What makes a red-blooded American man—a retired forest ranger in Oregon, for Pete’s sake—become a vegan in the first place? In the case of my husband, Gene Skrine, he turned vegan (consuming no meat, fish, dairy, or eggs) for two reasons: first, his health and high blood cholesterol; second, his repulsion at the beef feedlots in California.
Gene’s bad-cholesterol levels plummeted and his weight dropped on his vegan diet, which included lots of bean stews, leafy green salads, fresh veggies, whole wheat pastas, and nuts, along with red wine. (Okay, he's almost always vegan—try ordering a Gardenburger in the Midwest, home of great bratwurst and Jell-O salad.) Reinvigorated, he worked long days at the kind of small-scale, hands-on forest work he loves. And he had enough energy left over to get a bow and start target shooting.
The beef feedlots in California are repulsive, even when seen at seventy miles an hour from the interstate. Thousands of steers mill around in close quarters, taking their turns at rows of feeders and standing in a muddy mess of churned-up dirt, urine, and manure. A ripe manure stench drifts over I-5.
Those feedlots are not only unpleasant to see and smell, but also really bad for our planet. Their carbon footprint, or total carbon emissions, is even bigger than their stink. It takes many pounds of corn and soybeans to grow each pound of beef, and all the trucking of feed, then trucking of cattle to slaughterhouses, adds to the fossil fuels consumed in producing beef. Don’t get me started on the methane gas rising from all that manure.
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger and editor of NaturalNews.com, says, “Your food is your No. 1 source of carbon emissions.” Eating meat is a big part of those carbon emissions. Actually, as Gene points out, eating commercially raised meat is a big part of your carbon footprint.
Eating locally grown meat is different. Eating locally-hunted wild meat is much different. As Gene explained to a friend of ours, “Elk meat is very different from the beef in supermarkets. Elk meat is lean, it’s grass-fed, pesticide- and hormone-free. No fossil fuels were used to grow the elk.”
Not much fossil fuel is used to hunt the elk either. Since we already live in the mountains, Gene can hunt on the slopes outside our back door. He may drive five or ten miles to other hunting spots, but that’s far less than our fifty-mile drive to a supermarket.
“Could you actually shoot an elk though?” our friend persisted.
“I have, and I could again,” Gene answered. “Maybe it’s not easy, but I give thanks to the animal, I have respect for the animal’s sacrifice.”
In our case, the contest between human and animal is about as fair as it can be. Gene hunts with a bow, not a rifle, which gives the elk a fairly level playing field in the hunt. Cougars hunt elk and deer year-round in our Oregon mountains, so the animals are already predator-wary when hunting season starts.
If you don’t eat any meat for moral reasons, then you have no reason to hunt. But if, like Gene, you eat very little meat for reasons of personal and ecological health, then hunting is consistent and logical.
If you eat meat, whether a little or a lot, then it’s a matter of personal integrity to look that animal in the face at least once in your life, so you understand what meat-eating really is. Elk are beautiful animals. Much larger than deer, elk have chocolate brown heads and necks, buckskin-colored bodies, and buff rumps. Bulls grow majestic antlers, taller and broader than buck-deer antlers. I remember one morning last fall, seeing the elk on the slopes behind our house. Morning mists were burning off and I saw the dark heads of browsing elk emerging from the fog. One by one, the elk raised their dark heads to look at the human and dog walking. Finally the six-point bull snorted and the whole herd started running like water across the slope and into the woods.
Would you shoot?
