Speaking of eating: There is no meat I would rather
eat, and none I eat more of, than wild meat got with my own bloody
hands as an ethical predatory omnivore.
To the
contrary, I go sick at the thought of swallowing “alternative
livestock” flesh butchered from the bones of captive-raised wild
animals.
Magazines running plugs for high-priced
eateries where “wild game” is served, as is the fashion these days,
by promoting game ranching and glorifying elitist consumptive
values, in fact are working against the long-term interests of
wildlife and democracy. Same-same for those who proffer and
purchase mail-order “wild” meat.
As a hunter, I
kill nothing I will not eat, I eat everything I kill, and when I
fail or decline to kill I eat road-kill. There is honor and
humility in these acts. Contrarily, purchasing bogus “wild game”
meat or body parts promotes wildlife profiteering, hubris, waste
and worse.
A tertiary moral strike against game
ranching is the cruelty, mental as well as physical, attendant to
sawing off the velvet antlers of captive bull elk, to be sold like
bloody gold on the booming Oriental “folk medicine”
market.
If you haven’t noticed, I despise it
all, top to bottom.
” David
Petersen
in Elkheart
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Speaking of eating: There is no meat I would rather eat.
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