It’s time to welcome a new generation of health-conscious meat-eaters into the world of hunting.

Photo above: Rupp with some steaks and roasts she procured in Pennsylvania last fall (still in their original packaging).

Years before I got my first hunting license at the age of twelve, I was–at least in my own young mind–a crucial part of the process of putting our family’s yearly venison in the freezer. It was my job, you see, to wrap. As Mom and Dad cut up their deer into steaks, chops, and roasts, I’d sit next to them with my trusty plastic wrap, freezer paper, tape, and Sharpie. First I’d wrap the meat tightly in plastic wrap, making sure no air was left inside. The thick, white freezer paper went on next (Mom showed me how to do the cool-looking butcher’s fold), and I’d tape it down securely. Next, I’d write with the marker whether it was Mom’s or Dad’s deer, the cut, and the date, and embellish the package with little drawings of deer.

Fast-forward thirty-some years to southern California, where an eclectic group of friends gathers on our back patio while my husband grills up elk and moose backstraps from our freezer. I’ve long since traded the paper and tape for a Foodsaver and abandoned my nascent career as an artist, but I still love the whole process of turning a game animal into a delicious meal. Even more, I enjoy the comments from my nonhunting friends: “This is delicious!” “Hey, I thought it would be gamey!” “Sure, I’ll have seconds!”

Popular interest in wild game as a food source has undergone a meteoric rise lately, fueled by bestselling books by the likes of vegan-turned-hunter Tovar Cerulli (The Mindful Carnivore) and celebrity chef Georgia Pellegrini (Girl Hunter), as well as articles such as “Hipsters Who Hunt: More Liberals Are Shooting Their Own Supper” on Slate.com.

All this is great news for hunting. As I know from those backyard wild-game barbecues, people who are not otherwise favorably disposed to the idea of killing an animal turn out to be fine with it if they get to eat it and it tastes good.

In fact, some experts say this phenomenon is bringing a whole new demographic of health-conscious and environmentally ethical adults into the ranks of hunters. That’s right; hunting (for food, at least) is becoming–gasp–hip! And why not? Wild game is healthy, low-cholesterol, lean protein with no added hormones or antibiotics. In a recent survey, Responsive Management reported that 68 percent of hunters surveyed identified obtaining local, natural, or “green” food as an influence in their decision to hunt.

State wildlife agencies aren’t ignoring this trend. For the first time since the 1980s, resident hunting license sales are on the rise, and some wildlife managers are crediting the increasing interest of young urbanites in eating wild food as at least a partial driver of thhis participation. They’re responding by reaching out to this demographic with new programs like “Hunt, Fish, Eat,” a food-centered adult hunter ed program offered by the Indiana DNR, and “Gourmet Gone Wild,” a program started by the Michigan DNR in partnership with Michigan State University and the Boone and Crockett Club.

Talking about memorable wild-game meals takes me back to a camp in the Yukon wilderness several years ago where sheep backstraps were sizzling in a pan on a camp stove. I had just pulled an exhausting all-nighter helping my guide pack out my magnificent Dall sheep. As I sat there, tired and hungry, salivating as the meat cooked, I considered the complicated truth about hunting: The sustenance we ultimately derive from the chase is as much spiritual and emotional as it is physical, but it all began, long ago, because we needed to eat. And we still do.

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Threats from antihunters have now cost Namibia’s rhino conservation program hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In January, at a banquet at the Dallas Safari Club (DSC) convention, something historic and important happened in the annals of hunting as a conservation tool. A permit to hunt a black rhino was auctioned to the highest bidder, fetching a cool $350,000–100 percent of which went straight back into the rhino conservation program in the nation of Namibia, where the hunt will take place.

You probably heard about the controversy surrounding the auction. In the real world of scientific wildlife management, there actually wasn’t much controversy at all about the idea–every important international scientific wildlife organization, including the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS), Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), agreed that auctioning the permit was a sound idea for conservation and that the money it would raise would be of tremendous importance to Namibia’s rhino conservation program. The hunt would target a specific old male—one that was past its breeding prime and had become dangerous to the young rhinos in its herd—and the money raised from hunting this single, selected rhino would contribute to saving the overall black rhino population.

Namibia hoped that auctioning a permit in the USA would push the price of the permit (and the money going back to its conservation program) to extraordinarily high levels. Unfortunately, it also brought the antihunters out of the woodwork. No amount of explaining the science behind using carefully controlled hunting as a conservation tool could placate the screaming masses who poured their energies into thousands of virulent Internet posts. They were not attempting to raise money to help rhinos–far from it. They were only attempting to stop the hunt.

