Wholesome family activities

Well, I told you last time around that I'd share some information regarding our household supply of meat. So, here goes.

My husband hunts. I have no moral dilemma about this, because I know he is a responsible adult who has been trained properly in this arena by other responsible adults. Plus, I know he respects life of all kinds, and the creator of life to boot. Additionally, he does his best to prepare himself and his weapon so that when a hunting opportunity arises, he is ready and can aim with practiced care and accuracy so as to make the animal's death quick and as free of suffering as possible.

(I also know that my little son is not with him while he engages in this pursuit, and I am more than a tad relieved that the kid has not yet shown serious interest.)

Anyway. We try to be honest with our child, and that involves talking openly about hunting, wild animals, death, humane treatment of life, and our food supply. (Most kids can handle the truth; it's the adults who turn away and get squeamish.)

So, my hunter was successful on one of his recent archery forays, and he made an excellent, quick-kill shot on a very large buck. For the past few years, thanks to some knowledgeable hunting friends from church, my husband has begun to process his own animals. I won't lie; this freaked me out at first, mostly because it happened in our garage. Yes, my father hunted also, as did many of the people (kids, too) in my hometown. I'm comfortable with that, as long as the people who hunt are cautious, mature, and respectful of life. I'm not so comfortable with animals being skinned where the station wagon should be... I'm also not so comfortable with large pans of flesh, or with an electric grinder making a horrific racket in my basement. But? I'm getting there.

The whole experience, now that we've been through it more than once or twice, is actually very informative. I've learned a lot about different cuts of meat on grazing animals—which ones are typically tender, which ones are tough, which ones require a full day of roasting in juices but deliver wonderfully when granted patient, proper cooking techniques. I've learned how deer carry their fat in a totally different way than beef (the fat is layered just under the skin, not marbled throughout muscle... although most of the heavily marbled purchased meats are coming from cows that were fed corn, a totally unnatural and harmful food product for them...) I've learned that honestly, doe meat tastes better than buck. I've learned that a whole lot of garbage can be hidden in any purchased sausage product. (Don't say you haven't been warned! Some of those sausages could make hot dogs or gelatin seem pretty harmless, folks...)

Anyway, mostly I've learned that butchering is bloody, messy work, and that for all my concerns about our garage and basement, they're likely just as (if not more) sanitary than a typical butcher shop.

It's hard to ignore the fact that you're eating animal flesh when you watch the stuff getting ground up and mixed with other stuff, emerging like little worms from a loud machine. There's pretty much no getting around that image. You're eating meat. But hear me on this: Any time you eat meat, even prettily packaged plastic-wrapped store-bought meat, you're participating in this procedure in some way. You're funding it. For anyone who's labeling my family and me as barbarians right now, I ask you only this: when did you last eat a burger? a pepperoni pizza? a good steak? The more marbled the steak, the more likely that the cow it came from was close to death from corn consumption even before it was slaughtered. Fish? Yes, it too had a face once. Not cute and fuzzy, not pretty and big-eyed, but a face nonetheless. For all the people who are shaking their heads at us right now, ready to dial CYS to save our child from this horror, I say to you that you are part of it, too, every time you go out to dinner and watch your children happily, mindlessly consume chicken nuggets.

If you eat meat, any meat, then some creature had to die, in some form or fashion.

I'd rather know what I'm supporting than not know. I like helping to determine exactly what goes into our meat supply regarding flavors and source foods. This deer was fat, healthy, and happy; he had a good life. And frankly, I'd rather participate personally in his death this way than support some of the cruel, sick, and unusual practices that are rampant in modern feedlots. If I ever have the acreage, I like to think I'll try to raise my own chickens and turkeys.

That's how we spent a few hours during the past week or so. And I like to think that in the big picture, we're no worse than anyone else. At least we're informed. We know where the food came from. We know how it was prepared. Yes, we all washed our hands repeatedly, and sterilized the necessary surfaces with bleach. But I have peace of mind about it all.

Do you?

P.S. I hope I didn't scare anyone away permanently. It's a topic worth pondering, I assure you.

"How can you eat that?!"

Meet Peter the buck. I call him Peter partly as a nod to REM band member Peter Buck, and partly because I photographed him in between bites of our abandoned pumpkin. Get it? Pumpkin eater?

