Hunting

Archery practice and bow-hunting

Our paleo meetup went to an archery range on Sunday out in Queens.  I haven't had this much fun since summer camp.  (Not coincidentally, the last time I did archery.)

Why did we go?  Mostly just as a fun activity.  Are we planning on bow-hunting?  Unlikely, for most of us.  I'm open to bow-hunting in the future, but it really requires a lot of practice.  The worst thing you could do as a hunter is wound a deer and have it run off.   Though if you use a proper bow from the right range it is highly accurate and deadly.   

After archery we went to Flushing for some awesome Taiwanese food.  The vegetarian section of their menu seemed a bit...lost in translation.   See the photos.  You mean to tell me that there's a vegetarian version of "Intestine & Duck Blood Cake w. Spicy Sauce"?  Maybe they make the intestine out of tempeh and the duck blood out of dyed tofu.  

Tofu duck blood, please!

Assorted links

1. The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (so much self-loathing, it's hard to read)

2. Skinning a deer with obsidian (not gross, but they are skinning a deer)

3. Vitamin D deficiency and the benefits of sun exposure (finally getting some mainstream recognition)

4. Devastatingly even-handed criticism of the China Study, the vegetarian/vegan holy book, courtesy of Dr. Michael Eades

Michael Pollan's new website

Michael Pollan just released a brand new website. 

Love the nice clean site design.  He's got a ton of great content too -- here's a curated selection:

  • The Botany of Desire is less well known than The Omnivore's Dilemma, but just as good.  It takes a "plant's-eye view" and explores how in some sense, plants have domesticated humans, not the other way around. 

"Every schoolchild learns about the mutually beneficial dance of honeybees and flowers: The bee collects nectar and pollen to make honey and, in the process, spreads the flowers’ genes far and wide. In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan ingeniously demonstrates how people and domesticated plants have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship. He masterfully links four fundamental human desires—sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control—with the plants that satisfy them: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. In telling the stories of four familiar species, Pollan illustrates how the plants have evolved to satisfy humankind’s most basic yearnings. And just as we’ve benefited from these plants, we have also done well by them. So who is really domesticating whom?"

  • You can find all of Pollan's articles on the site, including The Modern Hunter-Gatherer, a fascinating description of Pollan's experience hunting -- excerpted from Omnivore's Dilemma.  The first line:

"Walking with a loaded rifle in an unfamiliar forest bristling with the signs of your prey is thrilling. It embarrasses me to write that, but it is true."

Read the whole thing, particularly if you're not a hunter.

  • Pollan also has an excellent Resources section covering six topics: Sustainable Eating & Nutrition, Growing Food, Politics & Policy, Animal Welfare, Journalism & Writing, and For Parents & Kids. 
  • A (very) frequently asked question:

"Why aren't you a vegetarian?  I'm not a vegetarian because I enjoy eating meat, meat is nutritious food, and I believe there are ways to eat meat that are in keeping with my environmental and ethical values. "

Full answer here.  Pollan has done more to influence vegetarian attitudes than any outsider would be able to do.  (Just like Ted Nugent will always be more influential in the hook and bullet crowd.)

 

Hunting dogs getting back to nature

It's not just humans who are learning how to hunt again.  Dogs are too.  The New York Times has a great article on dog-owners teaching their domesticated and pampered hounds how to hunt again.

"We were at the Fun Field Trial here, a hunting training program held in the spring for dogs that have never hunted but whose breeds were created to do so. ...

The number of so-called instinct-performance tests to measure a dog’s hunting and herding skills has increased 39 percent over the past two years, totaling 1,549 in 2009, according to the American Kennel Club. Many are geared toward pets and owners who have never hunted."

However, pampered dogs seem to be having the same problems as overly-domesticated humans.

“That’s the problem with our domesticated dogs,” said Mr. Stern, a psychologist from Long Island. “They smell our pizza. They don’t smell the rabbits anymore,” he said, adding, “If we had put a steak in the woods, that might have worked.”

Most of the dogs loved it, even if their instincts had been dulled by modern living.  Read the full article here, interesting throughout.

