Call of the Mild

by Lily Raff McCaulou

  As a nation, we raise and slaughter nearly ten billion land animals: Henning Steinfeld, Pierre Gerber, Tom Wassenaar, Vincent Castel, Mauricio Rosales and Cees de Haan, Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options, prepared by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (Rome, November 29, 2006).

  That portions out to about two-thirds of a pound of meat per person per day, or 241 pounds a year… It’s also more than twice the international average: “Livestock and Poultry: World Markets and Trade,” prepared by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (Washington, DC, April 2011).

  The average American today eats eighty pounds more meat per year than in 1942: Per-capita meat consumption in 1942 was 161 pounds, according to Roger Horowitz, Putting Meat on the American Table: Taste, Technology, Transformation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 16.

  Add up the weight of all land animals on the planet… and domestic livestock accounts for one out of every five pounds: Steinfeld et al., Livestock’s Long Shadow, xxiii.

  Thirty percent of the earth’s land surface is now used to raise meat, either for grazing or growing grain for feed: Ibid.

  three species go extinct from our planet every hour on average: Ahmed Djoghlaf, “Statement from Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity” (speech, New York City, May 22, 2007).

  The meat industry is… responsible for 18 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, which is more than transportation: Steinfeld et al., Livestock’s Long Shadow, xxi.

  The production of merely 3.8 ounces of beef… releases about as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as a midsize sedan emits by driving eighteen miles: Calculated from a 2007 study by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan, cited in Mark Bittman, “Rethinking the Meat Guzzler,” New York Times, January 27, 2008.

  Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals (New York: Little, Brown, 2009), 143.

  Chapter 6: First Kill

  Ring-necked pheasant Latin name, origins and population decline information from Harry Nehls, Familiar Birds of the Northwest (Portland, OR: Portland Audubon Society, 1981), 60. And from Marshall, Hunter and Contreras, Birds of Oregon, 174–75.

  Pollan, Omnivore’s Dilemma, 353.

  Herman Melville, Moby-Dick: Or, The Whale (New York: Modern Library, 2000), 776.

  Garrison Keillor, Lake Wobegon Days segment of A Prairie Home Companion, American Public Media, March 22, 2008.

  Ironically, this has coincided with a sharp rise in meat consumption: Horowitz, Putting Meat on the American Table, 16.

  there are now at least 4,385 [farmers’ markets] in the United States. But only about 3 percent of farmers’ market vendors sell meat: National Farmers Market Survey, published in May 2006 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agriculture Marketing Service, 2, 27.

  hunters play an important role in population control: From multiple sources including telephone interview with Steven Williams, president of the Wildlife Management Institute, in September 2007, and Frank Miniter, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Hunting (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2007), 105–16.

  Interview with Greg Cazemier in Bend, OR, September 9, 2010.

  Mule deer study results from Richard Cockle, “Study Shows Surprising Rate of Mule Deer Poaching,” The Oregonian, November 15, 2010.

  Chapter 7: Off the Mark

  Eastern cottontail Latin name, habitat description, diet and hunting regulations provided by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. Species information may be found at www.dfw.state.or.us/species/docs/rabbit.pdf.

  Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, 23.

  Roy Wall, Fish and Game Cookery (New York: M. S. Mill, 1945), 126.

  NRA background information from Robert J. Spitzer, The Politics of Gun Control (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2004), 75–83.

  On its website, the NRA proudly calls itself the “largest pro-hunting organization in the world.”: www.nra.org.

  a semi-automatic Glock 19 pistol—which can shoot more than one round per second: William Hermann, “Gabrielle Giffords Shooting: Pistol Used Is a Mainstay for Law Officers,” Arizona Republic, January 10, 2011.

  The NRA has about 4.3 million members: From www.nraila.org/Issues/Faq, accessed July 29, 2011.

  Nationwide, three thousand tons of lead are shot into the environment by hunters every year, another eighty thousand tons are released at shooting ranges and four thousand tons are lost in ponds and streams as fishing lures and sinkers: From “Petition to the Environmental Protection Agency to Ban Lead Shot, Bullets, and Fishing Sinkers Under the Toxic Substances Control Act,” submitted by the Center for Biological Diversity, American Bird Conservancy, Association of Avian Veterinarians, Project Gutpile and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility on August 3, 2010, available at www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2010/lead-08-03-2010.html, accessed July 29, 2011.

