Tag: vegetarianism

January 20, 2011

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.

January 7, 2011

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.

October 15, 2010

The Dalai Lama: On meat and moral gymnastics

Here in Vermont, as in other places where crunchy Americans congregate, the 14th Dalai Lama is a popular guy. Folks like Cath and me who shop at community food co-ops and farmers’ markets—and are often vegetarian—tend to think of him as a wise and compassionate teacher.

For many, it comes as a shock to learn that he eats meat. I know it did for me.

By the time I read about it in his autobiography, I had already abandoned vegetarianism, and his story resonated.

Back in the 1960s, he had witnessed the slaughter of a chicken and had sworn off flesh foods. Before long, though, his health began to suffer, with complications caused by hepatitis. Following his physicians’ instructions, he reluctantly returned to eating meat and regained his health.

What resonated even more was his commentary on Tibetans’ relationship with meat.

He notes that, in the 1960s at least, very few Tibetan dishes were vegetarian. Alongside tsampa—a kind of barley bread—meat was a staple of the local diet.

This, however, was complicated by religion. Buddhism, the Dalai Lama writes, doesn’t prohibit meat-eating “but it does say that animals should not be killed for food.” And there lay the crux of what he calls Tibetans’ “rather curious attitude” toward meat.

Tibetan Buddhists could buy meat, but they couldn’t order it, “since that might lead to an animal being killed” for them specifically. (This reminds me of a friend’s experience with a rabbit earlier this year.)

What, then, were Tibetan Buddhists to do? How could they eat meat without being involved in butchery? How could they consume flesh, yet prevent themselves from being implicated in killing?

Easy. They let non-Buddhists do it, often local Muslims.

These moral gymnastics might strike us as odd. But is the average American so different? Here, people’s distaste for butchery may be guided less by scripture than by squeamishness, the task assigned less by religion than by profession. The end result, though, is much the same. The dirty work gets done by others.

And there lies the crux of my own curious attitude toward meat. I prefer to take my own karmic lumps.

August 30, 2010

A small idea sprouts wings

Two years ago, it was small.

Just a glimmer of an idea. Nothing more than a flicker of movement, caught out of the corner of my mind’s eye.

Bold one moment, it would dash into full view like a blustery red squirrel. Furtive the next moment, it would skitter off into the mental underbrush. (I have underbrush to spare. A tidy parkland my mind is not.)

Within a few months, I realized it wasn’t going away. So I started reading up on it: How exactly does one go about getting a book published?

But I won’t bore you with the tedious details.

Fast forward to earlier this year: as I mentioned back in April, I found a book agent—and not just any agent, but the patient, insightful, and tenacious Laurie Abkemeier (aka Agent Obvious)—who thought I had an idea worth pursuing. Together we crafted a proposal, which she then shopped around to editors.

Just over two weeks ago, Laurie emailed me with the news. We had a publisher. (Friday the 13th is my new favorite day.) We just had to keep it under our hats until the details of the contract got ironed out.

Now it’s official.

The Mindful Carnivore: A Vegetarian’s Hunt for Sustenance will be published by Pegasus Books!

I’m psyched. I’m grateful for the support and encouragement of all my friends and family, in person and online. And I’m looking forward to working with the fine folks at Pegasus on the next leg of the journey.

July 26, 2010

Hunting with Gandhi

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 and wisdom to recognize that his truth was incomplete, that it was only “the relative truth as I have conceived it.” Closing himself off to new insights would obstruct his search.

At the time, in my early years as a vegan, I was confident I had a lockdown on dietary truth. Lacking Gandhi’s humility, it never occurred to me that someday I might have to lay down that particular shield and buckler.

Had I paid closer attention to Gandhi’s experiments with diet, they might have been instructive. He tried eating meat in his youth, returned to the traditional Hindu and Jain vegetarian diet on which he was raised, then went vegan.

Eventually, though, recovering from an illness, he found he could not rebuild his constitution without milk. In his autobiography, he warned others—especially those who had adopted veganism as a result of his teachings—not to persist in a milk-free diet “unless they find it beneficial in every way.”

But I wasn’t ready to hear that then. Nor was I ready to hear that other great teachers of compassion—the Dalai Lama, for example—were not the vegetarians I imagined them to be.

It was only later that some faint echo of Gandhi’s wisdom tempered my certainty.

It was only when I found that my body, too, was healthier if I consumed animal products that my truth changed. It was only when I learned that the production of almost every food I ate depended on controlling cervid populations—that is, on the annual slaughter of millions of deer across North America, by hunters and farmers alike—that I began to see a bigger picture.

