The Moral Dilemma of Not Hunting

When I returned to meat eating after a stint of vegetarianism, I discovered a growing urge to know where my food came from.

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This year will be my second year of hunting. Last year was a long journey into a culture I am still learning about. One might be surprised to learn that ten years ago I was a vegetarian. This time period lasted for a few years until I stopped and integrated meat back into my diet. The reason I left meat off my plate was for health reasons. I was overweight, cardiac problems run in my family, and I had a moral dilemma when it came to how animals were treated. During that time I did lose weight and felt healthier. The one downfall I had about the lifestyle was that I was always tired and had no energy.

Recently I listened to a Fat Burning Man podcast where a person interviewed had similar problems that finally went away when they started eating meat again. I had already been eating meat again for years. Now my suspicions of what was happening to me were being confirmed. I still had two dilemmas I was dealing with when it came to my food. The first was my health, and the second the treatment of animals.

Hunting helped solve both dilemmas. In my personal time, I tend to be a shut in. Except for checking on my garden, I’m not usually outside. My day job includes me staying inside all day as well. When I decided to take up hunting, it forced me out of the house and provided me with fresh food that I knew had lived a natural life.

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I have put on some weight from eating meat again. While I stay away from steak, because my family ate it 2-3 times a week, the leaner meat I eat tends to be higher in calories because of the way it is cooked. Think of General Tzo’s chicken for an example–the meat is battered and fried, then covered in a sugar-based sauce.

Many animals are fed food they are not designed to eat. Cows, for example, are fed corn and other grains to fatten them up before slaughter. While they should be leaner and eating greens out in the fields, they are fed grains their bodies are not designed to eat. This causes their digestive system to grow a deadly form of E-coli. The slaughtering process is fast and sloppy. It’s not uncommon for the entrails to be cut and have the meat contaminated by these bacteria. To clean the meat, it is dipped in ammonia.

Now I don’t know about you but I for one do not want to eat ammonia. I also would like to pay a butcher that can process a cow and not get feces all over the meat I’m paying to eat. I think there are a lot of things that are fundamentally wrong about how we raise, treat, and feed the animals that we have on our dinner plate. For most people ignorance is bliss.

Having said all of this, I’m guilty of still eating these things. I rarely eat beef, but that has more to do with being tired of it after 20 years of having the same thing. I still get cravings in the food court at the local mall. I get lazy like anybody else. I go to a drive through. I will pick up a to-go container of orange chicken. Then things catch up with me and I learn the same lesson all over again.

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During hunting season my diet changes. I try to fill my freezer with food that I personally know where it came from. Containers of fillet fish sit in the door waiting to be fried. Frozen berries lay in bags waiting to be made into something great.

Some people will argue this is extreme and that it’s too much work to get a little bit of food. It’s more than food, though. It’s about becoming a part of the food chain again. Humans are domesticated animals. We no longer remember where we came from or where we fit on the food chain. There is something amusing about hearing that a person was attacked by an alligator and then the town goes on a rampage trying to find the guilty culprit. We like to think we are at the top of the food chain, but let’s face it, on our own, we are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum.

Hiking in the woods and learning how to read the environment is a skill few have anymore. Walking miles of trails, uphill and down, and jumping over fallen tree trunks is a workout few people get. There were a few days I came home with a container of raspberries instead of a bucket of fish or a fur-ball.

Had I stayed a vegetarian there is no telling what kind of health problems I could have developed. Going back to an omnivore diet, I know I risk other negative effects. Over the years I have juggled these two lifestyles in my mind and what I found is that being an omnivore is what our species is supposed to be. Our teeth are designed to eat both meat and plants. Our ancestors were great hunters and gatherers. I’m discovering that the more food I collect, grow, and hunt myself, the better I feel. The food tastes better. There isn’t that sense of guilt or wonder about what the hell is in my food. I feel better over time.

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Image credit: lwpkommunikacio/flickr

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