Back in November, a fellow hunter and I talked about an essay he’d written. In it, he described stumbling onto a deer that had been wounded by someone else. When the piece was published, he heard from some disgruntled hunters. They didn’t like seeing that kind of story in print. A couple months later, I … Read more
Venison, a forester friend tells me, is the best way he knows to eat trees. He points out that whitetails do a dandy job of converting cellulose into protein. When Cath and I sit down to a bowl of venison stew, we are eating more than potato, carrot, and deer. We are also eating maple … Read more
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. … Read more
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.
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
In college, studying Mahatma Gandhi’s moral and political philosophy, I was impressed by the twin commitments of his lifelong quest for truth. On the one hand, he lived according to what he saw as the truth, which must, he wrote, “be my beacon, my shield and buckler.” On the other hand, he had the humility … Read more