To kill a deer

Mindful Metropolis, November edition

It was the second bullet that pierced the deer’s brain. The first one, fired through the barrel of my father’s rifle a couple minutes earlier, only maimed him as the buck bent down to eat a fallen apple in the orchard on my parents’ property — on the opening morning of Michigan’s deer-hunting season five years ago.

I was at the computer absorbing the day’s news when I heard the shot. George W. Bush had won his reelection two weeks earlier, and I still felt numb with disbelief. Secretary of State Colin Powell (“the voice of moderation”) was resigning today and Condoleeza Rice would replace him. The news was expected to make the White House more hawkish.

In Iraq, the U.S. military’s invasion of Fallujah — seemingly postponed until after the presidential election — was entering its eighth day of bloody, street-to-street fighting, pitting American soldiers against Shiite rebels loyal to the fiery cleric Abu Musab al-Zarquawi, with plenty of innocent civilians trapped in between. The reports coming out of Fallujah were confusing, and morbid.

Then, the second gunshot. Remembering my pledge to my Dad to help this time, I threw on a raggedy pair of jeans and walked outside into the cool northern Michigan fall air. There, on a bed of freshly fallen leaves and under a knotty old apple tree, where I had once lain in a hammock and memorized statistics on the backs of baseball cards, a beautiful animal lay dead. Blood trickled from his mouth and wound near the heart, where the first bullet struck. The deer had been sacrificed to feed us.

“Are you ready for this?” my Dad calmly asked as we stood over his body. I nodded, though I wasn’t convinced, myself.

He later told me that he had been reading an essay in The New Yorker by John McPhee about barges on the Illinois River when he saw the deer walk into the orchard. The buck had appeared suddenly and was in such a direct line of fire that my Dad had taken a couple deep breaths to calm himself before pulling the trigger. Nevertheless, the first shot hadn’t killed the deer — the nightmare for every hunter with a conscience. The animal stumbled for 20 yards before falling down. He must have felt at least 90 seconds of bewilderment and pain before leaving this world.

My Dad knelt over the deer’s body and said in a hushed tone, “Thank you for your life.”

I imagined Native American hunters performing the same ritual over centuries — taking a moment, just a moment, between kill and butcher, to reflect on the animal’s life and thank it for its contribution to the food chain.

Then he pulled out a knife and cut the deer’s throat so it could bleed. Next he made an incision along the belly, from crotch to ribcage. When we opened up the deer, the air around us became warm, and it took on a sickly, sweet smell of blood and organs. There’s no smell quite like it — and it’s nothing like the experience of consuming meat, which I’ve done my whole life and continue to do today.

We reached our bare hands and arms into the deer, navigated past the heart and lungs with a sharp knife, and cut its esophagus so that we could pull out its guts and intestines. We were careful not to rupture anything, as we separated the part of the animal we would use with what we wouldn’t. My Dad cut out the deer’s liver and placed it in a plastic bag — part delicacy, and perhaps also part trophy. The innards were left in a far corner of the apple orchard for coyotes and vultures to eat that night. Everything would be used somehow.

Then we each grabbed two hoofs and dragged the body across the yard, marking the path with a slight trail of red. She was not heavy, but my thoughts weighed me down. When we got to the tree where the cars are parked, my Dad fetched a rope from the tool shed, and we tied the hoofs to the antlers and strung the deer from a tree limb, to let its blood drain onto the ground and to cure the meat.

The liver was put in salted water to soak and to draw out the blood. I showered and changed my clothes, then sat down in front of the computer again.

Hundreds were reported dead in Fallujah, and the occupying army was blocking an aid convoy from the Iraqi Red Crescent from entering the besieged city. Amidst the fog of war, rumors surfaced of an ambulance — which may or may not have been carrying insurgents — with sniper bullet holes shot through the windshield from above, aimed at chest level. An NBC cameraman videotaped a U.S. Marine shooting an unarmed and wounded Iraqi prisoner in a Fallujah mosque, yelling, “He’s (expletive) faking he’s dead!”

A couple hours after the kill, my Dad invited several friends and fellow hunters over for lunch, and the fresh liver was fried up with onions. Though I’d eaten this delicacy before, today I had trouble chewing the body of the animal. The aroma of the liver in my nose took me straight back to the smell of the body when we opened it up. It wasn’t that I was nauseated; I just couldn’t chew.

I thought of the deer lying there in the apple orchard, how she had been alive and graceful just minutes before, how quickly this animal had gone from pasture to plate, and how I had witnessed and taken part in most of the process. I thought of all the meat eaters in this country who have never killed or butchered what they eat, and I wondered how many would continue to do so if the gun and the knife, the blessing and the intestines were required to be a carnivore. And I couldn’t help but think of the bloodbath in Fallujah.

Was shooting a human being anything like shooting an animal? Was it difficult to chew food in the mess hall afterwards? Was there a connection between how we get our food and how we fight conflicts in the world? All I knew for certain was that the tender liver seemed rougher than any meat I’d ever chewed before.

Sustainable Thanksgiving

Mindful Metropolis, November edition

Say “thanks” this turkey day with local and organic foods that honor nearby farmers and the land they tend.

I am not politically aligned with my in-laws, with whom I spend Thanksgiving. When we vote, we support different values and visions. But when it comes to food — what we eat, where it comes from, and how it’s prepared — we might as well have grown up on the same farm. And our common relationship to food may be more important than which lever we pull at the ballot box every four years.


I called my mother-in-law a few weeks ago and suggested that we team up this November to produce a Thanksgiving feast full of local and, if possible, organic foods. She fully supported the idea. A schoolteacher in rural northern Michigan, she’s been on a buy-America kick for a while now, partly out of patriotism and partly to enhance the quality of what she brings home.