More and more pet owners are realizing that their dogs (and cats) aren't adapted to processed food.  Here's a dog food company called "B.G.", which stands for "Before Grain".  Their tagline: "...the way food was supposed to be, Before Grain got involved."

Do I need to draw all the parallels?  Think this general approach might work with humans?

Updates: barefoot running clinics, hunting, raw milk...and Eliot Spitzer

It's been a busy week.

1. On Wednesday, 70+ people turned out for a barefoot running clinic in Central Park put on by RunBare founder, Michael Sandler.   Awesome turnout -- that was over a third of our meetup group.  (We even caught the attention of former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer and his wife, who were walking by and stopped to figure out why all these odd people were doing running around without their shoes.)  Michael, along with his co-founder and fiancee Jessica Lee, is the author of the recently released Barefoot Running, available for sale now.  I'll be posting a review, plus photos of the event soon.

         

2. Tomorrow we've got another barefoot running clinic in Central Park put on by none other than Barefoot Ken Bob himself.   For those who don't know Ken Bob, he is a legendary barefoot marathoner with an even more legendary beard.  Details and RSVP here.  Everyone is a beginner at barefoot running -- these clinics are a great opportunity for beginner's to get a little guidance and instruction.

        

3. I went up to Vermont this weekend and got my hunter's safety certification.  Good in all 50 states (and Canada).  I am utterly enthralled by the idea of bringing down a moose and having to eat, freeze, and give away 700 pounds of meat.

        

4. On the way back from Vermont, I stopped by a local farm and picked up some raw milk, grass-fed beef, and pastured eggs.  I'm not a milk-drinker, but I thought I would give raw milk a try.  Definitely tastes full fat (I grew up on skim milk), but the taste wasn't as shockingly different as expected.  Not sure if I'm supposed to travel with raw milk across states lines.  Maybe it's illegal?  The pastured eggs are a totally different color when I cook them up -- the yolk is much darker.

         

Did paleolithic hunters cause global cooling?

 A recent article in New Scientist asks, "Did early hunters cause climate change?"  

"When hunters arrived in North America and drove mammoths and other large mammals to extinction, the methane balance of the atmosphere could have changed as a result, triggering the global cool spell that followed. The large grazing animals would have produced copious amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from their digestive systems. They vanished about 13,000 years ago."

The skeptics take issue with the paper for a few reasons.

  1. Temperature is highly correlated with methane, including during this period, and changes in temperatures could well be causing changes in methane levels (which fluctuate naturally).  Since most methane comes from fermentation in wetlands, temperature changes could slow or quicken the fermentation process.
  2. The methane drop is quickly followed by an even higher rise in methane.  It's not as if the megafauna came back to life, though it's possible that other factors caused the rise.
  3. Using the IPCC's own assumptions about methane forcing and the methane estimates in the paper, the estimated global temperature change from the mass extinction is 0.08 degrees C.  Yeah, so hardly anything.

Read the whole broadside here.  Note: the tone is less formal than an academic journal, but they open source their methods so anyone can check it.

 

(Thanks to @melbournian for the New Scientist article.)

Assorted links

1. Tanning is associated with optimal Vitamin D status and higher bone mineral density.  (NOTE: But as one commenter pointed out, most tanning salons try to sell you UVA, when this paper is talking about UVB.  Don't rush to the solarium.)  And this:

"There is increased concern about skin cancer, which has created a fear of causative sunlight exposure (9 –12). Melanoma is the most serious form of skin cancer. It should be recognized that most melanomas occur in areas that are not exposed to the sun (13) and that it is the number of lifetime sunburn experiences, the number of moles, and red hair that increase the risk of this deadly disease (12)."

