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Deer are regularly hunted across the United States, but some people pay exorbitant prices for imported deer meat:
Wintertime is a special time of year at Cafe Berlin, located just a few blocks from the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. This is when they roll out their menu of wild game, such as deer, wild boar, and quail. Regular customers have come to expect it. "They ask, weeks in advance, 'When does the wild game menu start? When does it start?'" says James Watson, one of the restaurant's chefs. And the star of that menu is venison. The restaurant serves venison ribs, venison loin, even venison tartar. It's food that takes your mind back to old European castles, where you can imagine eating like aristocracy.
You won't see venison in ordinary supermarkets. At Wagshall's, a specialty food shop in Washington, I found venison loin selling for $40 a pound. This venison comes from farms, usually from a species of very large deer called red deer. Much of it is imported from New Zealand.
Yet there's a very different side to this luxury meat. Less than two hours drive from Washington, Daniel Crigler has a whole freezer full of venison that he got for free. Crigler's home in central Virginia is surrounded by woodlands full of white-tail deer. For Crigler, they are venison on the hoof. And he loves hunting. "I love the outdoors. I love being out. But I also like to eat the meat," he says, chuckling. It's pretty much the only red meat he eats. And as he shows off the frozen cuts of venison in his freezer, this crusty man reveals his inner epicurean. "That's a whole loin, right there," he says. "What I like to do with that is split it open, fill it full of blue cheese, wrap it up in tin foil and put it on the grill for about an hour and a half."
And here's the odd thing about this meat, so scarce and expensive in big cities; so abundant if you're a hunter in Madison County, Virginia. Hunters like Crigler kill millions of deer every year in America, but the meat from those animals can't be sold: It hasn't been officially approved by meat inspectors. Also, the government doesn't want hunters to make money from poaching. Yet hunters are allowed to give it away, and many do. As a result, venison occupies a paradoxical place in the world of food. It's a luxury food that turns up in notably non-luxurious places.
Related: Arby's is Selling Venison Sandwiches in Six Deer-Hunting States
Deer in Multiple U.S. States Test Positive for Chronic Wasting Disease, Leading to Restrictions
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday January 04 2018, @05:27PM (4 children)
There are other aspects of hunting that can't be reduced to a dollar figure. I'm not hunting or fishing to save money -- the moorage for my boat is $250/month which would buy more crabs than I eat in a whole year -- but the ones I catch taste better (no BS, I think the commercial ones sit in tanks too long starving and consuming their fat reserves till they taste bland whereas the ones I catch and eat five or six hours later go into the pot with all that goodness intact).
Personally, I started hunting two years ago because I wanted to be responsible for the entire process of eating meat -- it had been more than 10 years that I hadn't eaten any mammals for ethical reasons. When I decided to eat mammal again, I figured I should completely understand the full meaning of what eating meat entails. I'm glad I did that way. I don't eat much mammal, but when I do, I do it with full consciousness of what it means.
And lastly, if we do have to reduce everything to dollars, hunting made me a good poker player. Since hunting season ended at the end of October, I've won over $2000. Hunting made me much more patient and that has carried over into my play. Previously, I'd probably average a small loss playing poker but I'm cashing in about 75% of the small tournaments I'm playing in now (even with lousy card streaks), and consistently winning in cash games, or losing small when I lose. Hunting made me patient.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Thursday January 04 2018, @06:55PM (2 children)
Someone further up the thread already mentioned that prey animal's diet affects the taste. The most detestable commercially raised meat animal has to be rabbit. I had eaten rabbit most of my life, off an on, with the seasons. After joining the Navy, we had rabbit on the menu one day. I waited in line, got my tray full of goodies, sat down, bit into some soapy tasting, overly tender stuff, and spit it out. Commercial rabbit never eats grass, or whatever other shrubbery they might find available. Instead they eat those little pellets of Gods-know-what with speckles of stuff that kinda look like corn, darker speckles that might be sugar cane, and many other speckles that no one can identify.
Commercially raised catfish don't quite taste the same as wild catfish, but at least they don't taste like soap.
Turkey? Mmmmm - depends on how they were raised. SOME commercial turkey tastes pretty good. Others, not so much.
All ruminants have the best flavor if they are grass fed. Or, if fed grain, they should only get about as much grain as they would have found in nature - which is very, very little over their lifetime. Sheep, especially, fetch a higher price if they are grass fed.
Your crabs may or may not taste odd because of diet. Or, maybe you nailed it, with not being fed for their final days.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday January 04 2018, @08:11PM
The commercial crabs are wild caught but they can end up in a tank for a very long time if you go buy them live. Otherwise they are cooked, frozen, and packaged but it is literally impossible to preserve crab well. It's either fresh or no-way, at least for me.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 04 2018, @09:28PM
As far as I'm concerned, farm raised fish taste like mud - especially tilapia. Ever been to a fish farm? It's not mud, exactly, that they live in, more like a broth of 60% water, 10% mud, 10% algae, and 20% fish poop.
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(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 04 2018, @09:25PM
Yep, after sitting 20' up on an uncomfortable perch in freezing temperatures for 8 hours, most anything else is fast-paced.
We do the same for the fish we catch, would be boating anyway, but the fish are fresher and much better tasting than market bought. Plus, we mostly fish inshore, so we catch smaller, younger fish with much less toxin concentrated in them.
And, we've never taken an animal from our camping land - we lease the land to beekeepers who have had the right to hunt for the last 3 years, and unless they're lying to me, they've yet to take one, either. We've seen a huge doe many times since they've had the lease, our beekeeper told me "we don't take the girls..." seems truthful enough with the big one being as visible as she is.
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