Bang! Chop! Sizzle! Yum!
I grew up in the Midwest; a culture
that gravitates toward hunting, fishing, and all other forms of
out-doorsman, survival-themed sports. Yet I have never fired a rifle
at anything other than black and orange clay discs propelled through
the air by a 21st century, high-tech slingshot. My
knowledge of the sport was lacking too much to say with any honesty
Baylor’s line “Hunting is no hobby. It’s an art. It’s a way
of life. Everything gets turned into a hobby these days.”
As there is little deer hunting to
be done in Manhattan (or any borough of New York for that matter), I
went straight to the almighty YouTube. It wasn’t until hours later
that I realized I’d spent a large portion of my day watching videos
on how to gut, skin, and butcher a deer. I’ve seen my handful of
Saw movies, and none were quite so graphic as this
blood-soaked marathon. But to my surprise, after just five or so
minutes, I was no longer disgusted by all the mysteries a deer’s
skin hides (I also realized why we call an animal’s skin its
“hide”).
I mostly eat vegetarian, but on the
rare occasion I order a steak, it always arrives to me on an ornate
plate looking clean and pretty. It seems chefs spend a large amount
of their career figuring out how to make meat not look like meat, and
what I discovered while glued to my laptop that day was that there is
something beautiful about the process of an animal’s body becoming
sustenance, as long as it’s executed in a humane fashion.
I started my research hoping to get
more connected to Baylor. I did not expect to also get more connected
to the food I eat.
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