  California condor information from the American Bird Conservancy, available at www.abcbirds.org, and from Katharine Mieszkowski, “Condors vs. the NRA,” Salon.com (September 22, 2007), available at www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/09/22/condors, accessed July 29, 2011.

  the president announces that one of the organization’s top priorities is to oppose Endangered Species Act protection for gray wolves: M. David Allen, “Standing Up for Elk Country,” Bugle 28, no. 2 (March–April 2011), 9.

  But elk numbers didn’t drop nearly as much as some biologists had feared. In fact, they noticed changes that helped the entire ecosystem: Sandi Doughton, “Can Wolves Restore an Ecosystem?” Seattle Times, January 26, 2009.

  At the same time that he denounces wolves, the group’s president pledges that the organization will “become more engaged in the core issues of our time that threaten our hunting heritage and that of our children”: Allen, “Standing Up for Elk Country,” 9.

  the National Wildlife Federation, which was founded by a hunter back in 1936: Available at www.nwf.org/About/History-and-Heritage.aspx, accessed July 24, 2011.

  Chapter 8: Wild Tastes

  I took creative license with several details of the goose’s life. Facts including Latin name, population statistics, social and mating habits, size and migratory pattern from Marshall, Hunter and Contreras, Birds of Oregon, 76–78.

  I took creative license with precise details of the chicken’s life, but based it on factual accounts of factory farms, beak cutting, commercial habits for light and feeding, injury rate, crating technique, slaughter method and life span from multiple sources including Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma; Foer, Eating Animals; the Farm Sanctuary (www.farmsanctuary.org), and Karl Weber, ed., Food, Inc: A Participant Guide: How Industrial Food Is Making Us Sicker, Fatter and Poorer—and What You Can Do About It (New York: Public Affairs, 2009), 62.

  Tom Standage, An Edible History of Humanity (New York: Walker and Co., 2009), 4.

  Today more than nine out of ten land animals killed for food in the United States are broilers. Fast-food chain KFC alone buys nearly one billion per year: Weber, Food, Inc., 62.

  more than 250 million chicks are destroyed each year, most of them layers who… turned out to be males: Foer, Eating Animals, 48.

  Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, 333.

  A 2009 study found that more than 40 percent of all food produced in the United States is thrown away instead of eaten: Kevin D. Hall, J. Guo, M. Dore, C. C. Chow, “The Progressive Increase of Food Waste in America and Its Environmental Impact,” PLoS ONE 4, no. 11 (2009), e7940.

  Only a few known species of mushrooms are, if ingested, capable of killing an otherwise healthy adult. Most poisonous mushrooms cause run-of-the-mill food-poisoning symptoms: diarrhea and vomiting: David Arora, Mushrooms Demystified (Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 1986), 893–96.

  The capped mushrooms that we’re used to—the kind you could slice and sprinkle on a pizza—are actually reproductive structures: Fungus life cycle and mushroom species information, including Latin names, from ibid., 4–6, 662, 191. />
  “a provocative compromise between ‘red hots’and dirty socks.”: Ibid., 191.

  Lily Raff, “A Taste of Tradition,” The (Bend) Bulletin, August 17, 2008, F1.

  Horowitz, Putting Meat on the American Table, 44–70.

  Hal Herzog, Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It’s So Hard to Think Straight About Animals (New York: HarperCollins, 2010), 183.

  Chapter 9: Good Dog, Bad Wolf

  Wolves and dogs are the same species, and their genomes are almost impossible to distinguish: Barbara Smuts, “Behavior of Domestic Dogs,” The Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior, ed. Michael D. Breed and Janice Moore (New York: Elsevier Academic Press, 2010), 562–67.

  Other than humans, wolves were once the mammal with the most varied geographic distribution on earth: From http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/NorthAmerica/Facts/fact-graywolf.cfm, accessed July 29, 2011.

