Call of the Mild: Learning to Hunt My Own Dinner

Author: Lily Raff McCaulou

Rating: ⭐ 4/5

Date Read: 2013/08/07

Pages: 336

Hunting gets a bad rap. At least in the U.S., liberals (full disclosure: I’m very liberal) seem to think of hunters as NRA-obsessed redneck whack jobs who think the world would be safer if everyone shot everyone else. I’ll get my politics out of the way upfront: I believe in extraordinarily tight gun control, including extensive background checks and limits as to which types of guns can be purchased. I think buying a gun for “self-defense” is bullshit, and I’m disgusted by the fact that I live in a country where people are free to murder children on the street in broad daylight, without any fear of retribution. Actually, I think hunting is the only valid reason to purchase a gun.

However, in Call of the Mild, Lily Raff McCaulous dispels the “hunters as gun-crazed rednecks” stereotype. A liberal herself, she notes that only a small percentage of gun owners actually hunt, and that these hunters seem to care more about the environment than urban, vegan Prius owners. Raff McCaulou took up hunting, not because her parents hunted, but because she wanted to feel more connected to the source of her food.

I found this to be a thought-provoking memoir, especially since it presents a balanced viewpoint of what it means to hunt. Raff McCaulou notes the hypocrisy of animal-loving vegetarians who despise hunting on principle, as hunting is usually necessary for population control. She writes “Before I began to hunt, I thought of animals as individuals, with families and emotions and a whole slew of anthropomorphic traits. This strikes me as the environmentalist, vegetarian, animal lover’s approach: Any death of any individual being is painful and bad. The trouble is, I now think of animals as members of a population and as individuals. It makes for a lot of hand-wringing. But maybe it’s a necessary paradox; it’s what makes me a responsible hunter.” She also notes that, in one survey, 60% of self-identified vegetarians ate meat within the last 24 hours. Not that she’s trying to skewer vegetarians. Instead, she calls into question the idea that the best thing for animals is for people to blindly adopt a vegetarian diet. Like most difficult issues, it’s much more complicated than that.

This isn’t a well-known book, which is a shame. I heartily recommend it, especially for foodies who dig the farm to table concept.