Nov 1st marks the opening day of Deer season for does & hinds and an important day in my food calendar.

As we begin another period of restrictive consumption, it's worth pausing to reflect on our place in the food chain.

This is a thread on why I choose to hunt my own food. /1

Subsistence hunting predates Homo Sapiens, and alongside cooking with fire, underpins who we are biologically, societally and ethically. To call hunting a 'sport' is a gross misunderstanding and devalues one of the most important spiritual acts we can engage in. /2

Whether we like it or not, we are all built on a hunter gathering platform. It's our common ancestry and the one activity that unites all 8 billion of us globally. For us to not hunt is historically and biologically off the mark and astray from who we are as a species. /3

Understanding your biological heritage helps you comprehend who you are (both good and bad), and more importantly who you can potentially be in the future. We are so removed from the food chain, it's easy to ignore the fact that we're highly evolved & sophisticated predators. /4

Once our ancestor homo habillis learnt to use rocks to open mammal bones & access the highly calorific marrow, it kickstarted a positive feedback loop where the high octane increase in brain development led us to invent more sophisticated tools for accessing more meat and fat. /5

Rocks gave way to spears, bows and arrows, muzzleloaders, and modern breechloading rifles. From Homo Habillis (2 million years ago) to Homo Sapiens, our carnivorous brains more than doubled in size from 600 cubic centimetres to 1,300 cubic centimetres. /6

As our brains swelled in size and power, our guts shrank considerably as we invented cooking to render meat and fat more nutritiously dense. We developed to be excellent long distance runners to hunt down prey, and lost much of our body hair to prevent overheating on a chase. /7

As success was not always guaranteed, we learnt to share our spoils of victory in the hope that the favour would be returned to us on the time we returned home empty handed. The law reciprocity was born and was soon hard wired into our societies with the golden rule of /8

doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. Complex societal hierarchies based on competence, guile and reciprocity formed as well as the idea of sacrificing a present part for a later whole. /9

Fast forward to present day and back to deer.
The effects that too many deer have on our landscape is well documented by folks much cleverer than I, and not really something that I want to get too much into on this thread. However it is deer season after all and /10

This season I will be spending a lot of time along in the woods with the single aim of harvesting a wild, organic and sustainable source of protein for my family and guests. This is not some performance of bloodthirsty sadism. /11

The act of stalking, killing, and cooking your own dinner not only helps us understand the important balance in our ecosystems, but helps us understand the balance with ourselves. /12

Choosing a life more in tune with your biological heritage will do wonders for your sense of belonging in the world.

I'll leave you now with my favourite quote of Jim Harrisons... /13

“When I’m fishing and hunting with the right attitude, I re-enter the woods and river with a moment-by-moment sense of the glories of creation, of the natural world as a living fabric of existence, so that I’m both young again but also 70,000 years old.”

Stay safe and aim true.