Jo Barrett is the reigning Good Food Guide Chef of the Year and, in 2019, represented Australia at the “pastry Olympics”, an international baking competition held in Milan. So why is she scared of a pie?

“This is so different from anything I’ve done before,” she says. “I am really nervous.”

Barrett and her business partners have just launched WildPie, a range of pies, sausage rolls and dim sims made with wild game meat, including venison, boar and goat, intended for the restaurant and catering trade.

The motivation is not purely commercial; it’s about making the most of an abundant but problematic resource.

“Wild game is such an underutilised protein,” says Barrett. “Animals are culled and left to die in the wild, so there’s a lot of food waste.” At the same time, professional chefs and home cooks are reluctant to cook and eat game meats, so there’s not enough demand to change the situation.

“We know people want to be more conscientious about the food system, but there hasn’t been an easy way to eat game,” says Barrett.

“With WildPie, we want to offer chefs a product they can whack on a menu with a garnish, and they’re instantly helping. For people at home, if they have a positive experience with wild foods, they might be more inclined to give it a go in a restaurant or purchase the meat to cook themselves.”

Feral animals create multiple problems in Australia.

It’s estimated that the national deer population increased from 200,000 in 2000 to 2 million in 2021, with the Victorian High Country and southern NSW at the heart of the problem.

“They are the ‘next rabbit’ of Australia’s feral species,” said Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek in 2023, launching the National Feral Deer Action Plan, designed to manage the feral deer population.

Nationally, feral deer cause an estimated $91 million in annual losses for primary producers and communities. They trample and damage native vegetation and hinder bushfire recovery by eating new vegetation and spreading weeds.

More than 1000 native plant and animal species would benefit from deer control efforts in Victoria, according to the Victorian Deer Control Strategy, a state government initiative to reduce the harmful effects of deer.

Deer are the fourth most common animal involved in road collisions, costing drivers more than $3 million a year. They are also a biosecurity risk with the potential to spread diseases and parasites to livestock.

The National Feral Deer Action Plan brings together government and non-government organisations to manage the problem. It proposes culling more than 35 per cent of the deer population annually to reduce their impact, but eating venison is not considered part of the solution.

“If we can increase demand for this meat, then maybe that could change,” says Barrett. “We could be making money off it rather than spending money on it.”

Barrett closed her popular Lorne restaurant, Little Picket, in April to work on WildPie, a collaboration with chefs Louise Daily and Mark LeBrooy, and game meat company, Discovered Wildfoods, one of the few suppliers licensed to shoot wild animals for human consumption.

Deer are killed with a single shot to the head, then chilled and processed in custom-made boning rooms. “We’re taking sambar deer from Victoria, wild boar from South Australia and goat from NSW and Queensland,” says Barrett.

Shifting from chef to manufacturer has been challenging. “Scaling recipes is hard,” she says. “If you’re in the kitchen and you stuff up a batch, you can fiddle with them until they taste good. You can’t do that with 300 pies at a time. There are also lots of new things like packaging and transport: I’m on the other side of hospitality now as a supplier.”

‘We wanted a pie that is approachable for people who are unused to wild game and I think we’ve done it. It’s a very normal pie.’

Chef Jo Barrett

Losing control is the hardest thing for a finicky chef – the pies shipped frozen to be cooked at the destination.

“In a restaurant, you only lose control of a dish between the kitchen and the dining table,” says Barrett. “Now the dish leaves our pie room, goes on the road, and someone else cooks it. As a control freak, it’s a lot. It’s a whole other level of pressure that I didn’t expect.”

She’s proud of the results, though. “They are pure in flavour but not strong or gamey,” says Barrett. “We wanted a pie that is approachable for people who are unused to wild game, and I think we’ve done it. It’s a very normal pie.”

Already, WildPie products are on the menus at Tanswells Hotel in Beechworth, Petrel Hotel in Geelong West and Holbrook Hotel, north of Albury, in NSW.

Tanswells is serving Barrett’s venison pie with house-made relish and spring salad for $24.

“It’s a great addition to our offering,” says the hotel’s head chef, Keira Lips. “The pies are absolutely stunning, and they’re a good way for people to try something different. We find people can be scared of game, but this shows them there’s nothing to be worried about. It’s just a delicious meal.”