We’ve all seen the images of lions lounging on the savannah, sleepily gazing at wildebeest or zebras just yards away. The lions have eaten their fill, and all the animals around them know it. For a while, at least, all is peaceful on the veldt.
They are sated, and it’s a feeling I’ve started to feel again lately, one I’ve missed dearly.
The idea of satiation, of being filled up but not full-to-bursting, of “just enough,” is one alien to many, especially here in America. We are a nation of more more more, of excess. We’ve always had this in our nation’s DNA, dating back to 17th century stories of rivers so thick with salmon you could walk over them, or of game as plentiful as that African savannah.
Both sides of this live in conflict within me, thanks to a nagging Protestant work ethic instilled in me by my Yankee mother.
I was raised to work hard, make money, be self-sufficient, all good things. But with coming of age in the era of Gordon Gecko and the go-go 80s, the notion that “greed is good” was not something I could easily dismiss out of hand. I’ve since seen many succumb to it.
But my mom, born in The Depression, also held us to another iron rule: You don’t get another until you’ve finished the last one. My earliest memory of this rule in action was with fruit. I could get any fruit I wanted, but I had to eat the last one before she’d buy me more. It’s a rule that has stuck with me. Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.
In the context of a hunting, fishing and gathering life, this conflict comes to the fore in the form of a full freezer. Holly and I had many seasons with filled freezers – our regular stand-up freezer in the kitchen, plus a modest chest freezer in the garage. Lots of ducks and geese, a deer or three, a flock of quail, a school of salmon and trout.
What normally happened was that we would eat down this store all year, nearing zero right around when the new duck season opened in October. And this was precisely why we only had the two freezers: Sure, we could have afforded to run more, but why? It was just the two of us, and while we gave game and fish to our friends every year, how much could we realistically eat?
Running a third freezer then felt arrogant. Wasteful, disrespectful. Now, living solo, I refuse to buy even one chest freezer. The space in my kitchen freezer must suffice.
Killing for food is hard enough, but wasting the meat of an animal, any animal, is worse, at least on my psyche. I am intimately aware that that lump of freezer-burned protein was once a deer or duck or pheasant who had a life, desires and idiosyncrasies very much like I do. To consign it to the stockpot, which is pretty much all you can do with freezer-burned meat, sucks, plain and simple.
So for years, as the freezer crept closer to being full, I could hear my mom’s voice in my head: Don’t waste! You’re good, Hank, you don’t need more. Stop hunting.
I have tended to slow down or stop hunting and fishing altogether at those moments. This past year, my first in Minnesota in two decades, I passed on many opportunities simply because I knew I had enough. I’ve grown accustomed to the weird looks I get from my fellow hunters and anglers when I do this.
Some understand. Some are envious. Mostly those with busy careers or multiple children. For them, it was uncommon to stuff their freezers. Few live off game and fish, and they ruefully said my problem was a good one to have.
They’re right.
A few years after I started hunting, I started to get good at it. I had dreams of skipping the meat counter entirely. All I’d eat would be game and fish I’d shot or caught myself. I’d write out long lists, even spreadsheets, of what game I wanted, how much it weighed, and how much we’d need to feed ourselves.
This genesis was important, for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, it set a rhythm to the year. In California, it was sturgeon in February. Turkeys in April. Pacific rockfish in June, ducks in December. Second, it focused my mind on what I actually wanted to eat. I love eating grouse and quail, so I make a point to hunt them when I can.
This process also taught me nose-to-tail cooking. At the beginning, when my entire duck season might be a dozen ducks, I had every incentive to eat everything but the quack. Same for a wild hog or a deer. The useable meat on an animal doubles once you get past the luxury cuts. And, as you get better at it, you begin to yearn for these “off” cuts. I always eat neck, shoulder and shanks of a deer before the backstraps. They’re just more interesting.
The benefits are twofold: It reminds us that we kill other animals to feed ourselves and our families, not rats at the dump or coyotes in the woods. And it also creates a foundation where you need not kill a dozen deer a year to make ends meet. The goal of meat self-sufficiency becomes closer.
I can hear some of you: Why not just take the breast meat or luxury cuts, so you save space and can hunt more? This is legal, and is the route taken by, arguably, the majority of hunters. But it is a path I will not walk, if for nothing more than the selfish reason that I prefer the “off” cuts of the animals I hunt.
As you walk this path, or one similar, you may wake up one day and find yourself in this situation. I have not bought meat or fish for the home more than a handful of times in nearly two decades. I had enough this season to give a whole deer to my friend Alan, who didn’t get one. I am food rich.
Linger on the idea of just enough. Of modest satiation. Look upon the savannah of your life for places where you can let a zebra walk by in peace. Cherish those places and say to yourself, “this is good.”
I’ve mentioned before that while I don’t hunt myself, I’ve grown up around and live surrounded by hunters. One stands out in my mind, not in a good way, and this column brought it back. I ran into him and he bragged that he’d gotten deer permits for himself, kids and wife…and shot four bucks himself, then tagged them w the above mentioned permits. He was heading out for a fifth. I still dislike that man. Thank you for writing this!❤️
I’ve never killed an animal in my life. But, what I buy, I eat - down to the last scrap. I was also brought up w a waste not want to mentality and, despite the fact that I can afford to throw food out, morally I can not and I’m so proud to be like that.