The Mindful Carnivore (33 page)

This chapter’s epigraph is from the Book of Isaiah in the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament.

Chapter 3: Trouble in Eden

Howard Williams discusses Hesiod and “the peaceful spirit of agriculture” on page 2 of
The Ethics of Diet
. David Pimentel’s study is described in his article “Soil Erosion: A Food and Environmental Threat,”
Environment, Development and Sustainability
8 (2006): 119-137. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service numbers on birds and pesticides were drawn from a two-page pamphlet issued by the Office of Migratory Bird Management,
Pesticides and Birds
(March 2000).

Several studies on the harm done to animals by grain harvesting are listed in a fact sheet by Champe Green,
Reducing Mortality of Grassland Wildlife During Haying and Wheat-Harvesting Operations
(Stillwater, OK: Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service, 2007). For a related, intriguing, and controversial article based on Tom Regan’s theory of animal rights, see Steven L. Davis, “The Least Harm Principle May Require That Humans Consume a Diet Containing Large Herbivores, Not a Vegan Diet,”
Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics
16 (2003): 387-394.

Richard Nelson’s
Heart and Blood: Living with Deer in America
(New York: Random House, 1997) is one of my favorite books on deer, not only because it is thoroughly researched and elegantly written, but because Nelson treats everyone—from animal-rights activists to trophy hunters—with respect. I have drawn quotes from his chapter on deer and agriculture, “The Hidden Harvest” (298-311). Thanks also to freelance writer Al Cambronne for discussing deer management and history with me.

In developing my historical sketch of the New England landscape, I consulted William Cronon’s fascinating book,
Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England
(New York: Hill and Wang, 1983), which includes his description of the precolonial coastal forest as “remarkably open” (25). I also drew on Tom Wessels’s
Reading the Forested Landscape: A Natural History of New England
(Woodstock, VT: The Countryman Press, 1997) and Charles W. Johnson’s
The Nature of Vermont: Introduction and Guide to a New England Environment
(Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1980).

Wessels’s
Reading the Forested Landscape
provides an intriguing introduction to the historical forces—from logging and agriculture to fires and hurricanes—that have shaped the region’s forests. David Ludlum’s remark about the “wool craze,” from Ludlum’s
Social Ferment in Vermont, 1791-1850
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1939), is quoted on page 57 of Wessels’s book. The suggestion that New England’s stone walls be considered “the eighth wonder of the world” appears on page 59.

I am grateful to Victoria Hughes and Marjorie Strong of the Vermont Historical Society for tracking down the Vermont Merino Sheep Association’s S
panish Merino Sheep: Their Importation
(1879), and helping me figure out what became of the several thousand animals William Jarvis brought over from Europe. Thanks also to Jennifer Donaldson of the Woodstock Historical Society for finding the local newspaper account of Alexander Crowell’s slaying of the catamount, “Panther Hunt in Barnard,”
The Standard
(Woodstock, VT), December 1, 1881.

This chapter’s epigraph comes from Wendell Berry,
The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural and Agricultural
(New York: North Point Press, 1982), 281.

Chapter 4: An Animal Who Eats

The Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, mentions his dietary journey in
Freedom in Exile: The Autobiography of the Dalai Lama
(New York: HarperCollins, 1990). In light of my own certainty as a vegan, I was intrigued by his description of how, in his vegetarian phase, he felt “a sense of fulfillment from a strict interpretation of the rule” (179).

Henry van Dyke’s discussion of “the enchantment of uncertainty” is from
Fisherman’s Luck and Some Other Uncertain Things
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1899), 10.

This chapter’s epigraph—from John Hersey’s
Blues
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), 9—is the Fisherman’s initial reply to the Stranger, who has just expressed his distaste for “the fishing mystique: all that notion of the elegance and nobility of a brutal blood sport.”

Chapter 5: Where the Great Heron Feeds

Speculations on aspens’ chemical defenses are discussed in a number of articles, including Walter J. Jakubas and Gordon W. Guillon, “Coniferyl Benzoate in Quaking Aspen: A Ruffed Grouse Feeding Deterrent,”
Journal of Chemical Ecology
16, no. 4 (1990): 1077-1087.