The online attacks escalated into death threats to DSC members and their families. Whoever purchased the auction tag, it was made clear, would be the target of threats not just to themselves, but to their families and businesses.

Understandably, many potential high-dollar bidders pulled out. You can’t blame them for not wanting to put their family members and employees at risk. And suddenly a tag that at one point might have sold for as much as a million dollars had almost no takers.

Fortunately, several brave and generous DSC supporters stepped into the breach, and the hunter who did purchase the tag (for what is still a record-setting amount), should be considered a conservation hero. One of the loudest detractors of the rhino hunt was Bob Barker, the anti-hunting former host of The Price is Right. Responding to him on CNN’s Piers Morgan Live a few nights after the auction, the hunter said he wanted to tell Bob that, with regard to the rhino permit, “the price was wrong.”

He was correct. This auction should have raised a lot more for conservation, and the only reason it didn’t is because of the shortsighted tactics of closed-minded people who don’t understand wildlife management.

There’s a silver lining, though. Hunting, conservation, and the relationship between them has been in the news for months as a result of the controversy. Many people who might not have previously understood this relationship do now. The haters aside, I believe that the majority of nonhunters out there are reasonable people who care about wildlife and can separate facts from emotion. Let’s make sure we keep reminding them how hunting benefits conservation–and let’s not wait until the next rhino auction to do it.

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Hunters, anglers, and other conservationists continue to fight a proposed mine in Alaska’s game-rich Bristol Bay region.

Flying over southwest Alaska, I’m surprised at the sparseness of the landscape. It’s not the jagged mountains and snowcapped peaks I’ve been imagining since Scott Hed of Sportsman’s Alliance for Alaska invited me to come along on a fact-finding trip to King Salmon, Alaska. The tundra, pocketed with lakes and cut by rivers, looks more like Minnesota than the alpine environment I imagined.

On the flight out of Anchorage, Scott and I are joined by Ben Bulis, President of the American Fly Fishing Trade Association; Rich Hohne of Simms Fishing Products; and our host, Jerry Shultz, a Dallas Safari Club Life Member and owner of Rapids Camp Lodge. The plan is to take a look at the proposed Pebble Mine site, talk to locals, and get a sense of what the proposed site means to the people and environment of the Bristol Bay region of Alaska. Oh, and we might try to fish a little, too.

The background on this mine bears repeating. In 1988, a mining company discovered a large deposit of copper, molybdenum, and gold fifteen miles upstream from Lake Iliamna, the largest lake in Alaska, approximately 200 miles southwest of Anchorage. In 2001, the claim was purchased by Northern Dynasty Minerals, which has been exploring and seeking to develop the site since then. Because of the low-grade ore quality, the most efficient way to mine the site is an open pit-style mine. The proposed pit mine at Pebble would be approximately two miles wide, 1,700 feet deep, and require two earthen dams to hold the waste rock in man-made lakes. The largest of these proposed dams would be over four miles long and 740 feet tall, bigger than the Three Gorges Dam in China.

Additional infrastructure including a port on Cook Inlet and over 100 miles of roads crossing twenty streams would have to be built to support mine operations.

Unfortunately for Northern Dynasty, this region of Alaska, known as the Bristol Bay watershed, is also home to the largest wild salmon run in the world; in fact, all five Eastern Pacific species spawn there. The Kvichak River, which drains from Lake Iliamna and is downstream from the mine site, is home to the largest sockeye salmon run in the world. Because mining is an industry with a poor environmental track record, to say that this proposed mine has been a hot topic would be an understatement. On one side, you have millions of dollars invested into an environmentally questionable project, promising thousands of jobs and money to a traditionally low-income area of Alaska. On the other, you have an environmentally sensitive area that hosts one of the last great salmon runs in the world and boasts a $1.5 billion commercial and sport fishing industry that employs 14,000 people. So which side should we choose to support?

After touching down in King Salmon, the next three days are a blur of flights, fishing, bears, too much food, and late night discussions. We spend two days fishing legendary Alaskan rivers like the Moraine and Little Ku, and what looked to me from the air like barren tundra is truly a paradise. It is clear, cold rivers and lakes teeming with fish, bears feeding and then disappearing into the brush like ghosts. You’ve heard the expression “keystone species,” but you can’t understand its true meaning until you see the connection that salmon has to southwest Alaska.

