The Venison Initiative

I shot and killed two deer this fall.  The ethics of hunting, the choices involved, the act itself, the results; these are all vital topics, and ones worth addressing, though they will for the moment await future posts.  Today I'd like to talk about the final act of hunting, consumption, and how and why a freezer full of  of venison is becoming a more and more crucial part of my life.  

As the planet's most high functioning omnivores, modern man's continued consumption of meat is a decision, not an imperative.  It is, unfortunately, an all too often unexamined decision, one rarely even thought about, much less actively made.  I feel that the blase approach most of us, as members of the developed world, take to the carnivory of our daily lives is inexcusable, an example of willful ignorance of the highest magnitude.  That's why (and this will no doubt surprise some who know me) I have a great deal of respect for ethical vegetarians and vegans.  They have at least looked at the issue and made a definitive choice, and though I don't think vegetarianism is the default moral high ground many see it as, I appreciate and encourage the empathy such a lifestyle displays.  But I've taken up the question of being a carnivore too, have thought about it a great deal, with no small amount of sympathy and information, and still have a freezer full of venison.  

How I justify that fact is, again, a topic for another day, though perhaps one not too far off.  Suffice it to say, for the moment, that that venison represents to me the right decision.  I continue to be a carnivore, but with some serious caveats: I try to limit my overall consumption of meat, I try to severely limit my intake of agriculturally raised meat (including my dear beloved pork), I try to cut out completely meat raised industrially, and for the next month or so the only meat I am going to only eat is the venison that my father and I harvested from the wild.  This isn't an easy choice, though it may seem a moderate measure at best; I really, really love meat.  Bacon alone represents to me a sort of gastronomic bliss, and it's a severe mental act to say I won't touch it again for a while.  Fortunately I enjoy venison a great deal as well, so I'm not really suffering, and of course I'm not entirely certain we shouldn't suffer a little bit for our carnivorous tendencies.  For me the choice to set these boundaries arises from three general issues: health, eco-social fitness, and ethics.

Health concerns are to me the least important of the three, but worth mentioning none the less.  Venison, while still a red meat and therefore worse than, say, leafy greens, is far superior to its agricultural alternatives.  It's low in fat, high in protein, and higher in iron than beef, pork, or poultry.  As wild game, it's one of the few truly organic foods(assuming the deer wasn't devouring crops sprayed with pesticide, which is a concern), and is at least free from hormones and antibiotics.  While I'd hesitate to call health a major issue for me, it is clearly a factor in my thinking, and rightly so.

What I call eco-social fitness is even more important.  The choice to eat venison, and only venison, has an impact both ecologically and socially, theoretically for the better.  Ecologically, the whitetail deer in Connecticut exists in populations far above the historic and natural norm.  This is a direct result of predator removal and land use issues caused by man; we killed off the wolves and the lions and planted corn and shrubbery as a buffet.  In some areas hunting has a direct beneficial influence on population fitness, and at the very least, the number of deer insures that hunting, as I at least currently practice it, is a sustainable pursuit.  On a larger scale, the fact that the meat I eat is locally produced means that one less ration of beef gets shipped from the midwest (or lamb from New Zealand, a bigger, and unfortunately more delicious, issue), and the carbon footprint I leave is ever-so slightly smaller.  The local aspect of venison consumption has social repercussions as well.  Though not supporting regional agriculture per se (perhaps tangentially as crop pest removal), I did have my deer professionally butchered at a nearby meat locker, in that way supporting a local economy in an ecological way.

Yet the most important issue at stake for me is ethics.  There are many who would say that the act of killing is by its nature unethical, and that argument is in some ways sound.  As I mentioned, I have a great deal of respect for people who critically examine the subject and choose to abstain completely.  For my part I see hunting, and by extension killing, as justifiable practices, under certain circumstances.  I see death as a natural culmination of life, and if not wanton or cruel, I see killing as both forgivable and enlightening.  For my part, killing a deer is a way to connect to place, a way to interact with the natural world in a time when such opportunities are in short supply.  I see myself filling a predatory niche once occupied by the eastern gray wolf, and though that vision is ultimately bullshit romanticism, it is at least environmentally sound.  Assuming then that death is an inevitability, my main concerns are with dignity and suffering.  I try to approach killing with respect for the animal above all things, and though just how I go about that is difficult to put into terms, it's easy to counterpoint with the simple phrase 'factory farm'.  Most animals raised in the US and intended for consumption are utterly bereft of dignity, in life or in death.  With suffering, however, they are overwhelmed. I won't get into the details of intensively raised feed animals, save to say that the scale of pain and misery inflicted is indeed industrial.  I will say how the deer I shot lived, and died: freely, and quickly.  I won't go so far as to say that the deer died instantaneously or painlessly; in most ways death is, and should remain, an ugly and disturbing thing, lest we get too comfortable with it (which, as a society, we have).  But as an alternative to starvation, predation by coyotes, wasting disease, or many of the fates likely to befall a wild deer, I say that an accurate slug from a high-powered rifle is merciful.  Nothing wants to die, not the deer I shot, not me, but in the grey reality of the world, indignity, suffering, are death are not avoidable.  What I can do, what I choose to do, is mitigate those things, to be as natural, to be as, dare I say, humane as possible.  A freezer full of venison may be an odd expression of that sentiment, but if nothing else, perhaps it's a step in the right direction.