Go Green: Hunt your Dinner

By Eric Fowler

Maybe it’s the circles I run in or the part of the country I live in, but I don’t recall having to defend hunting or fishing. It’s obviously not only accepted but encouraged here at work, and maybe most Nebraskans, if they do question it, are too polite to say so out loud. Maybe those activities are simply so ingrained in me I don’t think twice when someone does question them.

I suppose if someone did, I would simply say that I hunt and fish both for sport (the challenge), for fun (it usually involves time with friends and family), and for food (if I don’t eat it, I don’t hunt it). Put another way, I get way more out of hunting and fishing than a trip to the grocery store.

Lately, some of the buzzwords in society are “Buy Local” and “Go Green.” Combined with the long-running push to eat healthy (deer and elk are much leaner than beef), there are more reasons to hunt your dinner. I could tell you about them, but I don’t think I could do it as well as Lily Raff McCaulou, a big-city environmentalist/writer who moved to the country and became a hunter. I caught the link to her essay for CNN’s eatocracy, “Why hunting your own dinner is an ethical way to eat,” in a Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation e-mail update. Well put, Lilly. I’m betting you’re swaying more opinions about hunting and fishing than barbaric, neanderthals like myself could ever hope to.

If you take time to read the 1,439 responses to her story, many of which I suspect are from the antis, feel free to give me a summary (sheesh).