Now, I wonder: How would Gandhi have responded if he had found that his body, like the Dalai Lama’s, thrived on meat? What would he have done if it turned out that even the cultivation of the fruits and nuts he ate depended on the constant killing of large, charismatic, wild mammals?

June 27, 2010

Monkeys, venison, and the sentience of dinner

Was that the faint sound of steps? Of hooves crunching dry leaves under the thin blanket of snow?

Seated on the ground, I shifted to the right and half-raised my .54 caliber caplock.

Moments later, I saw deer some forty yards off, walking toward me among the pines. Two, three, four of them. I brought the rifle to my shoulder and eased back the hammer. My third year of hunting would come to a close in less than a week and I had yet to kill a whitetail.

The first in line was a doe. My tag was for a buck. The little parade had closed to less than thirty yards now, weaving through the trees. Heart pounding, I stared along the iron sights, watching for antlers.

If the chance came, I would probably shoot. Yet I couldn’t be sure. I had mixed feelings about the idea.

It would have sat more easily if I believed, with Descartes, that animals are senseless: nothing more than animated meat. But I don’t.

How different am I, after all, from my fellow primates? Some days I don’t feel like the brightest monkey in the forest. If my mind was not cluttered with abstract ideas, might I experience the world much as an ape does?

If I cannot exclude all non-humans from the realm of sentience, by what logic can I exclude some, drawing the line somewhere south of chimpanzee? A deer is not a primate, but it does have senses—perhaps different in kind, perhaps different mainly in degree. So does the hawk. So does the rabbit on which the hawk feeds. If we give credence to old teachings and recent science, even plants have kinds of awareness.

Perhaps the world is more complex and more beautiful than we have imagined. And more terrible.

My vegan diet had taken its toll not only on plants, but on animals, too—those displaced by the conversion of forest and prairie to farmland, those minced by the combines that harvested my grains, those gassed in their burrows to protect my salad greens, those shot in defense of the soybeans that became my saintly tofu.

Now my omnivorous diet was taking its toll on vertebrates more directly.

And here I was in the woods, wondering how willing I was to exact that price myself.

The lead doe was closer now. Looking past her, I could see that the second in line was a doe as well. The third, also antlerless, looked like a six-month-old. And the fourth?

Ah, another doe.

There would be no killing today, and no answers. Yet my heart still pounded.

The lead doe stood broadside a dozen paces away, her breath pluming in the frosty air, her ears and great, dark eyes focused on me. All four deer paused, aware of my crouching form. Unsure what I was, they hesitated. They looked and listened. Then, slowly, they turned back the way they had come.

Trembling, I sat and watched them go.

May 19, 2010

Moose at the threshold

Photo by Mike Lockhart/US Fish & Wildlife Service

The moose steak sat on the kitchen counter in a steel bowl, thawing.

Having just completed the state hunter education course, I was contemplating the prospect of going after meat on the hoof. Though I didn’t have any plans to hunt until the following year, I did have a question to answer: How would it feel to cook and eat the flesh of a wild mammal?

Two years earlier, for health reasons, Cath and I had given up veganism. We had started eating chicken and fish, foods that seemed strange after so many years.

Eating them was, for me, unsettling. It was also grounding, bringing with it an unexpected sense of embodiment, of fully inhabiting the world, of coming to terms with the inevitable impacts of living.

Handling the flesh of birds and fish, I was quite aware of their origins as living beings. Some of the chickens were ones I had seen pecking away in a friend’s grassy yard. Some of the fish were ones I had caught and killed. Yet, once they had been reduced to food, I didn’t dwell on them as individual creatures.

Moose was different.

The steak was a gift from a local hunter. Under my hand, the cool, firm muscle felt strange as I sliced. Lightly sautéed and served with a stroganoff-style sauce, it tasted even more alien than chicken and fish had.

With a piece of moose between my teeth, the huge, dark animal stood there, vivid in my imagination. Perhaps my awareness of the individual creature stemmed from his sheer size. Perhaps it stemmed from my categorization of moose as part of the local landscape, but—unlike cows or pigs—not part of the modern American diet. Perhaps it stemmed from the simple redness of the meat; Cath and I had not been cooking and eating the flesh of fellow mammals.

With the moose in mind, I took his body into mine uneasily.

Yet, by the time I sat down to the leftovers a night or two later, the texture and flavor seemed more familiar, the idea more palatable.

Eating this creature, whose individuality I pictured, was more potent than eating chickens, whom I imagined less specifically. I was in nutritional relationship not just with mammals in general, but with this one in particular. I felt the gap between me and my food closing even more.

I was, of course, still one step removed. That winter I bought a deer rifle.