  In one particularly odd theory, wolf pups were stolen from their dens at one or two days old, and lactating women nursed them from their own breasts: Mark Derr, Dog’s Best Friend: Annals of the Dog-Human Relationship (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 21.

  each theory rests on some level of consent from the wolves themselves: Smuts, “Behavior of Domestic Dogs,” 562–64.

  some scientists believe that Siberian huskies stem from a population of semi-domesticated wolves who flocked to nomadic tribes of people when hunting became difficult during harsh winters: Ray Coppinger and Lorna Coppinger, Dogs: A New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behavior, and Evolution (New York: Scribner, 2001).

  Humans and dogs have been hunting together for as long as forty thousand years, according to some estimates: From Herzog, Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat, 105.

  Modern breed descriptions from the American Kennel Club, available at www.akc.org/breeds/index.cfm.

  In 2009, wolf hunts open in two Western states: Montana and Idaho opened wolf hunts in September 2009, following the Obama administration’s decision four months earlier to remove gray wolves from the list of endangered species. Sources include Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (http://fwp.mt.gov) and Idaho Fish and Game (http://fishandgame.idaho.gov).

  Non-profits in Montana and New Mexico, for example, actually bring wolves into school classrooms: Sources include www.wildspiritwolfsanctuary.org/ed_presentations.php and www.wildsentry.org.

  In a recent study, well-regulated hunts were found to help migratory animals adapt more quickly to habitat changes: Todd Brinkman, Terry Chapin, Gary Kofinas and David K. Person, “Linking Hunter Knowledge with Forest Change to Understand Changing Deer Harvest Opportunities in Intensively Logged Landscapes,” Ecology and Society 14, no. 1 (2009).

  Chukar information, including Latin name, habitat, physical description and diet, from Marshall, Hunter and Contreras, Birds of Oregon, 171–73.

  John Cage, Silence: Lectures and Writings (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1973), 93.

  Daniel Lieberman, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard, believes that the uniquely human capacity for long-distance running… is a vestige of our ancient method of “persistence” hunting, or chasing a wild animal to exhaustion and eventually death: Charles Bethea, “Fair Chase,” Outside, May 2011.

  “Buck,” the word for a male deer, for example, is slang for one dollar: Richard Nelson, Heart and Blood: Living with Deer in America (New York: Random House, 1997), 101.

  Wall, Fish and Game Cookery, 90.

  A study in 2009 found that the horns of Canadian bighorn sheep have shrunk because of hunting: Chris Darimont, “Human Predators Outpace Other Agents of Trait Change in the Wild,” Proceedings of National Academy of Science, January 12, 2009.

  Chris Darimont quoted in Anne Minard, “Hunters Speeding Up Evolution of Trophy Prey,” National Geographic News, January 12, 2009.

  Chapter 10: Friends for Dinner

  Salmon life cycle information from Jason Cooper, Life Cycle of a Pacific Salmon (Vero Beach, FL: Rourke Publishing, 2003).

  Erich Fromm, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973), 135.

  Full Boone & Crockett definition of fair chase, as well as 2005 statement against canned hunts, available at www.boone-crockett.org.

  One short-lived but highly publicized ranch tried allowing clients to operate a gun over the Internet and, with the click of a mouse, take the life of a captive hog.: Zachary M. Seward, “Internet Hunting Has Got to Stop—If It Ever Starts,” Wall Street Journal, August 10, 2007, A1.

  In 2010, the Whitetail Pro Series began hosting deer-hunting tournaments in which contestants stalk deer, zero in on them using digital scopes equipped with memory cards and then fire blank shells: James Card, “A Kind of Hunt That Even Deer Can Get Behind,” New York Times, October 16, 2010.

  And in England, since fox hunting with dogs was outlawed in 2004, dedicated hunters on horseback have eliminated the fox altogether and taken to pursuing a designated human: Frances Stead Stellers, “Coakham Hunt’s Greatest Game Pits Bloodhounds Against Man,” Washington Post, January 12, 2011.

  José Ortega y Gasset, Meditations on Hunting (Belgrade, MT: Wilderness Adventures Press, 1995), 103–4.

  Each day in the United States, six thousand acres of open space, including working farms and forestland, are developed: Statistics provided by the USDA Forest Service, available at www.fs.fed.us/projects/four-threats/facts/open-space.shtml.

