Hearing a first-time hunter’s story is nourishing
On a chilly, windy, gloomy April morning, with an inch of fresh snow on the ground, I took shelter by making a pot of chicken soup. To me, hunting and fishing are like chicken soup for my soul. By lunch everything would be better.
I dropped the mirepoix into the pot to sweat, butchered out the chicken, and remembered a podcast sent to me about one lady’s journey into becoming a hunter. The bones and back meat were just ready to go into the pot about the time the veggies were sweated. I placed them on top of the mirepoix and opened the file on this lady’s story.
As I worked on peeling the carrots and then cutting them down — I like to add the carrots to the broth later on, I feel it richens the broth and adds a better layer of flavor — this lady explained how growing up she had no real contact with hunting or hunters and the information she received portrayed both in a poor light. She always had a deep connection and attraction to animals and ended up going to college to be a zookeeper.
I cut the breast meat down to size, got the pan ready to sear and seasoned the meat. She started telling her journey into hunting, which started 20 years ago when she became immersed into hunting, but she didn’t actually hunt until this year. The first hunt she ever went on, she filmed her future husband killing a buck.
After a quick, hard sear — but not cooking the chunks through — I used a bit of brandy to deglaze the pan, adding a lot of flavor in the bottom of the pan. It’s kind of like watching a sunrise over the marsh on a fall duck hunt; you sometimes even stop watching for ducks and just contemplate the glory of it all.
She continued into her deep thought process on why she decided to finally hunt herself and kill her first game. In so many ways she did a far better job of describing the attributes of hunting than most that make their living promoting hunting do.
Emotions are hard to put to words, more so for some than others. We can feel something deeply but not have an idea how to begin the first sentence to explain it. She walked the audience through her contemplation as to what her relationship was to this thing we call hunting. She talked about the relationships to the members of their “crew,” and her feelings that although she was an integral member of that crew, she felt left out because she didn’t hunt. She explained how she felt about her relationship to the game bagged. The complicated conservation of the animals that we hunt and the land they live on. How it nourishes her body by providing protein and the comfort of having meat to eat. And why, after 20 years, she felt she had a responsibility to start hunting herself. She explained the fears she had of being the hunter, the one that killed the game. It perplexed her because, as a zookeeper, she was often the one that restrained an animal that needed to be euthanized for health reasons or the one doing the euthanizing. Her fear of making a bad shot, fear of making a bad decision, fear of not being safe enough, and the fear of just not being able to actually pull the trigger if the opportunity presented itself.
About the time the meat fell off the bone, I pulled the skeleton, turned off the heat and added the juice from a can of peas – another layer of flavor. She started to talk about the plan for her first hunt.
I turned the heat back on and added the carrots. I added a bit of salt since the rice will absorb a bit and add the rice. She talked about the first day of her hunt. About 10 minutes after adding the rice and carrots I added the peas – I like them in my chicken soup. She talked the audience through the rest of her first hunt as I added the chicken back to the broth to finish. It was the perfect thing for a cold, windy April day.
If inclined I invite you to look up the podcast from The Hunting Public, episode #155 titled “The Journey From Non-Hunter to Hunter” with Myndi Clements. It’s chicken soup for a hunter’s soul.
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CHUCK K OLAR LOCAL OUTDOORSMAN
