Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 1037: Are We Living in The Age of Deer? with Erika Howsare

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Ep. 1037: Are We Living in The Age of Deer? with Erika Howsare · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: the White Tail Woods presented by first Light, creating proven
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: This week, I'm chatting with Erica Hauser, author of the
• 0:25
  Speaker 3: Age of Deer, to discuss with her exactly what she
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: means with that book title and what her experience was
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: like diving into the world of deer and deer hunting
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: for the first time. All right, welcome back to the
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by Moultrie. Today
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: we are chatting with Erica Hauser, the author of the
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: very interesting, very relevant, and possibly surprising book for many
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: of you, The Age of Deer, Trouble and Kinship with
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: our Wild Neighbors. This was a book that I saw
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: come out a year or two ago, and obviously, with
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: it being about deer, I knew I should check it out,
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: but I was a little bit nervous to read it.
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: You know, when there's something that comes out about a
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: topic that's so near and dear to your heart, it
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: can almost sometimes be risky to dive into it because
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: you just know you're going to be disappointed, either the
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: book or you know, this could be a film or
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: any other kind of project, but in this case a book,
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: you know it's likely to disappoint. It's either going to
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: be lousy, or they're not going to treat you and
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: your subject matter fairly or whatever it might be. Or
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: you know more than this person, so you're not going
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: to enjoy it, whatever it might be. But in this case,
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: I was pleasantly surprised on all fronts. This book was
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: eye opening, surprising, challenging, and a whole lot of other
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: things for me as a deer hunter to read. The
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: way I would describe this book and why I think
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: you should listen to this conversation is because it was
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: a little bit like introducing a stranger into your home
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: and giving them free rein to walk around, to look
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: in your fridge, to take a look at your bedroom,
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: to go and check out your dirty laundry, and then
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: to come and report back on all of it and
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: what they thought about all of this stuff. That's kind
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: of what happened here with this book. Because Rika Hauser
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: is not a deer hunter, she had not come from
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: the deer hunting world that we all do, and she
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: went and.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: Explored it all.
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: She explored the history of deer in our country, the
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: mythology and the legends and the storytelling around them, the
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: management and conservation struggles related to them, the ecological things
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: going on right now, and then the whole culture of
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: deer hunting and how we talk about deer hunting and
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: present it and all of that. And then she actually
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: even went so far as to try it herself, to
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: go along on several hunts to immerse herself in this
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: and many other aspects of the deer world. And the
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: end result is a book that I have found to
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: be really fascinating. Even though I, as many of you,
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: have surrounded ourselves with deer related content in books and
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: podcasts and YouTube videos and all that, sometimes I think like,
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: how could I possibly read another thing about deer? But
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: this one is different because this is an analysis, a review.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: This is a deep dive.
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: Into the world of deer and deer hunting from an
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: outside perspective, and that has been very interesting.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: What would someone think if they.
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: Were dropped in the middle of what we do here
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: and took a look at it for the first time.
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: That's what you get with this book, and that's what
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: I wanted to chat with Erica about here today, both
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: what her experience was like exploring these things, and then
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: what she learned along the way, what she learned about
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: deer's role in the ecosystem today, about the problem sometimes
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: of too many deer, about the ways that we manage deer,
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: about you know, the ways that deer interestingly fit and
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: are so adaptable in our modern day and age. And
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: then we spend a lot of time talking about how
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: she experienced deer hunting culture and media, and yeah, so
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: much that probably rather than me trying to rant and
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: ramble about it right now, I should just let you
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: listen to yourself.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: Long story short, This one was very interesting.
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: I think Erica presented things in a very fair and
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: interesting way the deer hunters would do well to pay
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: attention to to learn from. I'll say, there's some things
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: that I've read in this book, and even some things
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: that Erica said that made me uncomfortable that I wish
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: sometimes weren't the way the rest of the world sees
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: what we do and how we do things. But nevertheless,
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: perception is reality for people, and so I think for
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: that reason this is useful to dig into because what
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: we're doing here is deer hunters in America is a privilege.
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: We are a minority in this nation, and we are
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: dependent on the acceptance of the majority, the ninety five
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: percent of the rest of the country, who allow us
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: to continue doing this. So we better be aware of
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: and thinking about how the rest of the world is
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: seeing us. So that is part of this conversation, that's
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: part of this book. I found it very fascinating.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: I hope you will too.
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: And now I will let you get to my chat
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: with Erica Hauser on the age of deer. All right,
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: joining me now on the line is Erica Hauser.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the show.
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: Erica, thank you so much, Mark, thanks for having me.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: Thank you. I'm excited for this chat.
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: It's going to be a little bit different than the
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: typical that I get to have on this podcast, which
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: which I'm excited about. We sometimes in our community get
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: in an echoach. We are surrounded by other people who
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: come from similar backgrounds, who have similar perspectives and life experiences.
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: So I think that anytime we get to kind of
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: zoom out beyond that, it's it's both interesting and useful.
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: So for those reasons, I'm particularly excited for this and
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: I'd love to dive right into the deep end by
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: asking you to explain for me this idea of the
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: age of deer and if you do truly believe we
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: live in the age of deer, what does that mean
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: and what are the implications of that?
• 6:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that is the deep end. Okay, here we go. Well,
• 6:45
  Speaker 4: the title of the book grew out of, you know,
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: the research that I did really brought me to a
• 6:56
  Speaker 4: much deeper appreciation of the the role that deer play
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: in our world, in our culture, in American history. And
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: one of the things that I hadn't known about deer
• 7:12
  Speaker 4: that really became much more clear to me in the
• 7:16
  Speaker 4: process of researching was this whole story that I know
• 7:20
  Speaker 4: you've talked about before on your show, the kind of
• 7:25
  Speaker 4: overhunting story and then the conservation story, so that big
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: you know, I always think of the graph of deer
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: populations and how it just dives down like a v
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: and gets to this very low point in the early
• 7:37
  Speaker 4: twentieth century, and then conservation comes in and kind of
• 7:41
  Speaker 4: you know, brings that back up, and so you know,
• 7:46
  Speaker 4: those of us who are alive now are kind of
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: living in a time when that graph has climbed way
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: back up, and even since my childhood, you know, deer
• 7:57
  Speaker 4: populations have changed. They were at a certain point when
• 8:00
  Speaker 4: I was born, they grew, They probably topped out around
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: the year two thousand somewhere around there, and they've declined
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: a bit since then. So it really impressed upon me how,
• 8:14
  Speaker 4: first of all, these things are always changing, they're always dynamic,
• 8:19
  Speaker 4: and that it's very hard to say what normal is
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: or what the baseline is. But we have lived through
• 8:28
  Speaker 4: and we are living through a time of higher deer
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: populations compared with our grandparents and their parents. You know
• 8:38
  Speaker 4: that things were very very different in those days. And deer,
• 8:44
  Speaker 4: you know, are such adaptable animals, and one thing that's
• 8:48
  Speaker 4: super unusual about them, of course, is that they're very
• 8:51
  Speaker 4: good at living in cities and towns and suburbs. We
• 8:56
  Speaker 4: really associate them with the forest, but they're not actually
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: deep forest animals as much as they are edge creatures,
• 9:05
  Speaker 4: as hunters know. And so that adaptability and that you know,
• 9:10
  Speaker 4: they're they're becoming the overall bulk of the deer population
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: is becoming more urban and less rural, so that is
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: fascinating to me because that says, just like you know,
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: raccoons or certain types of songbirds, they're very good at
• 9:31
  Speaker 4: living with people, and they're figuring out how to thrive
• 9:35
  Speaker 4: in our spaces or the spaces that we think are ours,
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: and so that makes them you know, I think in
• 9:42
  Speaker 4: the book, I call them like, you know, masters of
• 9:46
  Speaker 4: disguise or mash up makers. You know, they're very they're
• 9:50
  Speaker 4: very much of our moment. They're really good at sort
• 9:53
  Speaker 4: of reinventing themselves and taking on a new face and
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: just adapting to the the world that's changed, you know,
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: in their terms, the world has changed so quickly. They've
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: been here for millions of years, and just in the
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: last few decades or a few centuries, they've had to
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: just adapt to this parade of changes, you know, just
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: one thing after another, and they've managed to do it.
