I don't fully understand how this happened but eating raw venison has become somewhat of a class tradition. Someone from one class knows someone in a previous one or something and it just keeps happening. It's never my idea but they keep doing it. Nobody has ever gotten sick so as far as I know it seems to be safe.
So you've got a new book out, The Beginner's Guide to Hunting Deer for Food. Who should read it and why?
The audience that I had in mind when I wrote this book was the modern locavore. The person who has never hunted deer in their lives but has that niggling feeling that something is missing. The former vegetarian who wants to eat meat but doesn't want to cop out. The organic gardener who is looking at the deer in their backyard in a whole new light. The urban man or woman who loves meat but thinks that there might be more to that whole world than just a bovine steak wrapped in plastic.
Why isn't there already a good introductory book on deer hunting? It seems like it should have been written a long time ago.
Until the last five years or so nobody was interested in hunting for food except for the people who were already doing it. Either you learned the basics growing up from an older relative or you had no interest in it at all. There were plenty of excellent advanced texts but not much for the adult beginner. In short, there was not much of a market until now.
You were raised into a vegetarian family. You just wrote a book about hunting. Does not compute. Please explain.
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I think that someone who was raised as a hunter would never have written this book. The only likely way for a book like this to emerge would be from someone who had to learn it all from scratch as an adult. I address topics that an experienced hunter would rightly take for granted. Like the emotional experience of making your first kill.
We rarely had meat in my house growing up -- even after we weren't exclusively vegetarian. I liked eating meat sometimes but since I didn't grow up cooking it I felt awkward handling raw meat while cooking. I wouldn't touch it with my bare hands. There came a point as an adult when I thought that this was just not right and that if I was uncomfortable with what my food was and where it came from then maybe I shouldn't be eating it at all. That was when I started studying deer and learning how to hunt.
Does understanding the evolutionary biology of deer make you a better hunter? Got an example?
Absolutely. For example, whitetail and mule deer are one little paragraph in a long evolutionary story of deer that have been going back and forth between fangs and antlers for millions of years depending on whether they were forced to be defenders of material resources against their own kind or gregarious herd animals. Modern deer are still torn between these instincts. For part of the year they disperse and then as autumn approaches they want to form back into herds. Understanding why they have these competing instincts and when they emerge helps a hunter to find the prey and succeed in taking it.
Why should hunters pay attention to which laundry detergent they use?
Most modern detergents don't just wash your clothes. They also give you 'whiter whites' and brighter colors through the use of UV reflective dyes. These dyes will build up in your clothes over time. Deer see very well into the ultraviolet end of the spectrum and if you wash your hunting clothes with those common detergents then you are practically glowing in the dark when deer look at your otherwise camouflaged clothing.
As you know, we went on a persistence hunt in Wyoming. We didn't catch any antelope. Any thoughts on what we could do better next time?
Modern western persistence hunters are on the right track. I think that what most of them are missing is that essential instinct to 'close the deal', as it were. A slight hesitation often causes the moment to be lost. Also it is essential to study the animal's behavior in response to predation. Watching pronghorn for a long time, including successful and unsuccessful hunts by other animals will help. Like a football team watching videos of the other team in the locker room. Young predators grow up doing this in real life.
And seriously, practice ambush hunting tactics. You can hesitate with the modern human's reluctance to kill for five or thirty seconds from a good ambush in most cases. The animal isn't going anywhere. Usually. You get yourself sorted out and pull the trigger or let the arrow go. Do enough ambush hunting to cure yourself of that hesitation. Then when you are on a persistence hunt the hesitation will be gone. Its a lot easier, less expensive and more productive all around to deal with the early reluctance to kill from ambush positions rather than during a chase on foot.
The last time we saw each other you were building a pigeon trap on my roof. Tell us about your "Eating Aliens" project.
'Eating Aliens' is pretty well wrapped up now, as a book. I spent a solid year hunting and fishing for invasive, ecologically disruptive species around the US and the Caribbean, and eating them. I only picked those species that I thought there was a reasonable likelihood of convincing a good number of people to actually go out and eat. So no bugs or anything that would be pure spectacle. I've hunted everything from iguanas [see photo of Jackson butchering an invasive green iguana in Florida] to wild boar to snakeheads to snails. Rifles, shotguns, spears, pellet guns, nets, fishing rods, and when necessary just running the buggers down on foot with a knife. 
I just handed in the bulk of the manuscript a few days ago. It will be out in 2012 with Storey Publishing. Theoretically speaking I should be moving on to another project but I'm reflexively still hunting invasive species. I can't seem to stop myself. Its dove season right now, doves being right up there with Maine lobster in my list of favorite things to eat. Yet I'm driving to a friend's property tomorrow to hunt pigeons and starlings. At some point what was supposed to be a book turned into a way of life. I've gotten completely accustomed to jumping in the car and driving a thousand miles when I hear about anything invasive that has shown up and sounds like it might be worth eating. While I have a house and a family waiting for me, I pretty much live on the road two weeks out of every month in a car filled with guns, cooking utensils, and fishing tackle. I don't even know how to go back to living like a normal person.
Regular people all hang out under roofs and watch movies and eat stuff from grocery stores, right? I think I kinda remember that.
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You can buy the book here.
