maybe that’s why one of my favorite things to do in the kitchen is to see how many people i can feed from one animal or cut. i’m up to 20 from a single duck, using skin, bones, offal, meat. and i’m still learning. and yes, i learned how to kill the duck and pluck it and evicerate it. it’s not something i look forward to doing, nor do i do it every time i serve a duck. but i, at least, understand the cost, and i admire the skill of those who can do it without causing undue suffering to the creature. and shame on me, but i’m willing to pay that person more when my time or temperament are short. the least i can do is not waste any part of that creature, even if the duck may not care if i respect it fully. but i’m human, and *i* care — and i take my humanity seriously. and i hope any creature who may slaughter me or my loved ones would do likewise.

“Organic venison? What a joke! Unless your deer is living on an organic farm, it’s eating soybeans and oats in the farmers’ fields that have been sprayed with herbicides and insecticides onto genetically modified plants. OMG! STOP! I could scream at the stupidity and ignorance!!!!”

I’m glad to see someone took my joke so seriously. I guess that’s the price of cold words on a page without inflection.

Why are so sure that the deer I hunt are feeding on soybean and oats? There isn’t a crop field within five miles of the parcel I hunt. It’s nothing but swamps and pine plantations, broken by the occasional field or grove of oak and beech. The extremely sandy soil (beach sand, Lake Michigan is closer than those crop fields) makes it a very poor agricultural area. I don’t put out bait, and I’ve never known my neighbors to do so either. I’m sure they get into a few gardens here and there, but that’s it. I do have a 1/2 acre orchard of hundred year old apple trees, but I don’t so much as water those let alone apply herbicide. In other words, those deer are eating primarily natural food sources: mast, cedar, white pine. Whether that certifies them as organic or not, I don’t know and I don’t really care. It was a just a joke.

You could scream at ignorance yet your own predicates your argument (including your throw away ad hominem one). Solid work.

Organic venison? What a joke! Unless your deer is living on an organic farm, it’s eating soybeans and oats in the farmers’ fields that have been sprayed with herbicides and insecticides onto genetically modified plants. OMG! STOP! I could scream at the stupidity and ignorance!!!! You’re killing me, and you’re not even going to eat me when I’m gone!

“1. Just because some of us don’t hunt our own meat does *not* make us hypocrites. I can’t even watch my own blood being drawn, ok? I’m squeamish, and moreover, I’m terrified of deadly things. I’ve never shot a gun, and I can’t hold a knife unless I’m cooking. It’s a psychological thing, okay? If these were some seriously olden times, I’d be the one working the garden while other people went out to hunt. Just because I buy meat doesn’t make my a hypocrite, and I think that’s unfair.

2. I don’t know what Bourdain’s feelings on hunting are, specifically, but at least we know he’s killed something before. We’ve seen it, a couple of times, on No Reservations, and I think that gives him the right — at least by your logic — to have opinions about it, whether for or against.

“Hunting,” as in the sport that rich people do, not people who are looking to cook and eat their own fresh kills like yourself, is (in my view) both cruel and pointless. Do you really need to dress up all fancy and ride horses around to kill some foxes you’re not even going to eat? Of course not. Take up Polo, you can recycle the outfit.”

1. By no means did I mean suggest that any meat-eater who does not hunt is a hypocrite. Not at all. Those meat-eaters who rail against hunting in all forms (those who have a problem with purely trophy hunting probably have a point) are the hypocrites. The meat-eaters that have said to me, “how could do something so cruel” are the hypocrites. If someone is a participant in the market place for dead animal parts, that person’s willingness to spend money to buy those dead animals kills just as surely as my bullet or arrow.

2. Of course he has the right to his opinion, and I greatly respect his opnions. I’ve seen him ceremonially kill those animals in where ever the hell he was in the Third World. The animal was then prepared and eaten by all in attendance. He recoiled from the experience of the killing, and he was clearly not comfortable doing it. Killing something like a deer (oddly and arbitrarily, I don’t feel this way about killing smaller game like ducks or pheasants) always carries with it, at least for me, feelings of regret and even sadness. That’s part of the human condition. But he’s made some blanket statements against hunting which I thought were, in and of themselves, hypocritical. I would apply some of his comments to some hunting myself. Pure trophy hunting is something I’ve never understood; there’s no act like eating or otherwise using the animal to redeem and make meaningful the killing. But he made his comments across the board about all hunters, even the ones who go out for some meat for the freezer. As I said before, eating meat means killing whether you shoot it or buy it, and it’s just as cruel (if not more) to industrially kill a cow in a slaughterhouse as it is to shoot a deer with a gun.

At least the venison is free range and organic.

My freezer is empty, but in 3 weeks I’ll be tucked up against a Michigan pine tree waiting for the dawn and some venison tenderloins to come loafing by.

I understand what you’re saying, but it’s been my experience that many if not most non-hunters have the stereotype of the drunken yahoo in the woods branded into their brains. I find the assumption offensive not only for its substance, but for the sheer volume of its repetition. Such hunters surely exist and are a deplorable disgrace, but they are in the minority. Most hunters are dedicated conservationists, and most are there for meat first, trophies second. While not particularly interested in trophies myself, I don’t see anything wrong with it if the meat is used and appreciated.

I’m a suburbanite born and bred myself (Detroit), but “going up north” in Michigan is a common experience, and I was blessed with a family cottage and hunting land where I spent and still spend a lot of time. I know every blade of grass on that land, and I know where the deer I hunt sleep, what they eat, where they mate, and where they seek cover and shelter. I’ve planted trees and cut down old ones that served no purpose for food or cover. I oftentimes see recognizable individuals over the course of a couple of years. In short, I know them well, and I don’t kill them unthinkingly or without respect, and I am not unusual in that regard among hunters. I certainly do not need to hunt to live; I could just as easily kill animals with the money in my wallet.

I usually kill one or at most two deer a year, nothing more than I use myself or give away to friends. I’m very selective not only of the animal I choose to kill, but also pass up many shot opportunities that are marginal and don’t provide a good chance for a quick clean kill (and that’s not altruism speaking, it’s practicality: I want that deer dead on the ground so I don’t have to track it for a mile through a swamp). To sum up, most hunters are like the ones you buy the venison from. The others are always more visible, but they are the exception.

However, the issue for me isn’t even so much the slaughtering as how the animals are treated before they die. If someone goes to witness the slaughter of a pig before they eat it, they’re probably missing out on the horrors of factory farming which made me become a vegetarian in the first place. They don’t see the overcrowding, the sickness, the bad “food”, the hormones and antibiotics, the torture, the poor handling of the meat, the poor working conditions of the people who work in the slaughtering plant. That’s what people should really tour before they eat a freshly slaughtered pig, or any animal. They might think twice about eating meat, or about where they’re getting it from.

There’s a lot of places for people to get info about factory farming – I recommend renting the film “Fast Food Nation”, which is an excellent overview of factory farming.

We had a brief discussion of buying a cow to raise for meat today. My wife wouldn’t want to eat the meat from an animal she’s raised. I wouldn’t have that problem, but I’m not around enough to do the work of raising an animal til slaughter. Perhaps in a few years when I’m retired.