Dean Spencer’s knife passes quickly and cleanly through the roast, turning it into steaks. He tosses it into a container, then trims the connective tissue off the next piece.

The retired butcher in Broadalbin made his living doing this for hours every day on beef. Today, he’s turned his attention to venison. Some of what comes under his knife heads to food pantries in a state program to help hunters donate their deer to help people who have problems making ends meet.

“A lot of hunters don’t know about it,” Spencer said Monday from his Route 29 shop, Big Buck Deer Processors. “And there aren’t many processors left.”

Spencer typically breaks down five to six deer each season to donate. He’s done two so far this year. “That was their thing: ‘Hey, we get plenty, so why not share a little bit?’”

That’s become more urgent to him, even as the longest federal shutdown in United States history recedes in the rearview mirror. People who used Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits didn’t get them for weeks, and turned to food pantries — 60,000 in the Greater Capital Region. Some deferred paying other bills to buy food, so even as SNAP resumes, money remains tight.

That’s where Spencer sees the benefit of the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s program. The program sends 50,000 to 70,000 pounds of venison each year to food pantries across the state, perhaps 300 pounds of which come from Spencer’s knife.

He’s one of two Fulton County meat processors who contribute to the program; Whitey’s Meat, Deli and Catering in Johnstown is the other. Farther afield, Berkshire View Farm in Hannacroix in Greene County also processes venison for donation.

“We’re a smaller food pantry; the first time he came, we were very, very low on meat,” said Susan Moyer, treasurer of the Broadalbin Ecumenical Food Pantry. “It was great.”

The pantry serves 60 or 70 families a month, she said, but at Spencer’s first delivery this season, it was out of meat.

“We all thank God the government opened up again,” Moyer said. “One woman who came to us — after we brought the food out to her, it looked like she’d been crying. … ‘Now I can feed my babies,’ she said.”

The woman had just received a benefits check, and spent every penny on rent, Moyer said.

Venison cooks and tastes much like beef, but because it has spent its life foraging and running through the woods, tends to be leaner and with more connective tissue — more like grass-fed beef than grain-fed beef. It tends to be higher in protein per serving and lower in fat than grass-fed beef.

It cooks best like grass-fed meat, too: lower temperatures and slower cooking methods for roasts so the connective tissue melts to keep the meat juicy; or high-heat, quick methods for steaks, so that it cooks to temperature before the connective tissue becomes tough and chewy.

Spencer likes the meat, although he’s not a hunter. He’s a butcher, spending his career in grocery stores, since the days stores bought whole steers and butchers were artists — and often the highest-paid person in the store — to figure out the best ways to cut it for their customers. But he retired a decade ago, and took up processing game to keep his fingers warm and his knives sharp.

“I do very well just doing this,” he said. “I can break it down in half an hour, but then you’ve got to cut it and wrap it.”

He sends all the donated venison to the Broadalbin pantry on North Main Street.........

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