But his name is not important. The important thing is that he is limping a bit these days, and one of his antlers appears to be shorter than the other. It wasn’t shorter a couple of weeks ago when we first spotted him, and we’re pretty certain it’s the same deer. I guess we can’t be absolutely sure… It’s not important. He’s limping a tiny bit, his antler has been broken off. Has he been hit by a car? That’s a very likely possibility, since the pumpkin photograph location is less than 20 feet from a sharp bend on a busy road—and that, of course, is the favored crossing spot of all the deer that hang out in our yard.

Sometimes we have 5 or 6 deer at once. Mostly doe—the two buck we’ve seen rarely hang with the babes, at least not when we’re looking. But they’re all regulars at our “club.” Why? They probably ran out of space, quite frankly. Plus, they know there’s easy pickin’s in our neighborhood (my animal-loving neighbor feeds them, so even when gardens aren’t blooming they have reason to pass through).

The point is, we humans are crowding them out with all our pretty little suburban neighborhoods. We’re driving big, heavy, metal killing machines across all their favorite pathways. And a lot of them are getting hit, maimed, or killed. I won’t lie: I feel really bad about that, about all the shrinking habitats of all the beautiful wildlife around us. The last time I saw an injured doe lying in the street, I was literally sick to my stomach as I called the game warden; it’s a horrible sight, the flailing limbs, the fruitless attempts to lift the head…just sickening.

But as bad as I feel, it will not keep me from eating venison. That’s right, deer flesh. I eat it. I’ve eaten it since I was a kid.

Before you slap a “barbarian” label on my forehead, let me explain myself a bit. If you’re a vegetarian and you’re reading this, I honestly have no qualms with your non-meat choices. I am pretty certain that the original, Garden-of-Eden diet did not include animal flesh. It wasn’t needed. That came around after we got kicked out of there. With some research and attention, a person can live a meatless life and be much healthier than most of us jowly, restaurant-abusing Americans. I was getting pretty good at going meatless until I got married (man want meat); plus, the whole diabetic issue isn’t helping—I’ve found very few foods that have the same hold-me-over power as meat—but I’m sure if I had limitless funds and my own dietitian, I could be meatless. I’d miss meat, especially as a cook, but it could be done. And that would be my individual choice, as it should be.

However, for the meat-eaters out there who dare to ask me the question that titles this post, I say, My dear carniverous hypocrite, have you ever ordered veal or lamb in a fancy restaurant, never giving a second thought to the fuzzy, adorable creature that your meal was in life? Have you ever stuffed a big, fat burger into your face or carved a ham at Christmas or Easter? Enjoyed a steak or a turkey dinner? Because if you have, then you cannot make comments about the barbarism of eating deer meat. I have never walked through a butcher’s workspace, nor seen a cow or pig taken in for slaughter, but how could it be any less awful than watching a deer be gutted prior to transport? Death is death; killing is killing.

And think about this: there’s my little Peter in the back yard, munching on rotten pumpkin and dying grass and relishing the memory of our pole beans from a few months back. If some lucky hunter takes him during season (which is unlikely since he’s in such a protected area), that hunter will get a more-than-half-rack to brag about and a freezer full of whatever meat forms he chooses, and it’ll be lean, healthy meat—no hormones, no chance of mad deer disease, no genetic alterations other than what God himself ordained. Sounds pretty safe, eh? Compare it to your faceless, nameless slab o’ beef (you have to assume they’re telling you the truth about the source animal, right?) that may or may not have been vacuum packed in carbon monoxide in order to keep its fresh color longer than it should…

I ponder at this time every year why some people feel righteously justified in turning their noses up at me. I think it’s founded in our complete separation of man from his food sources. It’s easy to badmouth game-eaters if you’ve never been hungry for a day in your life; honestly, how do any of us truly know what we're capable of eating? Have you ever really suffered from lack of food? I haven't. And how simple to slip into superiority about not eating wild animals when you never have to be confronted with the “civilized” (cough, cough) killing of animals raised purely for meat sales. Honestly, I think most folks would want to throw up after visiting a big, smelly egg farm, right? But those nice, white, clean eggs in their spotless cases are so removed from a chicken’s bottom that no one thinks much about it.

Well, we need to think about it. We need to grow more food in soil that we turn and weed. We need to learn more about what goes into all the ready-to-eat stuff that we consume daily without question. We need to be more responsible eaters in general. And we, as a society, need to stop vilifying the people who consume hunted game—especially when you consider that the naysayers are just as likely to be the very folks who are directly or indirectly responsible for Peter the buck’s shrinking habitat injuries. There’s a very good chance that because he’s injured and there’s limited land for him and his cronies, he won’t make it through the winter.

Now, who’s the barbarian again?