In North America, the number of people who hunt and purchase hunting licenses has been declining over the past few decades. There is also less public support overall for hunting, especially if it is considered “trophy” hunting. Yet, long-term survey data (Responsive Management et al., 2025) shows that public approval of hunting for meat (81%) and locally sourced food (80%) remains very high. A weakness for the hunting advocacy community and recruitment, retention, and reactivation (R3) effort is we cannot verify nutritional claims about game meat in support of the motivation “hunting for meat.” Currently, there is no publicly accessible nutrition content data for wild white-tailed deer meat in the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) national nutrient database, FoodData Central, which is used for standard reference for human nutrition. To leverage social acceptance to hunt for healthy, locally sourced meat and R3, we need to fill the information gap on the nutrition content of wild white-tailed deer meat. Meat is an important source of dietary protein and essential vitamins and minerals in the human diet. Consumer demand for healthy, lean meat is rising, with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommending meat and poultry consumption from lean, non-processed forms. Americans are also interested in consuming local, grass-fed meat that is not factory farmed. Many recent books, websites, podcasts, recipe blogs, and television shows highlight hunting for healthy food, yet ambiguities and uncertainties remain concerning the nutritional content of these foods. White-tailed deer is very popular to hunt and consume in the United States, but it is not specifically included in FoodData Central. The closest species listed to white-tailed deer is generic “deer meat” which is farm-raised deer or wild harvested “Sitka deer” found in Alaska, and not white-tailed deer. Through this grant, we aim to conduct research on white-tailed deer meat and include this data in USDA’s FoodData Central nutritional database to substantiate hunting for healthy meat as part of R3. The National Deer Association (NDA), along with Cornell University Cooperative Extension, and USDA’s Human Nutrition Research Center will collaborate on this project to collect white-tailed deer samples, use laboratory protocols to analyze the meat for nutrient content, and publish this nutrition information for consumers. NDA is a respected resource for information about white-tailed deer and has trained professionals across the country who are able to collect legally harvested deer during the hunting seasons in different regions. NDA will coordinate this grant and help disseminate findings from this work. Cornell University Cooperative Extension has led the charge in collecting wild game and fish samples for inclusion in the USDA nutritional database with brook trout, Canada goose, ruffed grouse, and Eastern wild turkey meat. The Tidball Lab in the Department of Natural Resources has researched, written, and spoken at large conferences about leveraging the locavore movement for R3 efforts. They will coordinate with USDA to establish a research protocol for inclusion of white-tailed deer meat into the database and work on publishing the findings. USDA’s Human Research Center will process the meat and conduct the nutritional analysis. They will conduct the laboratory work to establish calories, fat content, vitamin, mineral, and cholesterol content for a serving size of white-tailed deer meat. They will include the findings in FoodData Central for the public to be able to access this information along with nutritional professionals. This strong collaborative team and the nutritional findings from this project will help promote hunting for healthy nutritional meat as part of R3 efforts and to help improve the social acceptance of hunting, which ultimately impacts conservation of the species.