This is long, and I apologize in advance.

Today I found myself in an odd position. ADT was coming to place more sensors at some windows in the afternoon, and the morning was relatively booked, as I was going to the gym, going to vote, and taking the dog for a walk (since we'd be stuck around the house all day waiting for ADT).

Well ADT threw me a loop and showed up early. I still had a towel on my head from the shower, but I was thrilled that I now had the entire afternoon to do as I pleased. Did some much needed cleaning around the house, putting junk away and generally straightening up things. Surfed the web for a little. Scrubbed the floor (joy of joys). Got the mail and discovered something that I wanted to return ASAP, so Sawyer and I went for another walk. What a lucky dog!

As we're leaving the house, we encounter another woman with a dog that looks like a relatively young labradoodle. I have issues with people paying big bucks for designer dogs, but thats not really something I spout off about while on a walk. She made the turn into the park and we continued on to the mailbox at the end of the street.

At the next turn for the park, she emerges and asks me if I saw the big buck. Sadly, I had not. I responded that someone was going to get a great surprise when they find him. Her response is what prompted this blog posting. She said "Well hopefully he won't end up on a dinner plate or with his antlers in the den."

Those of you that know me know that we don't purchase beef in our house. We eat venison. Ejdo and his father hunt whenever they get the chance, and the deer they harvest provide enough meat for 10 people each year, plus some. We butcher the deer at home, make the sausages and jerky at home, and feel very good about the food that we eat and the impact we make on the environment.

When this woman made that comment, she obviously had no idea about my family and our connection to hunting. She had no idea that a very large part of my job is coordinating deer hunts. She simply knew what pop culture, Disney, and PETA have told her. She thinks hunting and eating venison is a bad thing.

How can we as hunters/anglers/foragers change the minds of people like this? What methods can we employ to educate others on why it is good not only for me, but for the environment, to harvest this deer? There has to be a way we can get our point across without becoming a joke like I feel PETA has. PETA has some good ideas, but the extremists invalidate their name.

IMO, harvesting deer for food purposes is one of the best things the average person can do for themself and the environment. The removal of a single doe can have a huge impact on the number of deer in our forests. There are already far too many deer in Northern VA, and if you look at the woods, you can see it. The natural, native understory does not exist in many places, because the deer have eaten everything. This vastly affects the way that entire ecosystem exists. If a similar ecosystem were allowed to advance for 50+ years, the large, mature overstory trees would die and there would be nothing to replace them. Our forests would begin to disappear. The above argument doesn't even touch upon the loss of predators within much of America and the fact that other than the hunter, the only predator many whitetailed deer encounter is the SUV.

As for the human impact, the beef that you can find in the average grocery store is only somewhat similar to "actual" beef. Many commercial cattle operations feed the cattle corn, which is not what beef have evloved to eat. This alters the fats held within the meat (corn is mainly a carrier of Omega-6 fats, while grass carries Omega-3). In addition to an altered diet, many cattle operations innoculate their cattle with antibiotics and hormones to encourage good health and proper growth. These antibiotics and hormones are passed on to the consumer upon consumption. One major issue associated with this is that many Americans are now developing immunities to these antibiotics, and when they get sick, the drugs no longer work. Some theorize that these hormones are contributing to the issue of young girls entering puberty earlier than in the past.

Venison is lower in fat than beef, so low in fact that we have to add pork fat to our ground venison to make it bind together for burger. As deer still prefer to eat clover, grass, acorns, and soybeans to corn, they are much higher in the helpful Omega-3 fats. Deer move quite a bit, with some having daily ranges of up to 1 mile, and their muscles and heart are in much better shape than a cow that is kept in a feed lot. The culinary world is beginning to embrace venison as a specialty meat more and more, and you can purchase venison by the pound at stores like Whole Foods. Small steaks can go for up to $20 a pound.

I wanted to tell this woman "I understand that you don't know me or what I do, but I feel that your statement is extremely one sided and rather ignorant." But I didn't. I kept walking and let her feel the akwardness of the situation. She has the right to her opinion. She doesn't have to share it with everyone she meets. Someday I hope to be able to educate her, but today was not that day.