An Update on Hunting Wild Boar in Texas

My sister who lives in Midland, Texas, called me after reading the previous post about wild boar to say that she personally knows many hunters in West Texas who love to hunt wild boar, that it’s their favorite animal to hunt, and that they do indeed eat the meat and also donate it to food banks. Whew! I am genuinely relieved and happy to hear it. That’s more like the Texas I know. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me to ask her in the first place before I went off half-cocked based on a story I read in The Atlantic Monthly (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200911/texas-hog).

Talk about being detached from the source.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how much we live in niches and how little we make the connections that would greatly increase understanding. For instance, the writer and his editors for the Atlantic article either had not read Pollan or had not made the connection between Pollan and the situation in Texas, nor had they talked to enough hunters in West Texas. (Or they simply chose to spin the story the way they did even knowing these factors.) To compound matters, I didn’t think to ask my Texas relatives what they knew about the situation. I just didn’t make the connection. It might also very well be that the sources for the Atlantic article haven’t connected with the hunters my sister knows either. It’s a big state, and maybe all these players don’t know one another. Maybe there are multiple stories, and it just depends on who you talk to.

Here’s to a more complete picture! May we all make the connections that increase understanding and knowledge. And next time, I will ask my sister before I make any sweeping statements about Texas.

Wild Boar

My name means “courageous like a wild boar,” which is funny because right now I’m obsessed over the fact that Texas—the home of my birth—is overrun with wild boar. According to the November issue of The Atlantic Monthly (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200911/texas-hog), Texas is experiencing a surge of wild boar in suburban neighborhoods, where they are decidedly out of place. But instead of mobilizing all those Texas hunters to hunt, kill, dress, and eat the wild boar, like one might expect from such a macho, gun-toting state as Texas, the state government is trying to figure out ways to poison and sterilize them. In other words, instead of seeing the boar as an inexpensive and handy food source, these officials are destroying them for no gain.

When will we ever learn that every problem is an opportunity? There are plenty of hungry people in Texas and plenty of wild boar and plenty of hunters. Let’s put them together.

I just finished reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, in which he concludes his investigation of our options in the American food system by preparing what he calls “the perfect meal,” whose main course is wild boar. He, a Jewish boy from New York with no hunting or gun experience whatsoever, learns to hunt wild boar successfully. He finds it a spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually uplifting experience that attunes him to the life cycles of nature and properly directs human aggression and killing instincts, while also allowing the boar to assert its nature and be a valuable part of the chain of life. He also finds the meat quite tasty. The whole experience of hunting, killing, dressing, cooking, and eating wild boar is the culmination of his exploration of the four basic options for obtaining food today: industrial food systems, industrial-organic mega-companies, small truly organic farms, and hunting and gathering our own food.

Meanwhile back in Texas, where the wild boar roam free, lots of financially strapped people are eating McDonalds or Whataburger and filling up on foods loaded with high fructose corn syrup. People in desperate need of real food and real nutrition, who are strapped for cash and probably bored out of their minds with “Dancing with the Stars” and Happy Meals, working mind-numbing, repetitive, cog-in-the-machine type jobs, don’t know there’s this whole other world of possibilities out there. Let’s train ‘em to hunt wild boar and process and prepare the meat, so they can eat. If it were only so simple…

Pollan says the hunter-gatherer model is no longer viable because we have too many people and too few resources, but here in this instance, we have the opposite situation: too many resources and too few people who know what to do with them, and no way to mobilize people to take advantage of the opportunity.

Why haven’t people in Texas figured out a solution that takes advantage of the abundant meat source themselves? Why are they struggling with manifestly over-the-top ideas like gunning hogs down from planes? What are they doing with the carcasses? Have we really become so detached from reality that we don’t even know a cheap and nutritious food source when we see one? Why would we throw away this opportunity?

The real obstacle here is one of detachment from the elemental nature of life. We drive cars to and fro, buying food in stores where it’s wrapped in plastic, with no consciousness of where our food came from or what it is and what it took to produce it and where we fit in the cycle of life.

Sitting here in New York City, writing this, I’m not about to go hunt wild boar myself, and it’s easy for me to criticize, but I’ve been to Texas and seen the freeways and suburbs stretching far and wide, so I know what the problem is, and I feel the conundrum, and it has woken up the wild boar in me. May we all wake up and smell the bacon. Teach us to know food when we see it, and stop overcomplicating life and take advantage of the bounty we are given.

Happy Thanksgiving, and welcome to the season of light!