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: So that's one of the reasons why I would say
• 10:25
  Speaker 4: we're in an age of deer. The other big one
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: is that for a lot of people in this country,
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: especially in the East, deer are the only large wild
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  Speaker 4: animal that we normally get to see on any kind
• 10:38
  Speaker 4: of regular basis. There are so many other large animals
• 10:43
  Speaker 4: that used to be here, Like where I live in Virginia,
• 10:46
  Speaker 4: we used to have elk, we used to have bison,
• 10:49
  Speaker 4: mountain lions, wolves, and of course all those animals are missing.
• 10:53
  Speaker 4: We do still have black bears, but I don't get
• 10:56
  Speaker 4: to see bears all the time, right, It's kind of
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: rare and exciting to see a bear, whereas deer are
• 11:03
  Speaker 4: just part of our neighborhoods. They are our neighbors. That's
• 11:07
  Speaker 4: why I have the word neighbor in the subtitle of
• 11:11
  Speaker 4: the book, because we really do relate to them in
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: that kind of everyday way. And I think there's something
• 11:19
  Speaker 4: really important about having an animal around that is as
• 11:22
  Speaker 4: big as we are, and that we get to see
• 11:25
  Speaker 4: a lot. I think it just kind of keeps us,
• 11:29
  Speaker 4: keeps us in our place in a way. I don't
• 11:32
  Speaker 4: think we'd want to live in a world where we're
• 11:34
  Speaker 4: the only large animals around. So those are some of
• 11:39
  Speaker 4: the reasons why I chose that title.
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I certainly think it's fitting. And as you just
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: alluded to, right, I think there is a way in
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: which deer are an animal of our time in how
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: they are, you know, actually suited to the moment and
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: can survive within this moment, but also, you know, you
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: made the case within the book that not only are they,
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: you know, practically capable or representative of survival in this moment,
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: but also symbolic you said, you said that they may
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: also be the species that perfectly symbolizes the way we
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: live with nature now and the way we'll carry on
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: into whatever weird paradoxical future awaits. When it comes to
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: the symbolism, what do you mean by that? Can you
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: impact that a little bit more? How do they symbolize
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: who we are and how we live with nature now
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: and possibly in the future.
• 12:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well, this gets into you know, some of the
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: history with them. One example I would give is that,
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: as we said, you know that conservation movement in the
• 12:49
  Speaker 4: early twentieth century started to bring them back. And I
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: never knew this before I started researching the book. And
• 12:57
  Speaker 4: I don't know if it's necessarily, you know, widely known,
• 13:01
  Speaker 4: but one of the strategies of those conservation folks was
• 13:07
  Speaker 4: to restock deer, so moving them around. I'm sure you
• 13:12
  Speaker 4: know all about this, but you know, moving them around
• 13:14
  Speaker 4: from one state to another or within a state, and
• 13:18
  Speaker 4: that happened, and I think about thirty states and Virginia,
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: where I live, is one of those. So when I'm
• 13:26
  Speaker 4: walking around near my house and I'm seeing deer, sometimes
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: I think to myself that deer is here because of people. Now,
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: it's a native animal. It's been here forever, not forever,
• 13:38
  Speaker 4: but for a very long time, since long before us,
• 13:42
  Speaker 4: and it evolved here. It absolutely deeply belongs here. But
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: the presence of that deer that I am seeing is
• 13:55
  Speaker 4: part of a human effort to bring them back. And so,
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: you know, that to me is so interesting and intriguing
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: to think about how deeply we are able to affect
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: our environment, wildlife, which species are here, which species are missing?
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: And so I think that's a really great example of
• 14:24
  Speaker 4: the sort of human hand in the world that we're
• 14:29
  Speaker 4: living with in so many different ways. So symbolically, you know,
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: deer have played throughout time. They've played some other very
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: important symbolic roles in mythologies and stories over thousands of years.
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: But for our time, I think that's kind of where
• 14:46
  Speaker 4: the symbolic energy is. Is kind of like there are
• 14:50
  Speaker 4: species that we have really intertwined ourselves with, We're very
• 14:57
  Speaker 4: involved with them.
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And and something else you've written about was how
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: they do represent a certain degree of wildness. They're one
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: of those key touchstones for people to connect with this
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: wild other but also still familiar. And so they represent
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: this this other, this wild this this other species. But
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: also at the same time, as you mentioned, they're not
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: fully wild and that we have interacted with them, we have.
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: There's all this management that you write about and that
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: we know about. There's there's all these different ways that
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: we're intertwined, which maybe speaks to this broader idea, which
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: is that we're not actually none of us are really
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: separated from from nature. We are part of nature. We
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: always have been a part of nature. We are an animal.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: Uh.
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: We have simply produced this kind of uh move, manufactured
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: a gap over these centuries. But but in some ways
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: with deer, you can see that closeness maybe better with
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: you know, than many other animals. It's really interesting to
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: think about, and not often do we do that when
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: for you know, people in my community, when we're just
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: so close to it all the time, rarely do we
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: ever step outside of that and think about it in
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: this kind of way. But another thing, another way in
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: which we don't often think about deer is as a problem.
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: I think within my world, we're constantly thinking about deer,
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: but typically we are looking at deer as Hey, they're great,
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: we'd like to see more of them, Let's have more
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: of them.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: How do we get that?
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: And interestingly, compared to most other wildlife in America right now,
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: where wildlife problems are typically because of a lack of
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: or of it declines scarcity with white tails, much of
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: the rest of the world, the non hunting world, looks
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: at white tails as a problem of abundance, and I
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: think that's something that oftentimes deer hunters have a hard
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: time wrapping our head around.
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: Curious to hear from your research.
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: From the time you spent in the field chatting with folks,
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: you know, if you could speak to that, because that's
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: one arena in which deer hunters oftentimes maybe even willingly
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: choose not to dive into that side of the things
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: because it's not as advantageous to the things that we
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: that we love and enjoy. Could you speak a little
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: bit more about how you know, the rest of the
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: world sometimes sees deer and the challenges that they might
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: bring from a cultural standpoint, safety standpoint, ecological standpoint. I
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: think that's always something that we can easily stick our
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: heads in the sand and forget about.
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, there's a few areas, you know, as you implied,
• 17:44
  Speaker 4: where the abundance of deer is seen to create problems,
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: and some of those are really human problems. Like, for example,
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: deer in the road is a problem. Right, we're driving around,
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: we're trying not to hit them. We're seeing deer that
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: have been hit, and that's you know, upsetting to a
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: lot of people, or it's just you know, gross, it's
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: a disposal problem. It's expensive for localities to deal with
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: those carcasses. And then there's kind of I write in
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: the book about a composting program here in Virginia. That's
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: one way that it's kind of a pilot program. It's
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: not it's not how most of them get disposed of,
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: but it's one very interesting approach to dealing with those bodies.
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: But all of this stuff costs money, and it costs
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: you know, takes time. And so you know, if you
• 18:36
  Speaker 4: talk to like car insurance people, that this is a
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: this is a big issue in their world. So that's
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: one area where folks who let's say have to you know,
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: commute home at dusk in the fall are are wishing
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: maybe there could be fewer of these, you know, large
• 18:59
  Speaker 4: animals trying to cross the road. That could definitely, you know,
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: cause a really terrible accident if something goes wrong. Another
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: thing that comes up for people is ticks and tickborn disease.
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: And this is a This is an interesting one to
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: me because a lot of there's sort of an easy
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: or a go to answer that people will express, which is,
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: you know, well, if we had fewer deer, there'd be
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: fewer ticks, and they're for our risk of getting lime disease,
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: for example, would go down. And it's not clear that
• 19:39
  Speaker 4: that's true, so, you know, without getting two in the
• 19:44
  Speaker 4: weeds here, the life cycle of the tick involves not
• 19:50
  Speaker 4: just the deer, but some other creatures as well, rodents.
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: Usually it's the white footed mouse, So you can't just
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: take away deer and solve your tick problem. You'd also
• 20:02
  Speaker 4: have to deal with the other posts that the ticks
• 20:04
  Speaker 4: live on at other points in their lives, and you'd
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: have to address the fact that ticks, just like deer,
• 20:12
  Speaker 4: are edge creatures and they like being in those kind
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: of edge environments which humans create a lot of, and
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: they're also tick populations are growing with climate change, So
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: there's a lot of things people are doing that are
• 20:29
  Speaker 4: supporting ticks. It's not just about deer numbers. And then
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: I think the other biggest area where people complain about
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: deer is that they eat plants. And sometimes that means,
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: you know, they eat your garden, and people get very
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: annoyed by that. And I've spoken with several groups of
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: gardeners and sort of gardener you know, or native plant communities,
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: and they, I mean, the emotion, the amount of emotion
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: and feeling that they have about their plants being eaten
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: by deer is just palpable. And I understand it because
• 21:10
  Speaker 4: I too am a gardener and I get it, you know,
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: I get that feeling of kind of like, hey, you
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: took something that was mine, and the frustration that comes
• 21:19
  Speaker 4: with that on a more and it's a little bit
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: easy to sort of just put that one in a
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: box of like, well, people need to get over themselves.
