restaurant menu is almost certainly the product of Dimuzio’s LedgEnd Farm.

In Vermont, “he is the only one doing what he’s doing,” state veterinarian Dr. Kaitlynn Levine said. “Hank is truly unique in both his staying power and his consistency.”

LedgEnd Farm was not always so unique. Toward the end of the 1990s, when Dimuzio started farming fallow deer — named for the animal’s pale brown color — there were several dozen operations raising deer for meat, he said. Today, according to Levine, Dimuzio is the only one still regularly processing and selling such farmed venison.

Hank Dimuzio Credit: Caleb Kenna

Sitting on his porch with a view of the fenced fields where some of his 600 animals grazed, the 74-year-old retired physician recalled “the heyday of farmed deer” in Vermont. He also explained some of the challenges that have left him almost alone in the sector.

During the dairy crisis of the late 1980s, Dimuzio said, a New York deer farmer was among those who pitched the Vermont legislature on the promise of farmed venison. “He said, ‘Deer will take a back 40 that’s not really good for anything, and they’ll make it profitable. It’s a great protein, a great meat,’” Dimuzio recounted.

The legislature decided to legalize farming of a few cervids, including fallow and red deer, in 1988. These species, originally from Europe and Asia, do not interbreed with native white-tailed deer; the latter may not be farmed or held in captivity in Vermont due to disease transmission risks to the wild population.

Around the same time, Dimuzio started his medical career in Vermont, but he also had entrepreneurial and back-to-the-land yearnings. The self-described hippie — who wears professorial spectacles, bushy white facial hair and a rattail braid curling down his back — said he always loved being outdoors and wanted to farm.

In 1991, Dimuzio and his first wife bought a 229-acre former dairy farm in Middlebury. “I was not looking to be a gentleman farmer,” he said. “I wanted to be hands-on, but it had to be compatible with emergency medicine, which is shift work, so milking cows or goats was out. I’m not a bird person, so chickens, emus, whatever: No, thank you.”

Intrigued by the idea of deer farming, Dimuzio studied up and, in 1995, bought about 50 fallow deer from two brothers in New Haven who had decided they were too much to manage alongside their other businesses.

Fallow deer appealed to Dimuzio for several reasons, not the least of which was their size, which rarely exceeds four feet tall and 150 pounds. “I’m small, and they’re small,” said the farmer, who described himself as “five foot six and shrinking.”

“They’re very beautiful animals,” he added, who keep their endearing Bambi spots for life and have sculptural antlers like moose.

LedgEnd Farm venison loin with sweet potato mash and roasted Pitchfork Farm turnips at the Daily Planet in Burlington Credit: Courtesy

The deer are pretty self-sufficient: They graze the farm’s pastures, stay outside much of the year and require minimal care. Most important to his business plan, Dimuzio read that fallow deer were “touted as being some of the best venison by chefs worldwide.” The newly minted farmer had little trouble signing up his first few restaurant customers.

Neil Solis, chef and co-owner of Burlington’s Daily Planet, has bought LedgEnd venison for about 15 years while cooking at various restaurants. For local venison, “Hank’s the guy, and he’s cool, too,” Solis said.

Solis counts farmed venison among the “good, sustainable meats,” he said. He is also a bow hunter and said he finds the flavor of the wild and farmed meat comparable; texture is where “a farm-raised animal is a different thing.” Wild game can be quite tough, but LedgEnd’s legs are “fork-and-knife tender,” and the loin “is like butter,” the chef said.

When Solis puts loin on the menu, perhaps with a blueberry sauce over mashed sweet potatoes or risotto, he always sells out. Other hits have included a burger crowned with blue cheese and jalapeños, as well as meatballs in a roasted grape-and-tomato sauce that sold so fast they became “annoying, because we had to make so many,” Solis said with a laugh.

Venison is not for everyone, he noted, particularly customers who want their meat well done, which does not suit the low-fat protein. Unlike beef, venison has no marbling from intramuscular fat, although many seek it out for that reason. “People often ask me where I get it,” Solis said.

Dimuzio also cautions cooks against taking his venison past medium when grilled, roasted or pan-seared. In my home kitchen, LedgEnd loin chops that were just a little larger than local lamb chops grilled up tender and sweet, not the least bit gamy, in a few minutes per side. Naturally tougher cuts, such as stew meat or shanks, are well suited to long cooking in stock or wine. Dimuzio said his wife, Rhonda Roberts, makes a great braise with shanks and winter root vegetables.

The couple hunt, too, and shared some of their personal stash of wild white-tailed venison for a side-by-side burger test. Simply seasoned with salt and pepper, both meats yielded a flavorful patty but with markedly different textures: The fallow deer cooked up more like beef, while the white-tailed was denser and bouncier.

LedgEnd deer spend much of their lives out on about 100 acres of fenced pasture and wooded copses. They eat mostly grass with some fermented haylage during the winter and a little grain as a treat when needed to manage them.

Dimuzio noted that the animals are decidedly not domesticated. “We have not taken the fight or flight out of the animal,” he said. “The bucks will fight to the death, especially if there are does around.”

A walk through his fields confirmed Dimuzio’s assertion. When humans approached, bucks standing under tall trees headed deeper into the shade. In another paddock, does and fawns leaped gracefully away, tails bobbing.

Over the years, the farmer has bred for gentler animals to help with herd dynamics and easier handling. “That’s Mister Rogers’ knoll,” Dimuzio said, pointing to a rise in the distance. The moniker was his pet name for an unusually human-friendly deer. “He ate apples out of my mouth. He probably would have let me put a cardigan sweater on him,” Dimuzio said with a smile. “We bred him a lot, and I think that helped with the herd.”

LedgEnd Farm venison Credit: Caleb Kenna

In one field, does clustered around haylage bales, and a couple of fawns scaled them, nibbling as they went, like goats. Due to this summer’s drought, Dimuzio had to start feeding bales in late August, about six weeks earlier than usual, a new record. He feels lucky that he had 100 bales left from last year’s harvest on the now 420-acre conserved property.

Feeding his animals from his land is the difference between profit and loss, Dimuzio said. Other major challenges have included finding a reliable slaughterhouse partner and the time and effort he invests into being his own salesman and distributor. The farmer personally delivers to about a dozen restaurants, independent retail stores and co-ops around the state. Margins are too tight to add a middleman, Dimuzio said.

Swings in consumer and chef tastes and trends have also proven difficult to ride over the decades. “Some years, I cannot keep venison in stock. It just flies out. Other years, I’m just sitting around begging for people to buy it,” Dimuzio lamented.

Farmed venison is never going to be the next chicken, but “I don’t want it to be so niche that it’s niche-niche,” Dimuzio said. “I want it to be a local or regional product that a number of farmers can make a good living on.”

Dimuzio, who retired from medicine in 2016, acknowledged that he’s never made his living off the farm but also noted that he invested a lot of money as a first-generation farmer. He understands that the high cost of land and infrastructure are significant barriers to anyone looking to farm deer today — it currently works best as supplemental income, he noted — though he would welcome others. Dimuzio misses having fellow deer farmers with whom to share advice, commiserate, and band together to build and meet demand.

This fall has been good for venison sales. Dimuzio said he hasn’t yet had time to change the seasonal deer-themed song on his landline answering machine.

In tribute to hunting season, he’ll warble a riff on Bob Marley’s “I Shot the Sheriff”: “I shot the fallow, but I did it for the venison.” 

The original print version of this article was headlined “Oh, Deer! | For 30 years, Middlebury’s LedgEnd Farm has raised venison”