Mother Nature’s Child (or Girl the Hunter)

Even before the film started, my antennae were up.

Cath and I had gone to the January 25th screening of Mother Nature’s Child: Growing Outdoors in the Media Age out of general curiosity. The documentary’s message would, I expected, be much like that presented by Richard Louv’s compelling book Last Child in the Woods.

In her brief remarks before the lights went down, however, filmmaker Camilla Rockwell had piqued a more specific interest. She said that certain parts of the film were “edgy.” She would be curious to hear how people felt about them.

What would be “edgy” in a documentary about connecting kids to nature?

My gut gave one answer: hunting.

In Louv’s book, I recalled, several pages were devoted to “The Case for Fishing and Hunting.” Louv wrote that these activities “remain among the last ways that the young learn of the mystery and moral complexity of nature in a way that no videotape can convey.” As a non-hunting angler, though, his focus was on fishing. Hunting remained in the background.

Settling into my seat, I enjoyed the first half of the film. It’s a well-crafted piece, blending footage of young people outdoors with excerpts from interviews with adults. We saw suburban kids running through the woods and crawling through hollow logs, their voices high with excitement. We saw urban teenagers planting gardens and learning to fly-fish. We heard from teachers, parents, and researchers.

Watching and listening, I was reminded just how crucial interaction with the natural world is for children’s physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health. I wondered, not for the first time, who I would be today if I had not spent my boyhood summers almost entirely outdoors, wandering the woods, fishing for brook trout, catching tadpoles and bullfrogs.

And then, halfway through the film, there she was: a girl about ten years old, headed to the Vermont woods with her grandfather—in blaze orange.

Rachel, grandfather, and deer Courtesy of Mother Nature's Child

Sitting there in the Montpelier’s independent theater, The Savoy, we watched the girl handling a rifle. We watched her waiting in the woods. We saw clips from interviews: Nancy Bell of The Conservation Fund talking about her respect for animals and why she hunts, Jon Young talking about how close contact with nature helps young people confront deep questions concerning life and death. Finally, we saw a still image of girl and grandfather. Beside them hung a dead deer: her first.

Fifteen years ago, I would have been horrified. Killing animals, I would have argued, has nothing to do with encouraging healthy relationships with nature, especially for kids.

Now, I see it differently. The filmmakers—both of them non-hunters—have given us a fine documentary about children’s relationships with the natural world. They have also given us a stereotype buster: women and girls hunt, and environmentalists, too! Perhaps most importantly, they have given us a great conversation starter.

The film opens a door for hunters and non-hunters to talk about hunting. Why do some of us hunt? What is it about hunting that others find revolting? Is it helpful to distinguish between stereotypes and first-hand experiences? Is it helpful for non-hunters to hear from actual hunters about how they relate to nature and animals? And, of course: What roles can or should hunting play in young people’s lives?

The film also opens a door for hunters and non-hunters to talk about our shared love of nature. It’s high time, after all, that conservationists—hunters, non-hunters, and anti-hunters—stopped lobbing political firebombs at each other.

It’s time we heeded the warning issued by Richard Nelson in his introduction to A Hunter’s Heart: “After we’ve lost a natural place, it’s gone for everyone—hikers, campers, boaters, bicyclists, animal watchers, fishers, hunters, and wildlife—a complete and absolutely democratic tragedy of emptiness.” Unless we work together, how can we insure that there will be natural places left for our children to relate to?

In the post-screening discussion, it so happens, not one person drew attention to the segment on hunting.

No, I take that back. One person did, indirectly. A man stood up to say that his young son, who appeared in the film, has now taken hunter safety and has put both squirrel and rabbit on the family dinner table. The father—a non-hunter (so far)—made it clear: connections with nature, including hunting, have done the boy nothing but good.

Notes: If you know of film festivals, schools, or outdoor education centers that might be interested in showing the film (or buying the DVD), please mention it to them. If you happen to live near any of these upcoming screenings, check it out in person:

3/17 – Vermont Institute of Natural Science, Quechee, VT
3/24 – CT Outdoor & Environ. Educ. Assn Conference, New Britain, CT
3/25 – Environmental Film Festival, Washington, DC
3/26 – Green Mountain Film Festival, Montpelier, VT
4/5 – Springfield Conservation Nature Center, Springfield, MO
5/18 – Shelburne Farms, Shelburne, VT

To learn more about Richard Louv’s work, visit the Children & Nature Network.

Adult-onset hunting: Know the signs

Experts have not yet determined whether Adult-Onset Hunting™ (AOH) is an epidemic. What they do know is that thousands of people are afflicted.