• 21:30
  Speaker 4: Your garden is not the most important thing in this ecosystem,
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: you know, just let it go. But then when you're
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: talking about native plants that are in the wild and
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: that are part of a community of native plants that
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: also supports native insects. Therefore native songbirds that eat the insects.
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: You know, this whole web of creatures in a habitat,
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: A heavy deer presence really does seem to affect that strongly.
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: And there are many many places in our country where
• 22:06
  Speaker 4: those native plant populations and tree regeneration really is being
• 22:13
  Speaker 4: affected by a high deer population. And so folks who
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: are you know, conservation biologists or ecologists who are concerned
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: about that whole web of life in that community are
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: often pretty focused on deer numbers as a kind of
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: you know, this is what we need to do to
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: conserve this habitat is reduce the number of deer. So
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: those are some of the main complaints that people have
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: about them.
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so where did you land after all of these experiences,
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: after all of this research, chatting with so many folks,
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: kind of seeing all sides of this will eventually get
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: to some of your experiences, you know, with the hunting
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: side of things.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: But would you say that after all this that you
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: view deer or.
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: As an asset or a burden, after contemplating all these
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: different ways that people experience them and interact with them.
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So I hope this doesn't sound like a cop out.
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: But where I landed was that I just can't land,
• 23:18
  Speaker 4: you know, with deer. I started this project with kind
• 23:23
  Speaker 4: of a hunch that they'd be a rich topic with
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: a lot to dig into. And it's one of those
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: things where you have a hunch, but you don't know
• 23:31
  Speaker 4: how right you are until you really get into the project.
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: And you know, I knew I was going to be
• 23:38
  Speaker 4: researching all these different avenues like deer on the road,
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: deer in the forest, you know, deer and lime disease,
• 23:45
  Speaker 4: and it was like all every one of those roads.
• 23:48
  Speaker 4: The further down the road I went, the more complicated
• 23:52
  Speaker 4: things became, and the less I felt like I could
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: land on a easy cli your answer. It was always
• 24:02
  Speaker 4: sort of like, wow, I can really see this side,
• 24:05
  Speaker 4: and I could see that side, and I can appreciate
• 24:07
  Speaker 4: the whole complexity and the nuance of this debate that
• 24:11
  Speaker 4: happened in a number of different areas of the research.
• 24:15
  Speaker 4: So that was really you know, to me, that's great
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: as a writer, that tells me I've got a really
• 24:21
  Speaker 4: juicy topic. But you know, I would say the thing
• 24:25
  Speaker 4: that happened for me overall was much more of a
• 24:30
  Speaker 4: connection to deer and an appreciation that they're here, given
• 24:34
  Speaker 4: the history that they have and just the sheer importance
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: of the roles that they've played in human life for
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: thousands of years. So, you know, I I'm glad they're here.
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: I appreciate that in great numbers, they can cause some effects,
• 24:57
  Speaker 4: you know, that that people are concerned about, and I
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: think those concerns are valid. But I'm not really an
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: advocate for just a simple reduction of numbers. You know,
• 25:11
  Speaker 4: I don't really think that's a complete solution to anything.
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: You know, I think there's there are changes that I
• 25:19
  Speaker 4: wish people could make kind of on our side as well.
• 25:24
  Speaker 4: And yeah, I just grew into more of a connection
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: with them and more of a sense of love for them,
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: you know, just just glad they're here and appreciating what
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: they bring to human life.
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: So this is just kind of came to me. But
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: I'm curious if I imagine you've spoke to a number
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: of different folks and different types of audiences since publishing
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: this book, and I imagine we're speaking to one unique
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: audience right now, which is hunters. Deer hunters who have
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: a lot of personal experience with deer and who bring
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: to this conversation a certain set of context. But when
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: you've been speaking about this book to non hunters, two
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: people that only know deer by driving by them on
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: the side of the road, or by worrying about hitting
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: them on the road, or by their gardens or whatever,
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: have you found yourself with some kind of a what's
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: the word I'm looking for here, like an agenda? When
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: you were speaking, Did did you find yourself wanting to
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: convince them of something? Or did you find yourself in
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: conflict in any way with people and their initial reactions
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: to this.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: Book or or deer in general.
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: And I guess yeah, I'll leave it at that. I'm
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: curious if you've found when talking to non hunters where
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: you found things going and where you ended up hoping
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: to open eyes or advocate. We'll get to the hunting
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: side of things here in a second, but I'm curious
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: about with that group of people, where do things tend
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: to go and what did you want them to see?
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: M H. That's a great question, you know. I think
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: the most frequent thing that I encounter with non hunters
• 27:26
  Speaker 4: is that kind of well, the deer are a real problem,
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: you know, That's the attitude that I hear people expressing,
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: and I think a lot of times they if they
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: haven't read the book yet, or they maybe read it
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: in a hurry. They they are expecting me to just
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: sort of agree that deer are a problem. You know.
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: They want me to talk about how our states should
• 27:54
  Speaker 4: be doing more or our community should be doing more
• 27:57
  Speaker 4: to reduce those populations. So I do find myself pushing
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: back on that a little bit, not because I'm you know,
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: across the board opposed to those kinds of programs, but
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: just because, if anything, I am an advocate for appreciating
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: the complexity of all of this and having some humility
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: about it. You know, we don't have all the answers
• 28:25
  Speaker 4: even though deer. You know, this is another thing I
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: didn't know before I started the project, but deer are
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: one of the most heavily studied animals in the world,
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: so there is a huge amount of research out there
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: about them. And you know, I attended several of these
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: conferences where ecologists and biologists are getting together to share
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: their current research about deer, and over and over again,
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: you know, no matter what the person was presenting on,
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: and of course they have their you know, feriment design
• 29:00
  Speaker 4: and it's all very intricate, But the overall, the overarching
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: message that I would take from those days of listening
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: to presentations was we don't know. It's very complicated, you know,
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: whether they're trying to figure out how deer move around,
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: or when the deer sleep, or exactly what they're eating,
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: or why they're reproducing in the numbers that they are,
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: it's always this overarching uncertainty, and it almost seems like
• 29:29
  Speaker 4: the more research we have, the less certain we are. So,
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: you know, when somebody who lives in a community that
• 29:38
  Speaker 4: has you know, let's say it's a sort of housing
• 29:41
  Speaker 4: development which has a lot of deer, and the HOA
• 29:45
  Speaker 4: is trying to decide should we hire somebody to come
• 29:47
  Speaker 4: in here at night in the wintertime and call some
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: of these animals? Would that be a good thing to
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: do for our you know, our forests and our kind
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: of human convenience here. I sometimes those folks sort of
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: want me to say, yeah, the deer are a big problem,
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: you should do it, and I don't because I just
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: think it's I'm glad that I'm not in a position
• 30:13
  Speaker 4: to make those decisions, because I don't think i'd be
• 30:16
  Speaker 4: very good at it. I'm much too aware of, you know,
• 30:20
  Speaker 4: all the there's always another side to those issues.
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny you mentioned, you know, going to these
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: conferences where all these different scientists, where we're speaking about
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: there many many studies and the fact that there's there's more,
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: almost more studies for deer, white tail deer especially than
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: almost any other species out there. And my assumption is
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: that and from what I understand that this is to
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: a large degree, because there's such a large, very interested,
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: very invested audience of people that are that are wanting
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: to understand more about deer, that are putting dollars into
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: research because of all of that, Because there's this massive community,
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: massive economy, massive set of traditions all around this animal
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: that is constantly demanding this knowledge, which then leads to
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: the trickle down effect to funding and so on.
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: And so forth.
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and at these conferences, if I remember, right, I
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: think I remember you noting that many of these people
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: were wearing camouflage or were hunters themselves.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: The deer research community is very very hunting centric from
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: my experience. I mean, I know many of the you know,
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: prominent deer researchers, and they're diehard deer hunters mostly. Many
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: of these people came to this because of that interaction
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: with hunting. So this then naturally leads to where I
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: imagine a lot of your interesting experiences within this book
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: came from. And one of the most interesting portions of
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: the book for me, which was your kind of immersion
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: and education and experience with deer hunters and the deer
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: hunting community and culture. And and yeah, we'll get to
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: how it felt for me to read your book.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: Which was very interesting as I was doing it.