While we’re there, we visit with locals, tourists, guides, and business owners, many of whom wear “No Pebble Mine” hats or shirts. The one phrase we keep hearing is, “If people could just see it for themselves…” By the time we board our flight back home, we understand. If everyone could see this place for themselves, the Pebble Mine would have been stopped before it started.

There is no doubt–this a complicated issue, but for me it comes down to two simple choices: throw caution and common sense to the wind, or draw a line in the sand and stand up for one of the last truly wild places in the world. I’m proud to tell you that Dallas Safari Club has joined over 1,000 hunting and fishing groups and businesses from across the country including Sportsman’s Alliance for Alaska, AFFTA, Simms Fishing Products, Trout Unlimited, Conservation Force, Pope and Young Club, Sturm Ruger & Co., and the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership in their opposition to the Pebble Mine.

In late September, a few weeks after getting back to Dallas, Anglo American–an English company and the major investor in the Pebble Limited Partnership–announced that it is withdrawing all funding from the Pebble Mine project. Even more recently, Rio Tinto, which oversees billions in pension fund investments for both California and New York and is a major investor in the Pebble Limited Partnership–was asked by the Comptrollers of each state to withdraw its $25 million dollar stake in the project.

Yes, this is exciting news in the fight to save Bristol Bay, but it brings to mind an expression from boxing: “You don’t stop punching until the other guy is on the mat.” I encourage you to get involved in the fight against Pebble Mine.

To learn more, visit: www.SportsmansAlliance4AK.org,
www.SaveBristolBay.org, www.PebbleScience.org.

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Remember, the first day of a hunt is as good as the last.

The stand overlooked a big field of almost impenetrable CRP grass. The wind was howling that day and I didn’t expect to see much. Also, I had no particular expectations. I was in western Nebraska, unfamiliar country, unguided hunt, on some country leased by Hornady (a Nebraska company, of course). Neal Emery was sitting with me on that frosty morning, and I was grateful for an enclosed blind and a propane heater. (Hey, one of the things I learned in the Marines is it’s not necessary to practice to be miserable!)

We saw nothing until mid-morning—and then whitetails started to pop up like mushrooms. Mostly we saw antlers, the rest of the animal hidden in the tall growth. But as we watched the antlers float along there were occasional glimpses of body. Again, I had no expectations; it was just a deer hunt with friends. So I could have shot an OK 8-pointer, then a spectacular tall, heavy 8-pointer, and then a weird 4×3 with cool palmated beams. All of these were in easy range. Lacking expectations, I was mesmerized…and it never really occurred to me to shoot.

At my place in Kansas, neighbor Chuck Herbel and I pool our properties and lease some ground for deer season. It would be grandiose to say that we “outfit,” but we take a dozen or so whitetail hunters annually, and I was doing exactly what I exhort my hunters not to do: I was “stockpiling” whitetails. Worse, I was doing it on a time-constrained hunt, in country I didn’t know…and passing bigger bucks than I’d expected to see in the first place.

I think I can say that I knew I was doing this and didn’t care. I was enjoying different country and I was seeing bucks…bucks that I understood only an idiot would pass. The enticing thing was that CRP field was full of bucks, and they never spooked. So, foolishly, I figured I’d see a couple of them again. For the moment, I was having fun watching deer.

The next day was dead calm. As a whitetail hunter my biggest failing that I hate to sit still! I’m usually good for about four hours before I start to go insane. On that day, absolutely expecting to see (and shoot) at least one of several bucks I should have shot the previous day, I sat all day, dawn until dark. I saw a couple of bucks moving along the far edge of the CRP, out of range, and, toward dark, a couple more in a green wheat field on a neighboring property, out of bounds. None were familiar, and in the CRP I saw only two small bucks. In other words, all the bucks I’d passed had vanished.

Far sillier, I’d taken these gambles on a three-day hunt. Madness! On the last morning I crawled into a tripod on the edge of that CRP. Just at dawn I watched a buck swagger up a mowed strip toward me. Well, I was also watching my watch. It said we were about three minutes into legal shooting when he was as close and as clear as he was going to get, and I shot him. It’s not fair to say there was ground shrinkage. It’s more honest to say that I never studied the antlers or counted points. I knew he had antlers, and he had the body shape of a mature buck. That was enough.

