DOVER-FOXCROFT – When Jim Ellis of Dover-Foxcroft overheard a mother tell her child she couldn’t afford to enroll the child at the Piscataquis Regional YMCA more than six years ago, he sprang into action.

Aware that the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife donated confiscated wild game to prevent waste, Ellis requested and received permission to hold an annual wild game dinner to benefit the YMCA youth program. With the aid of Rocco Palumbo of Wellington, Ellis served the first wild game meal, named in memory of the late game warden Arthur L. Hitchcock Jr., to 125 people. Attendance has grown every year since, with more than 400 served last year – some of them traveling from as far away as California, Ellis said this week.

“Once people try the wild game, they like it and they return each year,” Ellis said this week.

This year’s dinner will be served from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 16, at SeDoMoCha Middle School in Dover-Foxcroft. The suggested donation is $10 for adults; $4 for children 6-12 years old, free to children under age 6.

Over the years, the pair, who are assisted by about 40 volunteers, have expanded the menu. In addition to bear, moose and venison, diners can try muskrat, beaver, wild turkey, white perch, brook and lake trout, groundhog, raccoon and rabbit.

For those who don’t care to eat wild game, the couple also serve a farm-raised turkey, but the meat is limited, Ellis warned. “After all, it is a wild game supper,” he said.

Ellis and Palumbo, who also are co-chairs of the local Hooked on Fishing and Hooked on Hunting, Not Drugs and Alcohol programs, said the wild game served at the meals is donated by local wardens, hunters, taxidermists and guides. The pair travel great distances to get some of the game and do it throughout the year.

“It’s a full-time job all year round,” Ellis said.

The wild game is processed and then frozen until a few days before the meal. Some cooking is done the day before and the rest is done the day of the meal, Palumbo said. His firehouse pot roast of moose or venison is a popular dish.

About 50 percent of the people who partake of the meal are nonhunters, according to Ellis. “When they try it, they like it,” he said of the wild game. While he is pleased that people enjoy the taste, Ellis never loses sight of the purpose behind the meal.

“It’s all for the kids,” Ellis said.

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