Wild game -etarians?

March 5, 2008 12:30 PM

Is there a name for people who, for ethical or environmental reasons, will only eat meat if they have hunted it themselves? Do significant numbers of these people exist? Do they have web sites?
posted by Kevin A to food & drink (13 comments total)

Ted Nugent? I keed.

There is kind of a Local/Seasonable/Sustainable movement afoot.

You might want to look at rivercottage.net... and I kind of am 'one of those people' in that I only like to eat meat if I know who raised it/killed it, or if it's wild game (venison). I prefer to eat sustainable fish like Pollock, I prefer local veg, etc... but I don't think there's a NAME for this style.
posted by chuckdarwin at 1:00 PM on March 5

I'm finding some Google hits for "ethical carnivore" and "ethical omnivore," so those might give you some points of departure.
posted by rhizome at 1:01 PM on March 5

Here is one example: Women for Wild Game, though it isn't immediately clear if they will only eat wild game that they have killed themselves, or will eat wild game that others have killed.
posted by ssg at 1:04 PM on March 5

'Canadians' ?

But seriously, while I'm not sure a specific name exists (cue a German speaker...) most the people who come from a community where hunting is possible, would morally prefer meat that's been killed by their own hand (or indirectly-- friend, families or their communities) rather then the 'inorganic' mass produced version.
From my network of friends, that tends to be the case of Canadians who are from the more remote locations, but I'm sure it's a worldwide trend-- hunting is a skill they've grown up with and are comfortable. Being brought up in the wilderness (for varying degrees of wild) tends to make you respect nature more-- all of those elements would obviously lead you to make the choice of locally hunted over remotely so.

'Farmer' also fits, albeit without the hunted requirement. If you grew up on a farm with cows, pigs, chickens along with crops and obviously that's where their source of food would come from, with the excess being sold for profit.
posted by Static Vagabond at 1:12 PM on March 5

I don't know that there's a name for it, but some people aligned with various ethical eating movements promote doing so. Some foraging movements have hunting counterparts, and parts of the anarcho-primitivist movement hunt/forage/etc. These forums discuss hunting, trapping, and fishing as part of wilderness survival, and this "survival IQ" aggregates much of the same. This primitive living skillset links to a bunch of applicable resources. I think there's a much larger contingent of folks focusing on foraging wild plants and the like than hunting.
posted by youarenothere at 1:12 PM on March 5 [1 favorite]

Sandor Ellix Katz's excellent book The Revolution Will not be Microwaved also mentions eating roadkill as a sustainable way to consume meat. But again, it is part of a larger "ethical eating" mantra, not a sole (or even primary) means of attaining food.
posted by youarenothere at 1:25 PM on March 5

This may not provide an answer for you directly, but Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma includes a lot of discussion about the ethics of hunting and eating meat you killed yourself.

He mentions at least a couple of people in the San Francisco area who do exactly that.
posted by sindark at 2:12 PM on March 5

I work with a guy who does this - absolutely refuses to eat any meat that he has not personally hunted and prepared himself. Needless to say, he stocks up during the hunting season(s). He doesnt refer to himself as any kind of "-tarian" and we have a long standing jest about me being the "Broccoli Hunter" (being a veg-head). His reasoning is that he doesnt trust the meat that is commercially available, doesnt want all the additives, hormones etc. Not really a moral issue far as I can tell. He's an older guy and I'm pretty sure he doesnt even own a computer, never mind have a website. In any case, folks like him do exist, and in my neck of the woods (Nevada) its probably more common than most places, other than say, rural Alaska, where its doubtless the norm.
posted by elendil71 at 2:57 PM on March 5

Look for those opposed to "factory farming." Not sure how that works out to a negative category, but most of the serious folks I know who avoid the factory farms are doing precisely what you ask about.
posted by garfy3 at 3:16 PM on March 5

Sustenance hunters/hunting, maybe.

I hear a lot of "I'll only eat meat I killed myself" hunters self-describe themselves as sustenance hunters.

Where it gets confusing is that same term is used by some US states/Canadian provinces to define a class of hunters who depend upon hunting to provide food for themselves; these individuals are often offered a discount or waiver of license fees. It doesn't mean that to quality for the govt defined class means the hunter would turn down a grocery store t-bone.

Among the hunters I know, none attempt to qualify for the official class of sustenance hunter (and it would be laughable if they did, given that most of them make a living poking at keyboards) but call themselves that perhaps to distinguish themselves from sport hunters.

Source: SO is a hunter, most of his friends are hunters. Oy. I'm only into it from the dog-training aspect.
posted by jamaro at 3:47 PM on March 5

You may want to browse the Ethics section here. Among other things there is the concept of Fair Chase. The vast majority of hunters eat what they kill anyway. A group blog you may find of interest is The Rational Hunter.

Ted Nugent? I keed.

You're not far off.
posted by dhartung at 9:14 PM on March 5

I am one of these people. I don't eat red meat for various 'yuck-factor' and ethical reasons, although I would gladly eat meat that I killed. However, I don't want to kill any animals so ... that leaves me not eating meat. I think we've become too far removed the real environmental and ethical implications of our meat eating -- if everyone had to kill a cow just once in their lifetime we would eat a whole lot less meat. I realize it's not practical or even possible to have people killing their own mean even some of the time.

As an aside, I don't feel the same way about poultry and seafood as I do about mammals, so eating those things doesn't bother me, although I do try to make sure that what I eat was raised and killed humanely and with minimal environmental impact. And I do think it would do me a lot of good to kill a chicken. I would really rather not, so it makes me question whether I should be eating it at all.
posted by robinpME at 11:44 AM on March 6

Thanks for the helpful replies!
posted by Kevin A at 11:31 AM on March 11