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: But I'm curious about how you felt before your first
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: hand contact with deer hunters. What were your preconceived notions
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: about deer hunters or deer hunting before this project was
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: what was your starting point? I'm curious where you started,
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: and then I'll be curious eventually to understand where you
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: got to.
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: But where did we begin?
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: Well, it was it was a journey, it was a change,
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: So yeah, I'm happy to talk about that. Well, where
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: I started was I grew up in southwestern Pennsylvania outside
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: of Pittsburgh, which is a place that is deer hunting
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: is big there. It's a big part of the culture.
• 32:56
  Speaker 4: And my parents are not deer hunt they're not hunters
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: of anything, but some of our relatives are, especially on
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: my mom's side of the family. And we also had
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: some family friends nearby who the husband of that family
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: was a deer hunter, and I spent a lot of
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: time in that house as a kid, and so I
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: have these memories of seeing, you know, his trophy heads
• 33:29
  Speaker 4: on the wall and his guns in the corner, probably
• 33:32
  Speaker 4: not stored in a super safe way looking back on
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: it in the eighties, And to be frank, you know,
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: my my associations with all of that were not all
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: that positive. I felt, without having been kind of in
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: it or really part of it, it was always a
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: little bit over there. I felt afraid of it, and
• 33:59
  Speaker 4: it seems dark to me. There was kind of a
• 34:02
  Speaker 4: darkness about it. And I do describe in the book
• 34:07
  Speaker 4: that same guy that I mentioned, friend's dad. He and
• 34:12
  Speaker 4: another one of my earliest memories of deer is seeing
• 34:16
  Speaker 4: him and another guy drag a deer out of the
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: woods during honeymoon and just you know, as a young girl,
• 34:23
  Speaker 4: just feeling frightened and put off by that, and you know,
• 34:28
  Speaker 4: certainly wasn't invited into it in any kind of a way.
• 34:31
  Speaker 4: So and I think that probably that impression that mood
• 34:38
  Speaker 4: probably did not change very much at all until I
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: started on this project. And so if I had not
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: written this book, I think I'd probably still be in
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: that kind of a place of feeling like, well, this
• 34:51
  Speaker 4: is for somebody else, this is not something I would
• 34:55
  Speaker 4: ever get close to. And it seems a bit scary
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: and violent to me. And that's kind of about as
• 35:03
  Speaker 4: far as it went until I started the book.
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Okay, what I enjoyed the most about your book, eh,
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: I'm not sure if that's there. One of the things
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: I enjoyed the most about the book Erica, was this
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: very uncomfortable position that it put me in as the reader,
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: as a deer hunter myself. And I mentioned this too
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: before we started recording, but I'll mention it again.
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: I was struggling.
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: I was sitting there in bed thinking about like why
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: do I feel this way? And the only way I
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: could describe the experience was that it felt like I
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: had just invited a stranger into my home and gave
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: them permission to look through my home. Open up the refrigerator,
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: see what's in there, walk through my rooms, walk through
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: the bedroom, peer underneath the covers, look in my dirty
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: laundry and take a look at all that, examine it,
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: and then report back to me on their experience and some.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: What they thought about it.
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: That was a little bit what it felt like with
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: someone who you know, was coming from an outside perspective
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: and then diving headfirst into the deer hunting community and
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: world that I've grown up around and that I experience
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: from that kind of insider perspective.
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: But many times.
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: Forget to think about how the rest of the world
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: sees it, or thinks about it, or experiences it. And
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: that's the case with any kind of group, right any community.
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: We have a sense of insolarity. We develop customs and
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: ways of talking to each other, and you know, we
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: understand each other. We have a built in context, and
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: you all of a sudden forget that there's another world
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: out there that might think that what you're doing is
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: bizarre or strange or fascinating or repulsive. And so as
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: I read that, I had a myriad of different kind
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: of reactions. Sometimes I was like, Oh, yeah, she's getting it,
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: and other times I was like, Oh no, what a
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: horrible thing for her to have to experience in that
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: kind of way. Or I'm embarrassed by this moment, or
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: I wish that she'd seen it differently or heard from
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: someone differently, or all these different kinds of things, like,
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: for example, you went and got to go walk through
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: a deer hunting convention, like one of these you know,
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: big buck contests and things like that that I've grown around,
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: grown up around, and they're all good and interesting and
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: fun for someone who's a deer hunter who lives in
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: that world. But you know, your experience as someone who's
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: not been in that world seemed like it was uncomfortable
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: in many different ways. So I guess before I ramble
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: any further, I have a lot of questions about your
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: thoughts and experiences during those events, But maybe walk me
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: through some of those early stages when you were showing
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: up at some of these events, and you know, showing
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: up that deer hunting convention for example, and being kind
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: of thrown headfirst into the deep end of the die
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: hard deer hunting community.
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: What was that like?
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: What were some of your first reactions to all of
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: that as you as you kind of waded through those
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: waters and met people and spoke with people that were
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: deep within this kind of insular community that we that
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: we have sometimes well.
• 38:17
  Speaker 4: I appreciate Mark the honesty of your reaction there, and
• 38:24
  Speaker 4: I think, you know, there's something really great about this
• 38:28
  Speaker 4: kind of dialogue where we can acknowledge that we come
• 38:33
  Speaker 4: from two different worlds and that we might speak two
• 38:37
  Speaker 4: different languages in a way. But you know, I think
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: it's deer hunting is a really and deer in general
• 38:43
  Speaker 4: are really right place for people to have this kind
• 38:48
  Speaker 4: of open dialogue, which I think we need more of,
• 38:52
  Speaker 4: you know, in our in our world right now for sure.
• 38:57
  Speaker 4: So yeah, my the the I will say, the order
• 39:02
  Speaker 4: that things appear in the book is not necessarily the
• 39:05
  Speaker 4: order in which I experienced them. So I'm trying to
• 39:08
  Speaker 4: think where that fell kind of in my calendar. When
• 39:11
  Speaker 4: I went to that hunting and fishing expo, I believe
• 39:18
  Speaker 4: I had already been hunting by that point, though it
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: probably doesn't appear that way in the book, which is
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: good because the impression that I got at that show,
• 39:32
  Speaker 4: which I'm sure will not really surprise anybody, is that
• 39:36
  Speaker 4: the deer hunting world seemed on that you know, in
• 39:41
  Speaker 4: that place, seemed extremely focused on trophies to me. You know,
• 39:47
  Speaker 4: there was not a female deer to be seen in
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: the building, right. It was all bucks, all big bucks,
• 39:58
  Speaker 4: and lots of other animals too, I describe, you know,
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: there's a whole big taxidermy display with you know, animals
• 40:05
  Speaker 4: from Africa, the animals that kind of make deer look boring.
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: You know, there was a giraffe, there were you know, bison,
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: there were all these other really really iconic charismatic animals
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: and you know, zebra skins, you know, helping somebody advertise
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: their African safari offerings, and just definitely overall, this kind
• 40:31
  Speaker 4: of minds that of hunting as a way of possessing things, right,
• 40:40
  Speaker 4: like getting getting a trophy to bring home to show off,
• 40:46
  Speaker 4: to prove something. And I think, you know, for I
• 40:54
  Speaker 4: think my reaction was probably pretty similar to the way
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: a lot of non hunters would feel and that kind
• 41:00
  Speaker 4: of environment, which is this is off putting. You know,
• 41:05
  Speaker 4: this doesn't make a lot of sense to me. This
• 41:09
  Speaker 4: doesn't feel like love for the animals, which I had
• 41:16
  Speaker 4: read enough and experienced enough by the time I walked
• 41:19
  Speaker 4: in there, luckily to know that that's not the whole story,
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: and that a lot of hunters have extremely deep love
• 41:27
  Speaker 4: for the animals and a real connection to them and
• 41:31
  Speaker 4: a real respect for them, and that, you know, the
• 41:34
  Speaker 4: other side of the equation besides trophies is food, Right, Like,
• 41:40
  Speaker 4: the idea of getting food was really not represented by
• 41:45
  Speaker 4: that event at all. It was all about the trophies.
