Is Hunting the New Local?
2:53 am, by tricky coyoteMy dad has been cleaning out the corners of his house lately and asked me if I wanted the 30-06. It’s the same gun I used to shoot my first deer when I was fourteen. It was the last day of hunting season, called “hunter’s choice” in Oregon because you could shoot does and fawns. I shot a little spike, hit it in the front shoulder in my bumbling excitement, ruined the meat in said shoulder with the mismatch of firepower and deer size. I stood there a little shocked while my uncle Steve slit its throat, and stayed shocked for a day or two. I lost the enthusiasm for hunting right then and there.
I told my dad I’d take the gun. First I was a vegetarian who ate roadkill, and now I think I’m going to be a vegetarian who hunts. I can’t think of a food that could match locally hunted, bike-harvested venison for sheer eco-nourishment, and deep down I’m definitely a meat eater. Deer abound in these parts and require no fertilizer, pesticides, grain, reservoirs, antibiotics, fences, tractors, or labor to grow. And if I hunt by bike, no oil either. HBO, homegrown beyond organic(tm).
January 18th, 2006 at 9:28 pm
Go for it. Venison is great. I grew up on that stuff. My dad, brother, and I ate about 7 deer per year. We didn’t do it to be environmentally friendly, but it certainly is that. Of course, we hauled our deer to the house in the back of a pickup truck, but it was less than a mile. I guess that counts as local.
I don’t really hunt anymore, but my little brother is happy to keep me supplied with venison.
January 21st, 2006 at 1:35 pm
I’m a vegetarian of ~10 years, but I have a lot more respect for people who hunt (or raise), kill, and clean their own meat than I do for those who (like some members of my own family) sneer at hunting as cruel or barbarous while eating factory-farmed and factory-slaughtered meat three meals a day. The thinking (or lack thereof) seems to be that as long as you don’t have to be faced with the reality of what you’re eating, as long as your meat comes wrapped in cellophane on a little white styrofoam tray, then it’s OK. It was realizing the colossal scale of that disconnect, which most people live by every day and never give a second thought to, that made me cut out 99.5% of the meat from my diet. If I ever go back to it (which I may or may not do someday), it will only be if it’s something I raised, or something I hunted. Paying someone else to do the killing so I can enjoy the results without the reality- which is what buying meat comes down to for the vast majority of western/industrialized consumers - just doesn’t work for me anymore.
So… if you can shoot it, dress it, cook it and eat it, being involved with it every step of the way, and that’s what works for you, then that’s living honestly. And food doesn’t get any more local than right out your own back door.
(Jim could answer this… Would you have to field-dress a deer to get it on an Xtra?
January 22nd, 2006 at 4:10 pm
So in some other hunter’s opinion, “if you eat meat that you hunt, how can you be a said “vergitarian”‘?
January 22nd, 2006 at 4:18 pm
maybe you should consider yourself an “opportunivor”?
January 22nd, 2006 at 9:14 pm
You should always field dress a deer ASAP; if you leave the guts in, they tend to taint the meat. I think a deer carcass would be pretty easy to carry on an Xtra.
January 29th, 2006 at 9:30 pm
And of course hunting is hurt by suburban sprawl!