More than a year ago, it was known—and reported in a widely read New York Times article—that a growing number of U.S. citizens had the condition. According to a recent article in Toronto’s National Post, a number of Canadian citizens have contracted it as well. The geographic epicenter is unknown. Though early reports suggested that AOH is most commonly contracted in cities, recent research indicates that it is even more virulent in rural areas.

Experts suspect that AOH may have lain dormant in the American psyche for generations, feeding off 19th-century stories about Daniel Boone.

The most recent outbreak appears to be a mutation, triggered in part by widespread interest in knowing more about one’s food sources than is psychologically healthy. One pathological example often cited by both experts and adult-onset hunters is journalist Michael Pollan’s twin desires to visit cattle feedlots and to shoot a wild pig.

When fully developed, the primary symptoms of AOH are unmistakable: an otherwise normal, heretofore-non-hunting adult repeatedly goes to woods, fields, or marshes with a deadly implement in hand, intent on killing a wild animal.

Other potential symptoms include (1) a feeling of connection to nature, to one’s food, and to one’s hunter-gatherer ancestors, and (2) a re-calibration of one’s beliefs about hunting. Previous beliefs may suffer from atrophy, seizures, and even death, especially when an anti-hunter contracts AOH.

Knowing the early warning signs may protect you or a loved one from the worst effects. These early signs include:

Excessive reading about the production of industrial food, especially factory meat.
Esophageal spasms upon learning that the average pound of supermarket ground chuck contains meat from several dozen animals slaughtered in five different states.
Sudden bouts of wondering why the local food co-op—with its cooler full of local, organic, free-range meats—doesn’t sell hunting licenses.
Compulsive eating of “real food” purchased directly from farmers.
Recurrent realizations that farmers are killing deer and woodchucks to keep organic greens on your plate.
Impaired ability to find meaning in chicken nuggets or tofu dogs.
Insistence on a literal reading of Woody Allen’s dictum “Nature is like an enormous restaurant.”
An uncharacteristic compulsion to initiate dinner conversation about firearms.
Impaired ability to see humans as separate from the rest of nature.
Repeated contact with real, live hunters (experts suspect that AOH is highly contagious, though transmission mechanisms are not yet fully understood).

Early diagnosis is problematic, as other potential warning signs include interests in hiking, gardening, fishing, mushroom hunting, raising chickens, cooking, and eating. Even vegetarianism can be a precursor condition, particularly if your acupuncturist has recommended that you add animal protein to your diet.

Alarmingly, growing up in a non-hunting or anti-hunting family does not guarantee immunity.

Experts have begun searching for a genetic marker indicating a predisposition for AOH. Until an accurate test is available, researchers recommend following these guidelines:

If you or someone you know exhibits 0-3 of the above signs, the risk of adult-onset hunting may be low. You are urged to watch for further symptoms.
If 4-6 of the above signs are present, immediate action is required to prevent a full-blown case of AOH. Recommended precautions include (A) obstinate refusal to think about where one’s food comes from, especially any meat consumed, and (B) at least one-half hour per day of reading about how humans are, in fact, extraterrestrials.
If 7-10 of the above signs are exhibited, adult-onset hunting is already entrenched. Primary symptoms will begin to appear in a matter of weeks. Sign up for a hunter education course as soon as possible and find a hunter willing to show you the ropes.

There is no known cure.

Recipes, death wishes, and hippie hunting ethics

A year—in this case, a year of blogging—goes by in a flash. I can hardly believe it’s been that long already.

Back at the six-month mark, I realized it was high time to acknowledge the many folks who helped get my blog rolling, and to offer a few reflections on the weirdness of Google searches. The twelve-month mark seems like a good time to do the same.

As always, my greatest debt is to my readers.

Thanks, too, to the folks who have posted mentions of my blog in recent months, including Tamar at Starving Off the Land, Phillip at The Hog Blog, Albert at The Rasch Outdoor Chronicles, Daniel at Casual Kitchen, Kate at Living the Frugal Life, and the UMass Library’s Local Food research guide. (I’m sure some folks are missing from this list. If you think of someone who is, please remind me.)

And another shout-out to Holly at NorCal Cazadora, who gave my blog a big boost in its very first weeks. I make special mention of her here, both to say thanks and to tell anyone who hasn’t heard: her partner Hank Shaw’s book Hunt, Gather, Cook will soon be out, featuring Holly’s fine photographs.

A few words about Hank’s recipes: Two months ago, I got lucky in rifle season and thought back to one of Hank’s posts about braising venison shanks. Instead of trimming and grinding all those small, tough muscles, I decided to freeze the deer’s lower legs whole. This past weekend, I thawed a shank and tried a variation of one of Hank’s recipes. The result?