I shot this Nebraska buck on my last morning…but on the first day I passed a half-dozen larger bucks.

A few days later another of my editors, Scott Rupp, told me he was headed back to his native Pennsylvania to hunt with a Savage 99 in .300 Savage with aperture sight. I commented that, for some of us, using the rifle is more important than the deer we take. That was surely me on that Nebraska hunt; I was itching to take a deer with a gorgeous Dakota M10 in .275 Rigby (aka 7×57). And, on the last morning, I did.

So, exactly, why did I pass better bucks than I expected to see in the first place? Part of it was lack of familiarity with the area. We don’t have much CRP in my part of Kansas. I didn’t know that, on a windy day, it creates a protected shelter that whitetails gravitate to, and on calm days they’re more likely to be somewhere else. Most of it, however, was pure folly, if not stupidity. You can’t stockpile whitetails, meaning pass a buck now and expect to see him again. Actually, this applies to most big-game animals throughout the world, so it’s a general lesson with a specific example.

You want honesty again? I hate taking an animal early in a hunt. That makes it hard to build a story, and it’s worse with the TV camera rolling. You have to film backwards, really awkward. But that’s business, and hunting is reality. My reality: I’ve taken a lot of nice whitetails, but I admire really big eight-pointers. On that first morning in Nebraska I passed two dandies. Folly, foolishness, stupidity! Ten days later, when the Kansas rifle season opened, I took my own advice and shot a big 8-pointer on opening morning. Two of our hunters took my advice as well, filling their tags with good, solid bucks. Maybe we’d have seen bigger deer if we’d passed, and maybe not. With our tags filled, we’ll never know. So if you take the first animal you see, make sure you’re happy with it!

My longtime personal credo is that, when Mother Nature offers a gift, one shouldn’t kick sand in her face. The last day of a hunt is as good as the first, so one must keep trying, but let’s not ignore the corollary, that the first day is as good as the last. Obviously it depends heavily on your personal goals, which are yours to set. It’s okay to go for greatness–the long ball, or nothing. Note: the higher your self-imposed standards, the most likely you are to go home empty-handed! It’s also okay to set “minimum standards.” But what if you encounter that minimum standard on the first day? In some circumstances it is okay to look around for a bit, but never expect that an acceptable and satisfactory animal encountered will ever be seen again!

I’ve played this game so many times. I love the hunt itself, so aside from business concerns (building a story, building a TV show) I am reluctant to shoot early in a hunt, but I also recognize the risks in passing. Clear back in 1981 I took a monstrous Alaskan brown bear on the first hunting day. We spotted him at distance, and my guide, Slim Gale, started stripping his pack. I said something stupid like, “Hey, it’s the first day, there’s no hurry.”

Slim said, “Good Gawd, man, what’s wrong with you, that’s a ten-foot bear.”

Totally bemused, I went along with the deal, and Slim was wrong. It wasn’t a ten-foot bear; it was an eleven-foot bear, probably my best North American animal–and I had wanted to pass!

This huge Alaskan brown bear was taken on my first hunting day back in 1981. Since it was the first day I tried to pass the bear; fortunately my guide insisted, and obviously he was correct!

More than twenty years later we were looking for a brown bear for Donna. It was the first day, and we were passing the southern tip of Admiralty Island, enroute to another spot, when guide Alisha Decker spotted a bear at incredible range. More incredible, she knew it was a big bear. This time I didn’t argue, but I was intrigued. As we worked toward shore she was sharpening her skinning knives, so I asked her, “You’re serious, aren’t you?” She grinned and whispered, making sure Donna couldn’t hear above the spray, “Oh, yes, that’s a ten-foot bear. We’re going to get him if we can.”

The latter was certain: This young lady (and Alaskan Master Guide) was determined. We beached gently, wind good, and I took on the role of boat handler while Alisha and Donna made the stalk and shot the bear. This was a very expensive hunt and initally we weren’t happy about a first-day bear . . . somehow it seemed wrong (as, I suppose, mine had been so many years earlier). However, Donna’s bear was exactly ten feet, as called; the biggest bear of that season and, realistically, a bigger bear than Admiralty Island should produce. And it was taken on the first day, which is as good as the last day.

Guide Alisha Decker and Donna Boddington approach Donna’s bear. Donna was very reluctant to shoot on the first day and she’s just starting to realize how big this bear is. Unusually large for the area, passing it would have been a mistake…on any day!

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