I drew information on the global impacts of the livestock industry from Henning Steinfeld et al.,
Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options
(Rome: United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, 2006). Some of this study’s calculations and conclusions have been contested, especially those concerning greenhouse gases. It is important to recognize that the ecological impacts of livestock production vary greatly, depending on the methods employed; see, for example, the writings of Nicolette Hahn Niman, including
Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms
(New York: HarperCollins, 2009).

Jeremy Bentham’s famous articulation of the question “
Can they suffer?
” comes from
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Vol. II
, 2
^nd
ed. (London: W. Pickering, 1823), 236.

For an excellent discussion of commercial fisheries, I recommend Paul Greenberg’s
Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food
(New York: Penguin, 2010).

Richard Nelson’s line “The supermarket is an agent of our forgetfulness” appears in
Heart and Blood
, 281.

“Absent referent” is a term that originated in linguistics. Carol J. Adams uses it to make an important point about how we separate the idea of “meat” from the idea of “animal.” The lines I quote in this chapter come from her book
The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory
, 10
^th
anniv. ed. (New York: Continuum, 1990, 2000), 14.

The Dalai Lama’s discussion of Tibetan Buddhists’ “rather curious attitude” toward meat can be found in
Freedom in Exile
, 20.

Thomas Berry frequently used the word “autistic” to describe modern people’s relational incapacity. In
The Great Work: Our Way into the Future
(New York: Bell Tower, 1999), 79, for instance, he wrote that his was “an autistic generation in its inability to establish any intimate rapport with the natural world.”

William Cronon discusses the “dualistic vision in which the human is entirely outside the natural” in the book he edited,
Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), 80-81. By setting “humanity and nature at opposite poles,” he writes, “we thereby leave ourselves little hope of discovering what an ethical, sustainable,
honorable
human place in nature might actually look like.”

Paul Shepard’s line about large carnivores being inevitably “pursued by microbes, fungi, and plant roots” comes from his essay collection
Traces of an Omnivore
(Washington, DC: Island Press, 1996), 49. Val Plumwood’s remarkable essay was originally published as “Being Prey,”
Terra Nova
1, no. 3 (1996): 32-44. Cleveland Amory’s phrase “prey will be separated from predator” is from a 1992 interview with
Sierra
magazine, quoted in Nelson’s
Heart and Blood
, 275.

This chapter’s epigraph comes from Paul Rezendes,
Tracking and the Art of Seeing
(New York: HarperCollins, 1999), 20.

Chapter 6: Hunter and Beholder

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s
2006 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation
provided statistics on Americans’ annual participation in fishing and hunting.

Susan Kent’s observation concerning traditional societies’ classifications of animals and fish appears in the book she edited,
Farmers as Hunters: The Implications of Sedentism
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 132, and was first brought to my attention by Mary Zeiss Stange’s
Woman the Hunter
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1997), 45.

Estimates of U.S. per capita meat and fish consumption come from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s
Agriculture Fact Book 2001-2002
, 15.

The controversial idea that persistence hunting may have played a part in human evolution is sketched in Dennis M. Bramble and Daniel E. Lieberman’s “Endurance Running and the Evolution of
Homo
,”
Nature
432, no. 18 (2004): 345-352. It is also discussed in Christopher McDougall’s
Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009) and in Bernd Heinrich’s
Why We Run: A Natural History
(New York: HarperCollins, 2001).

The 2001 shooting death of Deborah Prasnicki in Wisconsin was covered in national and regional news stories, including Meg Jones, “Trial Starts for Hunter Charged in Fatal Shooting,”
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
, March 27, 2003.

Jan E. Dizard’s observation that “even hunters themselves are not all that trusting of other hunters” comes from his book
Mortal Stakes: Hunters and Hunting in Contemporary America
(Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003), 162.

