Eating Local

This past weekend I went out and ate extremely local. The kind of local where you see your food living that morning and by supper time its in your belly. I went squirrel hunting for the fourth or fifth time this year (in my whole life actually), but this hunting trip was different because I actually saw some squirrels.


When people asked me how my weekend was and what I did they usually had pretty disgusted looks when I told them I went squirrel hunting. This is somewhat surprising to me in the state of Alabama because not too long ago squirrel was probably a fairly common meal for most of the residents of this state. As a matter of fact, when you get just an hour or so out of the city you will find that eating squirrel is nothing special.

Even though squirrel is not the tastiest of meats, that was not my main motivation for hunting that morning. As always, my morning spent in the woods was pretty amazing. The first squirrel showed himself to me not five minutes after I had made myself comfortable under a tree. I was shocked. I have spent numerous fruitless hours in the woods barking and calling squirrels, hoping to deceive them into revealing their locations without any luck, and here there was this young squirrel coming right up to me.


I wasn't wearing camouflage so I remained very still. He approached and passed within ten feet of me on the ground. He knew I was something strange, but didn't know what to make of me. At first I was tempted to let him go. He looked small. But then I realized that squirrels really aren't that big to begin with. As I watched him begin to ascend a tree I started thinking about all the times I had passed squirrels in the quad, tossing them a piece of fruit or acorns, but never been able to actually bag one of these elusive creatures in the wild.

As I considered all these things, the squirrel stopped, looked at me. And started shaking his tail at me. I knew it was a matter of seconds before he began to bark at me, a warning to his arboreal comrades. I decided enough was enough and it was time to end this. I came around the tree I sat under, coming up into a kneeling position as I turned my body. The bead of the shotgun went to the squirrel reflexively as I took my finger off the trigger guard and squeezed the trigger, sending a volley of No. 6 death towards the arrogant critter.

As always happens to me after I take a creature's life, whether it be a deer, fish, or ant, I began to feel a terrible remorse. This is the product of being raised by hippies who taught me to respect all life. Contrary to what some in my family and circle of friends might think, I maintain that it is possible to respect a creature even while you take its life. I brought the squirrel back to my tree and ensured that his life ended as quickly as possible and hoped it was as comfortable as possible, considering I had just shot him.

After sitting with my first kill for some time I decided to walk a bit down to the river, where I heard the squirrels were plentiful. I set my squirrel down under one tree and then sat down across the trail from him. Within 30 seconds of sitting down I sensed a presence above me. I looked up to see a mature red-tailed hawk sitting on a branch just above me, obviously eyeing my squirrel friend. He was just as surprised to see me and flew off. I picked up my squirrel and returned to my first spot, determined not to compete with the local residents for food, they probably need it more than me.

Within a short time I had killed another squirrel and met back up with my fellow hunters. Altogether we killed 10 squirrels. A pretty successful hunt, even though Alabama law allows 8 squirrels per hunter per day. We took the harvest back to our camp, cleaned them, and submitted the meat to the chefs. That night we feasted on squirrel with dumplings and home grown vegetables in a rather luxurious log cabin. As I ate I thought about how I was probably experiencing something that I could relate to my forefathers with, who subsided off of the small game their elders taught them to hunt. I took a second to appreciate this, then returned to watching Deal or No Deal and gnawing on a bone.