• 41:48
  Speaker 4: And I think this is just such a key thing
• 41:51
  Speaker 4: that a lot of non hunters don't take the time
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: to think about, is that food is half the equation
• 42:01
  Speaker 4: or more right, It's so important to so many people.
• 42:04
  Speaker 4: It's important to my family. I'm really lucky that I
• 42:07
  Speaker 4: got to go on these family hunts which were really
• 42:11
  Speaker 4: primarily about getting meat, because that perspective makes sense to
• 42:18
  Speaker 4: me in a way that the trophy side of things,
• 42:21
  Speaker 4: I'm not sure is ever really going to make sense
• 42:23
  Speaker 4: to me.
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so, okay, that's helpful to understand. I would imagine
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: a lot of people we had these conversations. I think
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: we are trying to have these conversations more often within
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: our community, being thoughtful about how we not only how
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: we present these things or talk about these things within
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: our own community, but then also how the rest of
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: the world sees these things and understands these things.
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: Because I think a lot of the.
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: A lot of what the world sees and interprets as
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: trophy hunting or obsession, you know, stems from this much
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: more complex, complicated relationship. And all of these things are
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: tied together. Meat is this massive part of it. But
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: then too, there's there's all of the process and the
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: experience and the story that goes along with it. And
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: then what someone might call a trophy is then representative
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: of that larger experience, right that that that weekend you
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: spent with your dad and your son and this incredible
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: moment that happened or whatever it might be. There's, as
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: you talk about in the book, there's so much symbolism
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: wrapped up in in deer and the same goes with
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: with any physical memento tied to these experiences, which could
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: be a deer hide, which could be deer antlers, which
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: is also the meat.
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: Which might be a photograph.
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: All of those things have these deep connections and and
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: and resonate with so much more.
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: And and you know, from reading your.
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: Book, I found that you you were starting to see
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: and experience that both hearing from people and your family
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: or you yourself. And I want to read an excerpt
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: that came from the book and really resonated with me,
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: and I thought that maybe in that moment that you
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: might be experiencing a little bit of what I'm describing
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: here now. And I'll read this if I can find
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: my little section. This is towards the end of the book,
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: when you had a neighbor who had shot a deer
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: and it had gone onto your property, and then you
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: had gone to help him track and recover that deer,
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: And I want to read a little bit here.
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: You're right.
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: I caught up and saw him in Crystal and Tommy
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: standing over a big, big buck, a prone body, vivid
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: in three dimensions, a brown form and vibrato on the
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: plane brown ground. His head, with a generous set of antlers,
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: was toward me, and his eyes were open. It was
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: astonishing to take in his presence. He was sleek and perfect,
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: and seemed more alive than I was. But there was
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: a gaping wound in his side, six inches wide, through
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: which his ribs looked back at us. Michael was in tears.
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: Oh my god, he's gorgeous. He knelt and touched and
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: examined the buck. One hand came up covered with blood,
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: and he said, he blessed me. It was a reunion
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: of two beings that had met hours before in a
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: fateful instant. All night they'd been separated, one dying, one grieving.
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: Now I could almost see Michael's heart reaching out of
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: his body towards this animal. He put his hand on
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: the buck's flank. Sorry, buddy, he whispered, thank you, I'm sorry.
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: And there it was what Ian had called remorse, mixed
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: indelibly with gratitude, and there was tremendous relief and pride.
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: I felt in that moment, as I was reading that,
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: that I had experienced all those same things myself. I
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: had been there on a hunt, and I had felt
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: this overwhelming cocktail of emotions of pride and sadness and
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: excitement and and remorse and respect and reverence and everything
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: all at once. And and that massive eruption of emotions
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: that these moments contain, inevitably in my experience, have led
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: to for me and I think many other people, all
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: of these kind of adjacent ways. We talk about it
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: and represent it and and get excited about deer beyond
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: just just filling the plate today. But then it becomes
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: everything else. It becomes the broader experience, It becomes a lifestyle,
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: It becomes an obsession, it becomes a community, it becomes
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: you know, all of these things, the photographs, the antler
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: is behind me on the bookshelf, And for someone who
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: comes into it without any of that context, without that
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: lived experience that you got.
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: A glimpse of there, it would seem absurd. It would seem.
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: You know, prideful, it would seem the many many things
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: that non hunters without that context always see. And I'm
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: curious if, as you move through this process, if you
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: were able to better understand that and that paradox where
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: someone could kill but also love that same being and
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: appreciate it while also possessing it in some way and
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: incorporating it. Did some of this start to make a
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: little bit of sense to you as you progressed, is
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: what I'm saying? Making any sense?
• 47:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's making a lot of sense. And I think
• 47:36
  Speaker 4: all of this, you know, I love a good paradox,
• 47:40
  Speaker 4: and hunting almost seems like the ultimate paradox to me.
• 47:46
  Speaker 4: I do feel like I moved a lot closer without
• 47:52
  Speaker 4: you know, I'm still not a hunter myself, so I
• 47:54
  Speaker 4: know there's a level where I can't go unless I actually,
• 48:00
  Speaker 4: you know, take this up with my own hands. But
• 48:06
  Speaker 4: I do feel like I got as close as I
• 48:11
  Speaker 4: could to it, you know, standing right right next to it.
• 48:14
  Speaker 4: And that moment that you read is one of those
• 48:18
  Speaker 4: times which I this was so incredibly lucky. I wasn't
• 48:23
  Speaker 4: even looking for this one, but this man, you know,
• 48:25
  Speaker 4: I'm right in the middle of my research for this
• 48:27
  Speaker 4: book and this man knocks on my door. I've never
• 48:29
  Speaker 4: seen him before, and you know, here's this opportunity to
• 48:34
  Speaker 4: be with somebody in this tremendous moment where they you know,
• 48:39
  Speaker 4: I really did think of it as this reunion of
• 48:42
  Speaker 4: you know, these two beings that were almost had a
• 48:46
  Speaker 4: faded interaction with each other. He was very upset, you know,
• 48:51
  Speaker 4: that he had lost this animal the night before and
• 48:56
  Speaker 4: really just stayed up all night worrying about it, is
• 48:58
  Speaker 4: what he told me. And you know, he was really
• 49:05
  Speaker 4: a you know, hard on the sleeve kind of person,
• 49:08
  Speaker 4: so I could see everything, you know, that was pouring
• 49:12
  Speaker 4: out of him in that moment. It was very very
• 49:17
  Speaker 4: meaningful to be there for that. And then other conversations
• 49:20
  Speaker 4: that I've had with people who are hunters and they're very,
• 49:26
  Speaker 4: very thoughtful about it. And I will also say that,
• 49:33
  Speaker 4: you know, researching some of the mythology and the old
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: stories around hunting, I think really points in the same direction,
• 49:41
  Speaker 4: you know, the etiquette that a lot of traditional or
• 49:46
  Speaker 4: indigenous groups have around hunting, where there's this whole code
• 49:51
  Speaker 4: of behavior about gratitude towards the animal and proper ways
• 49:56
  Speaker 4: to treat the body, and kind of rituals that you
• 49:59
  Speaker 4: do in order to to show your thankfulness and kind
• 50:04
  Speaker 4: of invite the animals of that kind to sort of
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: keep coming to you, keep offering their bodies to you
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: so that you can continue to have life. You know
• 50:17
  Speaker 4: that seeing that those kinds of stories are part of
• 50:22
  Speaker 4: humanity for thousands of years helped me realize that, you know,
• 50:28
  Speaker 4: killing animals is part of the human story, and it's
• 50:33
  Speaker 4: something that we've always had this mix of emotions about.
• 50:37
  Speaker 4: It's always been kind of glorious and difficult and sad
• 50:42
  Speaker 4: and full of pride and all of these things all
• 50:46
  Speaker 4: at once. And I think the stories and myths and
• 50:50
  Speaker 4: artwork are part of how we've tried to get our
• 50:55
  Speaker 4: minds around all of that and kind of, you know,
• 50:59
  Speaker 4: teach each other, you know, how do you behave in
• 51:01
  Speaker 4: these situations? What's the right way to look at this?
• 51:06
  Speaker 4: How do we conduct ourselves as humans who depend on
• 51:11
  Speaker 4: other animals to survive, which you know we still do
• 51:14
  Speaker 4: even in the twenty first century. It's just that we're
• 51:17
  Speaker 4: not usually looking at it that closely. If we're just
• 51:20
  Speaker 4: buying our meat at the grocery store, we're not part
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: of that killing process and we can look away from it.
