An important post, (with recipes!) echoes life in the New Mexico Hi Low. Hunter fees allow some small ranchers here to make it through droughts and crappy cattle prices. Everyone has a freezer. Beef and wild game move from freezer to freezer like Trobriand Island Kula, generating reciprocal returns: winter feedings & trailer borrowings.
I used to get venison and elk from my great uncle who hunted. I tried to bow hunt when I was younger but was never successful and never got to practice the skills of butchering. In the Pine Barrens it's common to bag a whitetail to eat over the winter so I'm familiar with the culture and I think it's good to help balance the herds now that predators are rare. I've thought of taking up hunting again, but it's not for me. I'll support it, and I would buy meat from a hunter who used a doe tag our over filled their freezer. But living in city suburbs, I'm eating mostly vegetables to keep my drain on the land smaller.
An important post, (with recipes!) echoes life in the New Mexico Hi Low. Hunter fees allow some small ranchers here to make it through droughts and crappy cattle prices. Everyone has a freezer. Beef and wild game move from freezer to freezer like Trobriand Island Kula, generating reciprocal returns: winter feedings & trailer borrowings.
Very eloquent and thoughtful.
I used to get venison and elk from my great uncle who hunted. I tried to bow hunt when I was younger but was never successful and never got to practice the skills of butchering. In the Pine Barrens it's common to bag a whitetail to eat over the winter so I'm familiar with the culture and I think it's good to help balance the herds now that predators are rare. I've thought of taking up hunting again, but it's not for me. I'll support it, and I would buy meat from a hunter who used a doe tag our over filled their freezer. But living in city suburbs, I'm eating mostly vegetables to keep my drain on the land smaller.