Unbelievable. You could cut the meat with a fork. If Cath wasn’t already committed (and married) to me, that dish might have won her heart.

Thanks are also due to the many fine folks who have welcomed me to the world of Twitter. Like any good semi-Luddite, I’m wary of newfangled social media, so it has helped to receive such a warm reception. As one benefit of joining, I’ve come across some wonderful images, including Steve Creek’s wildlife photography and Tommy Ellis’s watercolor landscapes. The one at right reminds me of the brook that tumbles through the woods behind our house.

Finally, I cannot resist—okay, I relish—the opportunity brought my way by Google bots, ubiquitous scavengers of the web that they are. Here, with commentary by yours truly, are a few favorite search strings that led folks to my blog over the past six months:

“I want to be snake food” – There’s probably a cure for that. Other than the obvious one.
“Approx how long would it take a large snake to swallow and digest a small human?” – A while. If you want a more precise answer, you could arrange an experiment. You may have a volunteer above.
“What would be the term for extreme fear of porcupines?” – No clue. Porcuphobia? Quillophobia?
“Why am I not seeing deer in Vermont 2010?” – That depends. What were you doing when not sitting at your computer, Googling? If, like one of my friends, you were sitting by your living room window instead of sitting in the woods, then I have a theory.
“Are woodchucks invertebrates or carnivores?” – Um, neither. Wait, do you mean the kind that raids gardens, or the kind that hunts deer?
“Vegan falconry” – What does the falcon chase, a tofu pup on a string? Does the bird get a say in this?
“Vegetarian hunters organization” – If you’re starting one, please let me know. I want to be a founding member.
“Words of wisdom for vegans from hunters” – Hmmm. Unlike most of the other Googlers above, you might actually have come to the right place.
“Hippy ethics for hunting” – You definitely came to the right place. Technically speaking, I was never a hippie: I was a generation too late, didn’t pop psychedelic mushrooms, and never owned a pair of bellbottoms. I was, however, a peace-loving vegetarian who wore his hair long. In light of recent demand for evidence of that last fact, please see photo at right.

Scrimshaw, powder horns, and the limits of language

As I contemplated becoming a hunter, words helped.

It was good, for instance, to read Richard Nelson’s introduction to A Hunter’s Heart.

There, I caught a glimpse of his journey: from a boyhood of believing that “hunting was entirely evil—no matter who did it, how they did it, or why,” to an adulthood in which hunting served to remind him that he was not separate from his fellow creatures but “twisted together with them in one great braidwork of life.”

But words only went so far.

Others’ words could suggest only what hunting had meant to them.

My own words could shape only questions: Now that I was eating fellow vertebrates again, would hunting help me confront their deaths? Would it deepen my relationship with the hills and valleys I call home? How would it feel to kill a deer?

Even in asking such questions, language felt too narrow. I could not describe the feelings that stirred inside me, let alone name the unknown force—what was it?—that called me to the woods.

If I had been a fine artist, I might have sought insight in paintings. If I had been a musician, I might have sought it in songs.

Being only an amateur craftsman, I sought it in things handmade.

When a cardboard box arrived in the mail, I took out the old knife, secured in a new sheath Uncle Mark had crafted for it. I contemplated the red buck he had painted on its front, and the black deer tracks hidden behind the haft. I reflected on the belt he had made, too, and the ancientness of the image scrimshawed on the antler buckle.

Later, after I bought a secondhand caplock rifle, I took a pruned branch from one of our front yard apple trees—under which deer sometimes forage—and fashioned a ball-starter. With a woodburner, I sketched balsam twigs, the kind of cover through which I might stalk.

With helpful tips from Mark, I made a powderhorn, too. Two deer stood in silhouette on its cherry plug. Crude lines etched into its side suggested Cold Brook, the rocky little waterway that tumbles through the woods behind our house, along whose banks I might look for tracks.

Answers were still years away. But in these objects—in the variety of their shapes and textures and colors, in their symbolic and practical functions, in their very materials—the questions were given a fuller, more nuanced voice, specific to my hunting, here, in this place.

It’s hard to tell you what that voice said, though, muddling around within the constraints of these twenty-six letters.

Venison: Lean, clean, and (no longer) lead-fortified

I disposed of the lead fragment and picked through the rest of the venison carefully. I hoped none of my bullets would ever come apart like that again.

Zen and the art of deer hunting

Don’t try too hard, some folks say. Desperation can drive the deer away. The less you expect, the more animals you see.

How this philosophy dovetails with the undeniable value of perseverance, I’m not sure. But there may be something to it.