• 51:26
  Speaker 4: And so I really grew into a lot of respect
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: for hunting as a way to take responsibility for the
• 51:35
  Speaker 4: meat that one eats.
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if.
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: If you were to sit down with and maybe you
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: had conversations like this with your brother or other family members,
• 51:50
  Speaker 3: but if you were to sit down with some deer
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: hunters who have lived in this world for a long time,
• 51:55
  Speaker 3: and you could share with them what you wish they
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: knew about how their media and their photographs and their
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: social media, and their TV shows and their get togethers,
• 52:07
  Speaker 3: how all of that looks to the rest of the world.
• 52:10
  Speaker 3: Is there anything you would want deer hunters to know
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: about how we are portraying ourselves in our community and
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: how that is you know, uh, received, You've alluded to
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: a lot of this, but I'm curious if you could,
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: you know, choose a handful of things that you wish
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: you could get across to that community and say, hey,
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: this is how this looks, so, this is how this feels,
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: or this these are the questions of this race.
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: For me.
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: When I saw this, I've always thought that that is
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: a particularly important thing for us to better understand, and
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: I'd love to hear from you.
• 52:43
  Speaker 4: Well, you know, I wonder how often most non hunters
• 52:48
  Speaker 4: even enter that world, you know, even from the media side.
• 52:54
  Speaker 4: You know, I think a lot of folks, as I
• 52:57
  Speaker 4: used to, you know, just sort of thought of that.
• 53:00
  Speaker 4: As you know, I don't play golf, so I don't
• 53:04
  Speaker 4: look at golf magazines.
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 53:05
  Speaker 4: It's it's kind of like what you know, that's not
• 53:08
  Speaker 4: for me, you know, As I said, my impression when
• 53:13
  Speaker 4: I started for research purposes started to dive into that
• 53:16
  Speaker 4: world was sometimes, Wow, there's a lot of emphasis on
• 53:23
  Speaker 4: trophies here, there's a lot of emphasis on size. I
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: noticed that sometimes when reading, you know, stories, articles about
• 53:37
  Speaker 4: especially during hunting season, everything sort of gets dialed up
• 53:40
  Speaker 4: to ten, I guess, but stories and articles about folks
• 53:47
  Speaker 4: who have had success with the hunt, you know, these
• 53:51
  Speaker 4: kind of headlines about you know, so and so bags
• 53:54
  Speaker 4: of you know, fourteen point monster. You know, there's some
• 53:59
  Speaker 4: likeguage in that kind of writing. That is it's very brash.
• 54:06
  Speaker 4: It's sometimes I think I use this word in the book,
• 54:11
  Speaker 4: it sounds a little bit like bullying. You know. It's
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: kind of like the way if you want to be
• 54:19
  Speaker 4: mean to another person, you think of a name to
• 54:23
  Speaker 4: call them. You know. Sometimes it kind of has that
• 54:27
  Speaker 4: edge to it, which surprised me. I thought, this feels odd,
• 54:32
  Speaker 4: you know, it just to me as somebody coming from
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: outside that world. It just strikes me in an odd way.
• 54:40
  Speaker 4: And I don't want to make a blanket statement about
• 54:43
  Speaker 4: all of hunting media, you know, because clearly that's a
• 54:46
  Speaker 4: big world. There's a lot of different styles and approaches
• 54:50
  Speaker 4: within that. But that is something I noticed in some
• 54:53
  Speaker 4: of the things that I saw and read.
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that because I noticed, you know,
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: you you shared some examples of that within the book,
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: and I remember from from your viewpoint, it came off
• 55:21
  Speaker 3: as disrespectful, as brash, as bullying, as all the things
• 55:24
  Speaker 3: as those things.
• 55:25
  Speaker 4: Uh.
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: And then as I was reading these things, I was
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: I was thinking like, oh, no, that is many of
• 55:31
  Speaker 3: these words. I don't think I ever have read anything
• 55:34
  Speaker 3: in modern day deer hunting media that is intending to
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: be disrespectful or demeaning of the animal, or in any
• 55:42
  Speaker 3: way position positioning the hunter as dominating this evil thing
• 55:48
  Speaker 3: or dominating this thing that was not worthy. It's it's
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: what I realized though, in looking at this stuff, is
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: that when you are in it in such a way
• 56:01
  Speaker 3: that it is how do I say this what seems
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: in our moment as casual jargon, as familiar you know,
• 56:10
  Speaker 3: kind of shorthand, as like fun ways that we'll be
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: talking about an animal like I've heard people, you know,
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: you mentioned stink pig or megatode, like silly, weird little
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: things like that that when people are using them around
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: other hunting buddies, it's like using admiration.
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: It's like, oh my.
• 56:28
  Speaker 3: Gosh, this thing was a mega toe, like such an
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: incredible animal. I've never seen anything so incredible. So in
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: their view, they're using it in the in a sense
• 56:37
  Speaker 3: of awe and have we've kind of come up with
• 56:40
  Speaker 3: our own strange set of nomenclature that helps us describe
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: this awe in a very unrefined way. But I have
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: been guilty of that myself. But I but I can
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: then see how someone from the outside would read this
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: stuff and think, ah.
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: They're they're demeaning the animal.
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: They they think it's this this, you know, this thing
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: that they're just beating up on, punching down on. So
• 57:03
  Speaker 3: so it was very eye opening in a great reminder
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: of that for me and I think others.
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, another thing was good, Well, I.
• 57:17
  Speaker 4: Just wanted to say, you know, as you said, the
• 57:21
  Speaker 4: whole question of like what's the subculture, what are the
• 57:24
  Speaker 4: rules inside the subculture? So interesting to me. And there
• 57:29
  Speaker 4: was a hunter I was talking to one time who
• 57:31
  Speaker 4: told me that if he's hunting alone and he kills
• 57:37
  Speaker 4: a buck, he'll or any deer. I guess he'll he'll
• 57:40
  Speaker 4: go and just sit with the animal for you know,
• 57:44
  Speaker 4: a long time. He said, maybe half an hour an hour,
• 57:48
  Speaker 4: just sit quietly, appreciate, maybe talk to the animal, and
• 57:53
  Speaker 4: have this kind of one on one like encounter. And
• 57:58
  Speaker 4: he said, but if I with my friends, I will
• 58:01
  Speaker 4: not do that. Instead, we will stand around and we'll
• 58:07
  Speaker 4: have like a whole different kind of language among us
• 58:10
  Speaker 4: and how we talk, and of course we're still talking
• 58:12
  Speaker 4: about the deer, but it's in a totally different way.
• 58:16
  Speaker 4: And I just thought that was such a cool thing
• 58:19
  Speaker 4: for him to tell me, And like, what an interesting
• 58:24
  Speaker 4: difference right between like what we do when we're in
• 58:29
  Speaker 4: our subculture versus what we do when there isn't a
• 58:32
  Speaker 4: culture because we're alone. And you know, it's not that
• 58:36
  Speaker 4: one thing is like more real than the other. It's
• 58:39
  Speaker 4: just sort of like, that's so interesting to notice that
• 58:42
  Speaker 4: they're different.
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: I can one thousand percent relate. That's my exact experience.