2. Melissa McEwen's poetic description of learning to hunt, dress, butcher, and eat deer

"We carved the body cavity through and through, leaving bare ribs skinless so the light could shine through. The digestive system we left for the vultures, as it belongs to them. I read recently about one of the earliest religious sites, Göbekli Tepe, a marvel considering that hunter-gatherers had no cities, but they bothered to build this temple carved with vultures, lions, and other predators of humans dead...and alive. Some theorize that the hunter-gatherers left their dead here to be eaten by these fierce flesh eating creatures. The word for this is "excarnate," which is very beautiful to me, the idea of sharing your body with other carnivores. I think of then as a time when none owned another, except in death when it was an honor to be consumed and melded with others."

3. Tyler Cowen responds to fears that food markets will be turbulent in years ahead

4. Reasons for optimism: perch in downtown Milwaukee and tilapia in Colorado

5. I'll be in DC this weekend, and I'm looking forward to the well-regarded Mitsitam Cafe at the National Museum of the American Indian. 

"Mitsitam (pronounced Mit-see-tum) means “let's eat” in the Piscataway and Delaware language. The 350-seat restaurant is essentially an extension of the museum, specializing in authentic Native American cuisine. The seasonal menu changes on each equinox and solstice and is divided among five Native American regions: Northern Woodlands, Northwest Coast, Great Plains, Meso America and South America."

Locavore Hunter seminar in NYC this weekend

Jackson Landers is back in town with a Slow Food event this Saturday from 1-4pm.  This is for anyone who wants to learn about hunting for locavores, but doesn't have the time or money to travel to Virginia for a full weekend.  I went to this a couple months ago, and I highly recommend it.  You'll learn a lot even if you don't plan on hunting in the near future.

I also asked Jackson about my recent link to cattle and deer tending to align north-south.  Like always, he had a few sharp thoughts.  The ability to sense the magnetic field may be correct, but there might be other associated explanations, such as wind direction:

"I'd like to see them line up that data with the direction of the wind and see if there is a correlation.  It is advantageous to face into the wind while feeding, and certainly whitetails are known to favor bedding down facing into the wind.  Given the fact that our magnetic poles are aligned more or less with our rotational poles that produce cold air, I think that they really need to make sure that this isn't just a response to wind rather than magnetic alignment per se.

Broadly, I would expect some slight variation around the world depending on proximity to mountain ranges if wind is figuring into it.  For example, in North America we are exceptionally prone to winds from the north because our major mountain ranges run from north to to south and thus allow weather systems to come straight down without anything impeding them.  This is actually unusual  - Europe and Asia have ranges that run east to west.  It is one of the things that makes North America an evolutionary challenge for animals because even in temperate areas they have to be capable of surviving occasional blasts of cold air for weeks on end.  

So to test the wind hypothesis, I would look for slight regional variation among animals within a few miles of mountain ranges that go east/west."

I can't help but point out that a typical vegan or vegetarian would almost never know information like this because they tend to recuse themselves from nature's working.  A typical meat-eater wouldn't know it either.  But a locavore hunter is not only healthy, but also understands how animals think and how nature works.

Deer Hunting for Locavores: Photo Essay

Warning: Some of the pictures below show graphic images of a deer being butchered.  There are also graphic images of classroom instruction, target practice, and naps in the sunshine.  All acts of killing, field dressing, and butchering the deer were conducted with respect.

Click on the images below to start the slideshow!

Deer Hunting for Locavores: Day One

Things I learned today:

- Women are the fastest growing population of hunters.  (Read this great NYT piece by Betty Fussell, who bagged her first deer at the wonderful age of 82.  She attended Jackson's NYC talk with us a couple months ago.)

- It takes brains to hunt deer.  The only reason deer haven't been hunted to extinction a long time ago (like many other wild animals on the east coast) is that they are smart, stay hidden, and avoid humans.

- Bow hunting is hard.  Only 30% of bow hunters tagged a deer last season in Virginia.

- Bambi, the movie, is wildly inaccurate as to actual deer ecology and behavior.

- Don't wear blue jeans to hunt.  Deer see blue (and ultraviolet), but not the red side of the spectrum. 

- Deer use hearing to detect predators, then confirm using smell and sight .

- Supposedly I am a natural with a pistol.  (Not bad with a rifle, but need some work.)

 

Tomorrow we'll be field dressing, butchering, and cooking a deer.

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