He notes that virtually none of the hunters he interviewed during his research would hunt with a complete stranger: “They would first want to know something about the person’s temperament, judgment, and competency with a firearm.… If hunters are cautious about the company they keep while hunting, it is small wonder that nonhunters are concerned.”

The line concerning the “many Tygers, monstrous and furious beasts” found in the New World comes from Job Hortop,
The Travails of an Englishman
(London: William Wright, 1591) and is quoted in Andrea L. Smalley’s “‘The Liberty of Killing a Deer’: Histories of Wildlife Use and Political Ecology in Early America” (PhD diss., Northern Illinois University, 2005), which she generously shared with me.

In writing this chapter, I drew extensively from Daniel Herman’s excellent
Hunting and the American Imagination
(Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001). Direct quotes drawn from Herman’s work are listed here, by opening words and page numbers in his book: “How was it that New England could be so full of game,” 29; “lackluster hunters,” 31; “They believed that Indians, like English aristocrats,” 32; “the third stage,” 42; “images of man fallen to a state of nature,” 4; “take on the aura of the indigene,” xiii; “a hunting people,” x.

Herman’s book was also my source for quotes from several others. These are listed here, again with page numbers from Herman’s book: William Bradford, “hidious & desolate wildernes,” 16; Lord Thomas Macaulay, “not because it gave pain to the bear,” 30; Thomas Jefferson, “those who labour in the earth,” 44; Charles Woodmason, “one continual Scene of Depravity of Manners,” 39; James Fenimore Cooper, “driven God’s creatures from the wilderness,” 116; Henry William Herbert, “the demoralization of luxury,” 174-175.

In personal correspondence, Herman suggested I consult Godfrey Hodgson’s
A Great and Godly Adventure: The Pilgrims and the Myth of the First Thanksgiving
(Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books, 2006) regarding the presence of venison, not turkey, at the first Thanksgiving.

Cotton Mather’s diary entry about “making water at the wall” is quoted in Keith Thomas,
Man and the Natural World: A History of the Modern Sensibility
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1983), 38. The 1745 North Carolina law requiring hunters to tend corn hills is cited in Stuart A. Marks,
Southern Hunting in Black and White: Nature, History, and Ritual in a Carolina Community
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 31. The phrase “the feathered lightning is no more” comes from Aldo Leopold’s
A Sand County Almanac with Essays on Conservation from Round River
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1966), 118. Theodore Roosevelt’s description of killing the bison comes from
The Wilderness Hunter
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1893), 254.

This chapter’s epigraph comes from Dizard’s
Mortal Stakes
, 168.

Chapter 7: Double Vision

The mittens worn by Karen Wood the day she was killed have often been referred to as “white.” In a detailed accounting of evidence introduced during the trial—Steve Kloehn, “Mittens, Rifle Entered into Evidence,”
Bangor Daily News
, October 13, 1990—they are described as “large, cream-colored, knit mittens, with palms made of a dirty, buff-colored suede.” Thanks to John Holyoke of the
Bangor Daily News
for locating this story.

The hunter-education text referred to in this chapter is the
New England Hunter Education Manual: Core Curriculum
(Seattle: Outdoor Empire Publishing, 2002).

Figures on injuries and fatalities come from multiple editions of
Injury Facts
(Itasca, IL: National Safety Council, 1999-2011) and from
What Are They Doing about Hunting Injuries?
(Albany, NY: New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, 2004).

My thanks to Pete Mirick of the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife for helping me track down data on the loss of open land in the state. The figures cited come from
Losing Ground: The Case for Land Conservation in Massachusetts
(Lincoln, MA: Massachusetts Audubon Society, 1991) and James DeNormandie and Claire Corcoran,
Losing Ground: Beyond the Footprint
(Lincoln, MA: Massachusetts Audubon Society, 2009).

Facts on Missouri and Arkansas conservation funding come from Promises Made, Promises Kept: Celebrating 25 Years of ‘Design for Conservation’ (Jefferson City, MO: Missouri Conservation Commission, 2002) and Keeping Arkansas Natural Forever: Amendment 75: Promises Kept (Little Rock, AR: Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, 2002).