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: I have a totally different experience when it was just myself,
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: and I have sometimes lamented the fact that I love
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: being able to share, you know, these experiences with friends
• 58:57
  Speaker 3: and family, but it is a totally different thing, say social,
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: more celebratory kind of thing, when it's just yourself. It's
• 59:05
  Speaker 3: it's quiet, it's reverential, it is you're more reflective, and yeah,
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: I've sometimes wished, like, oh gosh, I wish I had
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: been able to somehow separate myself from the group and
• 59:17
  Speaker 3: just have my own alone time to really think about
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: what happened here and experience that. Oftentimes, when I'm with
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: a group, it's it's not until the momentum of the
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: day is done and I lay down in bed at
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: night that I'm able to finally actually process and think
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: about it, because in the moment you're you're celebrating with
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: your friends, and then as you experienced, then there's the
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: great amount of work that has to get done after
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: recovering an animal, and hours and hours and hours of
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: everything that follows that. So, yeah, it's really interesting and
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: and I and I ask all of these questions. I
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: bring all this up because I think there's there's two
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: I guess lines of thinking here that are important to
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: the future for for deer and deer hunting and deer hunters,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 3: I think, and most of it ties to the fact that,
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 3: you know, we are a small minority within the broader
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: American public right and what we do, the way we
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: engage with the natural world, our opportunity to hunt deer
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: is a privilege here, and it is dependent upon the
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 3: acceptance of the non hunting.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: World, which is the vast majority of the population.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: And whether or not they see what we do is
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 3: valuable as acceptable as a respectful way of operating in
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: today's society. And so how that rest of the world
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: sees what we do and how we do it that
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: matters practically.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: I know there's some people who don't like that.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: I think anywhere like anyone as an individual, at times
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 3: will get a little cranky when they have to deal
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 3: with some other person's perspective on what you are or do,
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: or where or say right. Sometimes that's irritating. But as
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: a hunter in twenty twenty six, we simply have to
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: be thinking about that because it's going to be reflective
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: of the future we may or may not be able
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 3: to enjoy. So for that reason, I've always thought that
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 3: we need to be really thoughtful about how we talk
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 3: about these things, how we introduce other people to these things,
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 3: how we showcase how we do these things and what
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 3: we do and why we do them, so that you know,
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: so that Erica's in the future, or Bob's or Bills
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: or whoever might be getting a glimpse of this subculture
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 3: in this world, can see the value of it, can
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 3: understand it to some degree, maybe be interested in checking
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 3: it out for themselves, or if nothing else, be willing
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 3: to simply accept it as Hey, that's an interesting thing
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 3: that Mark's doing over there, and I can respect his
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 3: choice to do it in that kind of way and
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: to get his meat in that way, and to experience
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 3: nature in that kind of way. But this is a
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: long winded way of me wanting to really get to
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 3: something that you've only been able to touch a little
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: bit on, which is just what it was actually like
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: for you to be on that hunt.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: You you mentioned being with somebody.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 3: For a recovery, but you yourself did go on several
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 3: hunts that you were counted in the book.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: You spent some time with your.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: Brother out there, and you actually saw a you know,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 3: a successful hunt, a kill was made right there with you.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 3: You were up close and personal to all of that.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 3: And in the book, you kind of did an interesting
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 3: perspective shift. You you shifted the.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: Timing a little bit.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: Everything had been kind of real time, and then when
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: the when that hunt happened, you then pivoted to like
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: a flashback. You fast forward to like being in the
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: car later thinking back on the day, and you kind
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 3: of dropped in these different moments, And I wondered if
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 3: that was just kind of how your writing process happened,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: or if you chose to explicitly position it in that
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 3: kind of way. Because of the experience itself and what
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: actually happened and how you actually processed it, it seemed like
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 3: that was a powerful moment I'd love to hear more
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 3: about it.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, I was so lucky that my brother Ian
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 4: allowed me to come along with him on these different hunts.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 4: And I don't think I fully appreciated when I asked
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 4: him if I could come, I sort of didn't realize
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 4: what a big ask that actually is. So he was
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 4: really gracious to, you know, let me tag along, including
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 4: on some solo would have been solo bow hunting, where
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 4: you know, it's so important to be quiet and all
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 4: of that. So that was generous of him. And the
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 4: bow hunting was a wonderful day, but not a successful
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 4: day in terms of deer. We only saw deer once
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 4: and they were kind of far away. But we had
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 4: a great time together. It was a lovely day. And
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 4: then he said, you know, you really should come to
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 4: the family hunt where we do these, because then you're
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 4: going to see some action. And I was. I was
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 4: a little reluctant. I had had such a good time
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 4: just sitting in a tree stand with him, and I
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 4: kind of thought, you know, maybe it's kind of poetic
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 4: that we went deer hunting and we didn't really you know,
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 4: get a chance to even take a shot, and you know,
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 4: maybe I'm maybe I'm good with that, but he he
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 4: convinced me to do it, and I'm really glad he did, because,
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 4: you know, hunting in that group. This was my brother,
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 4: some of our cousins and uncle, and then some other
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 4: folks who are friends of theirs. They have been doing
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 4: deer drives in the same small area around their town
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 4: for many, many years, and they really know what they're doing.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 4: And you know, it really was this experience of cooperative
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 4: hunting for meat, which I think is very cool in
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 4: a way because that is that's kind of the old
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 4: way to do it, right, That's that's what people have
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 4: been doing for thousands of years, is getting together in
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 4: groups to hunt large animals to feed themselves, and so
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 4: this was a modern day example of that. I know,
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 4: it's kind of not the not the style of hunting
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 4: that is, you know, trending right now, but I'm glad
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 4: I got to see that. And it also was kind
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 4: of an overwhelming day for me in certain ways because
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 4: you know, a lot of new sights and sounds and
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 4: experiences that I had never encountered before in my life.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 4: And so I told it in that flashback way because
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 4: while it was happening I was just well, first of all,
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 4: I was taking notes and trying to like see everything
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 4: and hear everything and write everything down, and I everything
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 4: was happening so fast that I almost couldn't process it
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 4: until later. So that's why it was like on that
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 4: drive home, had a couple hours in the car just
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 4: to think back over everything and sort of you know,
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 4: the day. The day had these very action packed, exciting moments.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 4: It had these kind of long stretches of just waiting.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 4: Of course, it had conversations, it had meals, It had
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 4: all these different people.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: It was.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 4: It was kind of a it wasn't a tidy plot.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 4: So I thought that this would be a better way
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 4: to tell the story as just sort of a collection
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 4: of moments, which is which is how it felt. You know,
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 4: it was just a lot packed into a single day.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that I can.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: I can relate to that kind of way of recalling
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: days like that myself.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: How about And I don't know if an assumption of
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: mine might be that.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 3: The climactic conclusion of your desire to see a hunt
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 3: might have been when your brother actually shot I think
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 3: too deer.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: There with you? What was that like? Was that what
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: you expected?
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 3: At to be like, I have to assume that that
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 3: was something you were thinking about leading up to it,
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 3: maybe worried about, maybe had some trepidation around seeing that,
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 3: seeing an animal die, being up close to an animal
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 3: like that. After you were there firsthand, was that like
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 3: what you expected different? How did how did you kind
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 3: of process all that?
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah? You know, I wasn't exactly afraid of seeing it,
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 4: and I do think I have, especially when I'm in
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 4: kind of reporting mode, I have the ability to like
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 4: pull back a little bit emotionally and just observe and
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 4: concentrate on taking good notes. You know, if I hadn't
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 4: been doing that, I'm not really sure how it would
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 4: have felt, you know, if I just went just to go.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 4: I think it was kind of a there was a
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 4: surreal feeling to it for me. It was almost like
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 4: being in a dream. And I think I put this
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 4: in the writing about it, that after he took those shots,
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 4: I didn't cry, but my eyes and nose just started
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 4: to water, like an involuntary kind of physical reaction to
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 4: something very intense happening. And I wasn't I truly wasn't crying,
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 4: but it was like, I don't know, my body was
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 4: crying for me. I don't know, it's a strange. I've
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 4: never experienced that. I don't that I recall. And then,
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 4: you know, I think some people would have a really
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 4: hard time with the cleaning. I that doesn't bother me
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 4: at all, and in fact, I just find it totally fascinating.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 4: My husband and I have raised chickens for meat here
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 4: at our house, so and I've been the one usually
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 4: to clean the chickens. So I was just kind of
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 4: really interested in, you know, well, how does this compare
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 4: to a chicken. It's really very similar. The hardest part
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 4: for me, I think has been, you know, several times
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 4: I've been on these hunts and seen animals that take
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 4: a little while to die. That's tough, and that kind
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 4: of stays with me in a in a way that's uncomfortable,
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 4: and I've I've kind of realized I think that for
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 4: all the you know, when you read about how to
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 4: hunt deer, it it always sounds like, well, this is
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 4: the kind of shot you should take, and if you
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 4: do that, it's going to work out nicely. It's going
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 4: to be a nice, clean kill, it's going to be
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 4: very quick. And so you think, as a non hunter Okay, well,
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 4: I guess that's how it goes. But then in the
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 4: field it seems that the reality is not always like that,
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 4: and you know that's that's tough, that's tough to.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 3: Think about, yeah, and that that does not go away
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 3: the discomfort of ever having to be a part of
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 3: that and see that. And I think that's why the
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 3: emotions are so high for a hunter in those moments
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 3: and afterwards, as you experienced with your neighbor Michael. The
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 3: emotional rollercoaster of wanting to do everything just right to
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 3: ensure that it is quick and clean and is ethical
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 3: and and fast as possible is is why you know,
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 3: the vast majority of hunters spend an immense amount of
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 3: time practicing and trying to make sure they're competent. But
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 3: then it is such a pressure failed emotional moment in
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 3: that you know, consequential second, when it all happens that, yeah,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 3: mistakes do sometimes happen, or just things happen, animals move,
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 3: or you might do everything just right and still it.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 2: Doesn't go quite right to your point.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 3: And so I think that's why you see, like the
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 3: outburst of emotion that Michael had there with you, I've
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 3: certainly felt that way.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that is.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 3: That is not easy to see or to bear the
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 3: burden of knowing you were part of that. But at
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 3: the same time, as you write really beautifully in the
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 3: book about hunting, is one way in which we can
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 3: take responsibility for that and look the reality in the
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 3: eye of the fact that if you were going to
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 3: eat meat, it means something has to die, and there's
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 3: something to be said at least, I think in being
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 3: willing to take that burden upon yourself and say, Okay,
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 3: this is the reality of life, this is the reality
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 3: of eating meat, and I will accept that reality and
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 3: own that and everything that comes with that, the emotional burden,
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 3: the physical burden, the work that is incumbent on all
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 3: of that, And I think there's there's something to be
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 3: said for that. It's not for everyone, of course, but
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 3: this leads me to me asking if, given everything you've
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 3: learned and experienced and done on this journey, if you
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 3: have gone hunting since with your brother as as a
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 3: spectator again, or if you've ever thought about maybe someday
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 3: trying it actually yourself, you did right in the end
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 3: of the book that you felt you began to feel
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 3: some sense of a desire of a craving of some
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 3: kind of connection to this human this human experience that
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 3: you were kind of getting around the edges of have
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 3: you or will you ever try it again?