When we gather for the traditional harvest meal in a few weeks, the turkey and stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet corn and squash, green beans and cornbread, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie will taste great. They’ll be full of healthy nutrients. And our purchase of them will support the local economy.

Whether you’re a city mouse or a country mouse, whether you like your T-day meal traditional or whether you introduce creative flair, whether you eat turkey or prefer tofu, and whether you do it yourself or like to go out, you too can celebrate a sustainable Thanksgiving. In Chicago, here’s how:

Organic turkeys

All talk of Thanksgiving begins with the bird. It’s the centerpiece and the main act, the sun around which the other courses revolve. You’ll give the turkey hours in the oven to cook it just right, and you’ll stuff it with bread, and possibly vegetables, herbs or fruit, to spread the good tastes all around. So make sure the main course lives up to its hype.

Caveny Farm, located in central Illinois near Springfield, is a card-carrying member of the Slow Food movement and raises heritage turkeys, ducks and geese in pastures that grow grasses, clovers and amaranth. Caveny’s Bourbon Red Turkeys are a hit among Chicago foodies, and John and Connie will deliver to Lincoln Park, Evanston and the House of Glunz on the Saturday before Thanksgiving and to Heritage Prairie Farm in Geneva, Ill. the next day. (The Lincoln Park pickup will happen at the Green City Market at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, between 8 a.m. and noon.) Caveny’s birds cost between $50 and $110, depending on how many mouths you have to feed. Visit www.cavenyfarm.com or call (217) 762-7767 to order.

Fresh Picks, just north of town in Niles, offers free-range, broad-breasted bronze and white turkeys from Triple “S” Farms in Stewardson, Ill., and TJ’s Poultry in Piper City. Pick up the bird yourself, or Fresh Picks will deliver to most Chicago zip codes between the Wednesday and Saturday before Thanksgiving. Reserve one at www.freshpicks.com or call (847) 410-0595.

Organic, Pasteur-raised turkeys from the Wettstein farm in Carlock, Ill. will be available for pickup the Saturday before Thanksgiving at the Buzz Cafe on Lombard Street in Oak Park. Call the Wettsteins at (309) 376-7291 for information.
Good Earth Farms in Milladore, Wis. offers pasture-raised Broad Breasted Whites with plenty of meat on them. You’ll be eating organic birds that lived out their days happily scratching, eating clover and grass and chasing grasshoppers. Good Earth will ship them for $15 each within a seven-state upper-Midwest region or for free if they weigh over 40 pounds.

If you don’t mind buying from a chain store, Whole Foods offers organic turkeys (though shipped in from Sonoma, Calif.) and non-organic birds from Michigan. And Trader Joe’s will offer some organic birds, though a company spokesperson declined to state where in the Midwest they originate.

Vegans get creative

My friend Chris Brunn, who doesn’t consume animal products, reports that vegan-friendly holiday meals aren’t as tricky as they might sound. He recommends perusing holiday editions of mainstream cooking magazines, like Bon Appétit, which offer recipes that are either vegan, or can easily be modified to be vegan.

In a post two years ago on the local blog GapersBlock.com, Chris mentioned unique and delicious recipes that included wild rice with roasted grapes and walnuts and a three-mushroom dressing. He followed the instructions but recommended substituting margarine, or good olive oil, for butter. Adding rosemary, white wine and sautéed onions to the mushrooms didn’t hurt.

Moving onto potatoes and vegetables, Bon Appétit’s mouthwatering suggestions included a bourbon-walnut sweet potato mash, red potatoes with ancho chiles, a wasabi mash, a hash of sweet potatoes, a recipe for roasted fingerlings, caramelized shallots, smashed rutabagas with ginger-roasted pears, green beans and almonds, parsnips with carrots, rosemary and roasted fennel.

Not everyone enjoys all meat substitutes, Chris admits, but some can be really good, and you can have fun making your own. The Chicago Diner, located at 3411 North Halsted, offers a host of great recipes on its website (www.veggiediner.com) including one for tofu roulade, which Chris has used for several years. Basically, roll heavily seasoned tofu around a savory crouton stuffing. Chris and his brother added another layer one year. They wrapped the whole thing in phyllo dough and brushed it with olive oil. The concoction turned out super flaky on the outside and piping hot and tasty on the inside.

The Chicago Diner will also take reservations and offer carryout for its 27th annual vegan Thanksgiving. Visit the website to drool over the menu or to book a spot at the table. And check out GapersBlock.com for more of Chris Brunn’s vegan culinary odyssey.

Bountiful sides

The Green City Market in Lincoln Park is Chicago’s only year-round farmer’s market, so stop there for produce and ingredients for all your delicious sides. Because the turkey would look awfully bare without the tasty stuffing, potatoes, sweet corn, squash, green beans, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. The aforementioned Fresh Picks, and other turkey-growing farms, are also good options to fulfill your produce needs. Or check out FamilyFarmed.org for a list of family-run farms that will help you set your table this Thanksgiving.

Remember, you might not see eye to eye with your family members about some things, and avoiding discussions about politics or religion at the dinner table is good advice. But if you can all agree that the food in front of you is tasty, healthy and ethical, then you already have more in common than you realize. Besides, the first taste of that delicious squash is a hell of a lot more enjoyable than a protracted debate about health care.

Jacob Wheeler is an adjunct teacher at Columbia College and publishes the Glen Arbor Sun newspaper (GlenArborSun.com) in northwest-lower Michigan