When Oliver Barker sits down at his dinner table, he considers himself at the end of a journey.As he takes a bite of the venison before him, he is brought back to the beginning.
He finds himself in an old oak grove on an early autumn morning. As the rising sun starts to peek through the barren branches, he spots a white-tailed deer at the foot of a creek bed.
Barker focuses his attention on the animal. His breath, visible and rising in front of his chilled face, starts to slow. He steadies his 30.06-calibre rifle, takes aim, exhales and pulls the trigger.
A 27-year-old native of Peterborough, Ont., Barker has been an avid hunter for over 11 years. He has hunted everything from small game – grouse and ducks – to larger animals, such as elk and deer, in Ontario and Alberta. While memories of his hunting expeditions are some of his strongest connections to his food, he never forgets the main reason for going on them in the first place.
“It’s incredibly important to know where meat comes from,” he said. “It’s not created in the back of a grocery store. It was once a live animal that was butchered. So it is extremely valuable to experience hunting.”
For Barker, the process of hunting extends beyond killing an animal, dragging it back to camp and celebrating with friends over some brewskis. He enjoys being involved every step along the way in the acquisition of meat, while doing so in a responsible manner.
“If I have the ability to go hunting and as long as it is sustainable, then I should not take advantage of meat sources like factory farms,” he said. “They waste a lot of resources, such as fuel and water and cause pollution.”
Steve Buist is an investigative journalist for the Hamilton Spectator and he experienced first-hand what it takes to bring meat to the dinner plate. In his story A Pig’s Tale, he raised a pig from the farm to the slaughterhouse.
Oliver Barker has hunted elk, deer and grouse for over 11 years.
Buist said one of the most shocking things he discovered from his story was just how much of our resources are allocated to the farming industry and how society in general doesn’t consider this when making food decisions.
“People need to be responsible about the choices they make and understand their implications,” he said.
While Buist himself does not hunt, he can understand why hunters are passionate about where their food comes from.
“I think they feel they have a responsibility that they are not wasteful with resources and not killing an animal for the sake of killing it.”
He added that as a society, we take it for granted that meat is easily available through a trip to the grocery store.
“People show up at supermarkets and expect food to be there,” he said. “There aren’t magic food fairies.”
Hunting has helped 38-year-old falconer Rebecca K. O’Connor establish a stronger connection with food. She lives in Sacramento, Calif. and has hunted with peregrine falcons for 15 years in the southwestern United States. She believes hunting has given her an entirely different way of looking at meat.
“When I eat a duck my bird caught, I knew that duck,” she said. “I looked into that duck’s eyes and saw it with all its feathers. It makes it so much more personal.
“It forces you to be respectful,” she said. “I would never just eat a part of a duck and throw it away, like you might with a McDonald’s hamburger.”
O’Connor is also the director of development for Ducks Unlimited and she believes in the importance of wildlife conservation. She said when her eight-year-old falcon Anakin kills another bird, it’s her “responsibility to make sure every bit of it gets utilized.”
The issue of wasting nature’s resources was a major theme of Buist’s project. It resonated with him once his pig was slaughtered, leaving him with four boxes of pork.
“I was very mindful to make sure it didn’t get wasted,” he said. “I gave away meat to as many people as I could to make sure it got put to good use.”
Buist said his emotional state was neutral when he finally got the chance to consume the meat he raised, but he said the project made him pause and reflect on what it is like to be a farmer.
Barker views hunting much like farming because it forces people to look at food more seriously and makes them consider the issue of life and death. He thinks anyone should be able to kill what he or she eats.
“It’s part of the whole process,” he said. “It’s intensified with meat because it’s an emotional experience when you’re dealing with the death of an animal.
“It is one thing to pick a wild mushroom and it’s another to shoot a deer. But it allows you a stronger connection to your food.”
Buist and O’Connor don’t think meat eaters necessarily need to take the life of an animal to make that connection. But O’Connor believes hunting still has a lot to offer in terms of learning experiences.
“There’s nothing wrong with not being able to bring yourself to kill an animal to eat it,” she said. “But what is more important about hunting is that it teaches you to be respectful and appreciate animals, which is our responsibility as human beings.”
Click here to check out Rebecca K. O’Connor’s book Lift, memoirs of a falconer.