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 4: Well, I still don't know. It's just a it's it's
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 4: a mystery to me. I have gone hunting, uh, you know,
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 4: after finishing the book, I've I've gone back with my
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 4: brother a couple of times, and I enjoy that for
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 4: the specifically I've gone to those you know, family group hunts,
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 4: So I really enjoy being part of that ritual. You know,
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 4: I've come to see it as a kind of family
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 4: ritual that's very seasonal, it's very connected to the land.
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 4: It's very much of that location and kind of knowledge
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 4: over generations of you know, this specific patch of woods,
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 4: this field, you know, behind this house. I'm really into
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 4: that because I I totally appreciate and have for many years,
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 4: you know, participated in local food in other ways. You know,
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 4: I grow a big garden, My husband and I grow
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 4: a lot of food here, including raising chickens, and so this,
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 4: you know, deer hunting definitely feels to me like another
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 4: aspect of that. But whether I'll ever get to the
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 4: point where I want to be the one holding the weapon.
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 4: I don't know. The interesting thing about those group hunts
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 4: is that I can participate even without being a shooter, right,
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 4: Like being a person who's walking through the woods is participating,
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 4: it's helping. And I kind of like doing that. I
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 4: like being part of the crew in that way. And
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 4: you know, one of the things that they do not
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 4: usually use are the hides. And at some point I said,
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 4: you know, I'd be interested in bringing home one or
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 4: two of these hides if you're just gonna you know,
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 4: if you're not going to use them. And so that's
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 4: been a way that I also, you know, have something
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 4: physical to bring home from these experiences. And then you know,
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 4: I learned, I tried to learn. I'm certainly not great
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 4: at it, but I've tried to learn how to brain
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 4: tan these hides. And you know, the physical work of
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 4: doing that, spending all the time with the hide, going
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 4: through all the steps, it's so it's so fascinating, it's
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 4: so earthy, it's so physical, and to me that that's
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 4: like a really compelling thing is to get to know
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 4: that animal in that way, you know, individually, you really
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 4: you see kind of stories on that hide you see
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 4: individual quirks of this deer's body, and so that's that's
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 4: where I'm at with it right now. I'm not sure
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 4: if I'll ever get to the point where I want
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 4: to be the one to go out and make the kill,
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 4: but I'm not ruling it out. Could happen.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: Well.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 3: I love that you have been able to have this
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 3: fascinating journey and glimpse into this world, and that you
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 3: were willing to share it with us and with readers
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 3: all over. And I'd like to throw one one more
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 3: at you. If we're in the age of deer right now,
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 3: I'm curious what you think is next. You know, where
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 3: do you see our relationship with deer headed in this
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 3: country or anything along those lines.
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 2: I'm just curious.
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 3: You spent a lot of time looking back at where
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 3: we came from and where we are now. I have
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 3: to believe maybe at some point you dared to look
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 3: forward into the future and where this all might beheaded.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: What do you think?
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 4: Well, I think we're in an interesting moment with you know,
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 4: very very rapid environmental change. We did talk about how
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 4: great deer are at adapting, but I do think they
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 4: are facing some challenges right now that are pretty serious,
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 4: chronic wasting disease being one of those, climate change being another.
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 4: I mean, climate change is kind of you know, it's
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 4: unclear exactly how that's going to affect them, but at
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 4: least in certain ways, I think they will be challenged
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 4: by that. At the same time, we continue to you know,
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 4: make more and more of these edges as we keep
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 4: developing more and more land, So in that way, we
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 4: are creating more habitat for them. They're great at living
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 4: in our suburbs, and we just keep building more suburbs
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 4: and you know, kind of extending our towns further and
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 4: further out. So in a sense, we're we're inviting them
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 4: to move in with us, and we're probably going to
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 4: keep on like annoying each other and getting in each
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 4: other's ways, you know, as as neighbors do. But I
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 4: think I feel like and I hope that our culture
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 4: is moving in this direction of more acknowledgement of animals
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 4: as beings that have their own stories. Right, They're not
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 4: just here for us to use, but they are living
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 4: their own stories. They have agency, they have intelligence that
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 4: is their own type of intelligence, right, It's different from ours.
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 4: And I think we're sort of getting there to realizing
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 4: that and understanding that in a new way, after a
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 4: long time of our culture just kind of seeing animals
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 4: as resources or as it's sort of driven only by
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 4: instinct and not fully conscious. I think we're figuring out
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 4: that they are fully conscious, and so you know, I
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 4: don't know how that's going to affect let's say, dear
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 4: management policy or things like that, but I just think
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 4: that we're we're kind of getting smarter about those things
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 4: and more more aware of those things, and so maybe
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 4: that will lead to a more collaborative kind of relationship
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 4: to them rather than this kind of management paradigm.
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 3: Well, if nothing else, there will certainly be no shortage
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 3: of opportunities for questions to be asked and for answers
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 3: to be sought, and for books and podcasts and articles
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 3: and speeches and conferences to continue being had about these
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 3: perpetually fascinating animals that seem to catch so many of
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 3: us in their web. And I just I want to
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 3: thank you Erica for having this conversation, and also you know,
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 3: for dedicating what I know is likely years of your
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 3: life to this process and to this study of this
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 3: topic and this animal and uh and also you know
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 3: for for writing about the deer hunting community in a
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 3: way that I think.
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 2: You were. You were quite fair. You were quite uh.
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 3: Willing to explore and and to dive into things that
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 3: maybe made you uncomfortable. And you know, you were open
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 3: and honest about your perspective and your experience and in
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 3: ways that sometimes made me uncomfortable reading it and hearing.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 3: But uh, you were pretty darn fair and accurate and
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 3: how you represented things. And it was eye opening and
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 3: interesting and I think useful, and I think a lot
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 3: of other folks will find it to be so as well.
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 2: So thank you for that.
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 4: Well, thank you so much for your careful reading and
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 4: your great questions, and thanks for giving me the chance
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 4: to speak with a deer hunting audience. I love doing that.
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been a lot of fun. Thanks again, Erica,
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 2: Thanks mart take care.
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 3: All right, and that's gonna do it for us today.
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 3: Thanks again for joining me. As I'm sure you could
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 3: pick up from this conversation. I'd really recommend this book.
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 3: It's different, it's fascinating. You're gonna learn a lot, you're
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 3: gonna review a lot of things that you knew already,
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 3: but you're going to see it from a new viewpoint,
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 3: and it might challenge you at times, it might make
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 3: you uncomfortable at times. You might not like all of it,
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 3: But I think there's gonna be a lot that will
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 3: resonate and then we can learn from there's a value
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 3: in that. Hopefully you saw that in our chat here today,
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 3: So thanks for tuning in. Pick up a copy of
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 3: the Age of Deer if you are interested, and until
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 3: next time, stay Wired to Hunt.