In my first few years as a hunter, I dragged home exactly zero pounds of venison. It was only in my fourth autumn—after I gave up on getting a deer and decided to focus on just enjoying my time in the woods—that my first buck came along.

The next year, I had no expectation of repeated success so soon. Yet a deer came. The year after that, with less time to hunt, my expectations were even lower. Again, a deer came.

There are limits to such luck, however.

This fall, I would be too busy to spend much time in the woods. (Of late, I’ve been too busy even to spend much time in the wilds of the internet. As fellow bloggers can attest, my forays there have left few traces in the form of comments.) I felt sure our freezer would hold no venison this winter. But I promised myself I would get out for a few mornings, just to feel the forest wake at dawn.

A week ago, on opening morning of rifle season, I was doing just that. I had reached the woods a full hour before sunrise: half an hour before legal shooting light.

In the dark, I heard one deer somewhere behind me, its hooves crunching leaves. But its meandering, start-and-stop movements sounded more like a doe browsing than a buck seeking a mate. Here in Vermont, only the latter are legal game in rifle season. Slowly, the animal wandered out of earshot. Probably the only deer I would hear that morning.

No matter. My aim, as meditation teachers say, was to “just sit.” And, as woodland deer hunters say when the leaves are that dry and frosty, to “just listen.”

The rustle of a leaf.

The swishing of wings, as a pileated woodpecker moved from one tree to another.

The sounds of the forest breathing.

I can’t recall ever taking so much pleasure in simply sitting, eyes closed. My mind went still, letting go of its churning thoughts about the next chapter I would be drafting for my book, or about the research I’m doing in grad school, interviewing hunters who came to the pursuit as adults. I was hardly even thinking about deer.

I had been there an hour, listening, when the hoof steps came, moving not into the faint breeze, but with it, so that the animal’s scent was carried my way, rather than vice versa. Again, the sounds stopped and started.

A doe, I thought, maybe the same one.

But when the deer stepped into view, just ten yards off to my right and behind me, I saw antler. And—more surprising—I made out a pair of points on one side. A legal buck.

I saw, too, why the animal’s movements sounded sporadic. The buck was so hopped up on rut-time hormones that he could hardly take a step without stopping to hook a sapling with his antlers or to paw at the earth.

A few more steps, as the buck crossed behind me. An ambling turn that would take him away, yet gave me the chance to raise my rifle unseen. A clear view as he angled off. A moment’s pressure on the trigger.

Crouching beside him, I offered thanks and apology—poor compensation for what I had taken—and thought how strange this brief hunt had been. In years past, I had never even seen a buck on opening day.

The next morning, returning scraps to the forest, I paused by a pair of crisscrossed logs. The moss was festooned with clumps of fine, downy fuzz. Puzzled, I leaned over to look more closely.

Red squirrel. The ephemeral traces of another, winged, hunter’s kill.

Coyotes, deer, and the very idea of ‘game’

A few nights ago, coyotes yipped and howled nearby. I was delighted to hear them.

Granted, I was in bed at the time. My sentiments would, I suspect, be substantially different if I was, say, deep in the woods with a turned ankle and no flashlight.

The next day I got thinking about those wild yelps, and about coyotes.

Here in Vermont, some hunters are happy to have coyotes around, and never think of killing them. Other hunters despise coyotes and shoot them at every opportunity. Still others are somewhere in the middle: perhaps ambivalent, perhaps hunting them occasionally, perhaps happy to co-exist as long as Fido and Sylvester aren’t getting snatched from the backyard.

These hunters would, I imagine, respond in various ways to Aldo Leopold’s thoughts about predators on the land:

Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. That is to say, you cannot love game and hate predators; you cannot conserve the waters and waste the ranges; you cannot build the forest and mine the farm. The land is one organism.

Photo courtesy Charles & Clint Robertson

What catches my eye in that passage is the word “game.”

As a broad category, of course, it simply indicates creatures that we hunt or catch. “Game” says deer, not shrew. It says grouse, not egret. It says bass, not minnow.

But doesn’t it also say something else?

By saying “game,” don’t we stake some kind of claim on these creatures? Don’t we define them as somehow different from other “wildlife,” perhaps one step closer to “livestock,” to “property”?

When hunters talk about what impact coyotes do or don’t have on white-tailed deer numbers, isn’t the entire discussion built on the very idea of “game”? On the notion that deer—almost like cows and sheep, or Fido and Sylvester—are, at least in part, off-limits to coyotes?

What are the consequences of believing that certain wild animals should be killed and eaten only—or at least mostly—by two-footed predators, not four-footed?