  Herzog, Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat, 176.

  While the exact number of vegetarians is difficult to discern, most surveys and polls produce estimates of seven to eleven million. That means we have about as many vegetarians as residents of the state of North Carolina: Vegetarian estimates derived from a series of surveys by the Vegetarian Resource Group, found at www.vrg.org/nutshell/faq.htm#poll; population from U.S. Census Bureau.

  one survey found that 60 percent of the people who identified themselves as vegetarians admitted they had consumed meat in the last twenty-four hours: Herzog, Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat, 195.

  Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, 326.

  Foer, Eating Animals, 13–14.

  in the United States, vegetarians are outnumbered, three to one, by ex-vegetarians: Herzog, Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat, 200.

  Peter Singer and Tom Regan, eds., Animal Rights and Human Obligations (London: Prentice Hall, 1989).

  Cora Diamond, “Eating Meat and Eating People,” The Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein, Philosophy, and the Mind (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995), 322.

  Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, 333.

  Foer, Eating Animals, 198.

  Chapter 11: Year of Death

  Gunshot is the most common method of suicide in the United States. In fact, gun-inflicted suicides outnumber gun-related homicides and accidental deaths combined: National Safety Council Injury Facts 2011 Edition (Itasca, IL: National Safety Council, 2011), 164–65, 47.

  Chapter 12: Killing Bambi, Reviving Artemis

  Lily Raff, “Tribes and the River,” The (Bend) Bulletin, January 25, 2005, A1.

  Several states… have amended their own constitutions to protect citizens’ right to hunt: By the end of 2010, thirteen states had amended their constitutions to guarantee the right to hunt, according to the National Conference of State Legislators in a report by Douglas Shinkle prepared November 2010, www.ncsl.org/default.aspx?tabid=21237, accessed July 29, 2011.

  One in ten American hunters is female—our gender’s highest participation rate in history—and we are the only demographic of hunters currently on the rise: From the 2006 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting and Wildlife-Associated Recreation, available at http://wsfrprograms.fws.gov.

  Interview with Jessie Fischer in Bend, Oregon, March 2011.

  Description of Artemis paraphrased from Robert Graves, Greek Myths (London: Penguin Books, 1981), 33–34.

  Some versions of mythology claim that Artemis killed Orion: Cartmill, A View to a Death, 33.

  Chapter 13: Deer Diaryr />
  White-tailed deer information including Latin name, related species, habitat, diet and population control, and mating habits from Nelson, Heart and Blood.

  “Everyone in North America who lives each day on agricultural foods…”: Ibid., 310–11.

  “looked as if mice were running up and down inside her esophagus…”: Ibid., 67.

  Gary Lewis, Deer Hunting: Tactics for Today’s Big Game Hunter (Bend, OR: Gary Lewis Outdoors, 2003).

  Chapter 14: Big Game

  General information about elk gleaned from multiple sources including Jay Houston, Ultimate Elk Hunting: Strategies, Techniques & Methods (Minneapolis: Creative Publishing International, 2008), and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

  Nelson, Heart and Blood, 71.

  A local Indian woman once explained: Interview with a source who wishes to remain anonymous, in Richland, Washington, May 2006.

  Fromm, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, 133.

  the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says that $14.70 of that went to purchase or lease wetlands for the National Wildlife Refuge System: According to the service, “The 98 cents of every dollar generated [from duck stamps goes to] purchase or lease wetland habitat for the National Wildlife Refuge System.” Information about the federal duck stamp program is available at www.fws.gov/duckstamps/Info/Stamps/stampinfo.htm.

  My license fees helped pay for biologists to study animals and restore important habitat. Some of my money even goes to help non-hunted animals like songbirds and pygmy rabbits: From “ODFW 2009–2011 Fee Increase Fact Sheet,” prepared by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, available at www.dfw.state.or.us/agency/budget/docs/2009/budget_fact_sheet.pdf, accessed July 29, 2011; and from “On the Ground: The Oregon Conservation Strategy at Work,” prepared by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife in November 2006, available at www.dfw.state.or.us/conservationstrategy/news/2006/Nov2006.asp, accessed July 29, 2011.