The Careful Carnivore

Gratitude for holiday wild game traditions

And for a new one: cannon-fire!

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We are in the season of traditions and memories.

Growing up, I knew duck hunting was the first thing on the agenda Thanksgiving morning at my great aunt’s house.

Squeaking floorboards, clinking coffee cups, and the deep rumble of the uncles discussing strategy were the sounds of the predawn darkness. You had to be 13 years old to go on the hunt. On the year I’m remembering, my cousin Beau had just turned 13 and was trying to look serious during the planning session, though his feet, not quite touching the floor, were dancing. I was still a year too young. I had petitioned for an exception but was denied. I had to stay home with the “too-littles” and the rest of the family. Again.

About mid-morning, when the turkey was in the oven and the first rush of cooking prep was over, the hunting party returned. They had an array of duck species and I was fascinated with the color and sheen of the feathers. There were little rainbows on their wings.

We helped finish preparing the ducks for the freezer, because those ducks would be part of Christmas dinner. Beau had not gotten a duck, but as often happens with hunting, something else occurred that gave him the gift of a good memory. A deer had walked past him at arm’s length, gotten a drink from the river and eased back into the woods. Beau’s eyes were wide as he told his story and he still whispered so he wouldn’t spook the deer.

Grown up and married at our own tables, Thanksgiving was often venison Wellington. On the good plates.

This time of year, if I take time to be thankful, it’s hard to stop.

I’m thankful for the deer that feed us through the winter but also thankful for all the people and ideas and work that it took for that deer to be there. People forget that not only did this country almost lose the bison, but also turkeys, deer and waterfowl in many areas because of over-harvest, market hunting and habitat loss.

That venison was on the table thanks to the idea from the colonists that the wildlife should belong to the people and not the king or individual land owner, thanks to the crazy idea of public land, game laws and seasons and bag limits that allow for harvest but still maintain the populations. Thanks to wildlife biologists and game wardens who figure out the methods and enforce the rules. Thanks to individuals like Aldo Leopold, the father of the American science of wildlife management and the wilderness conservation system. Thanks to the people who taught us to hunt safely and conscientiously, properly care for and prepare the meat we had taken. Thank you.

And thank heavens for fun traditions afield.

Just this fall, I went back to South Carolina for a family reunion. Back with the people who had given me some of my first memories of early mornings, bird dogs, and hunting stories. All of us “too-littles” from that Thanksgiving at my great aunt’s house now have gray hair or a distinct lack of it.

We gathered at the farm that had been in the family since before the Revolutionary War (yeah, that 1776 thing). There was the regular reunion food, photo albums and storytelling but there was also skeet shooting. Beau shot a rather respectable round. Then the group moved from skeet to the cannon.

Yes, the cannon.

My cousins have a real working cannon! (I think it gets used in revolutionary or civil war reenactments, but one does not ask a cousin a lot of personal questions about where he got his cannon.) They loaded it just like you see in the movies, then inserted the fuse and lit it. And waited, and waited, and (then commentary about why the South lost the Civil War) …  wait for it ... BOOM!  A seismic, bone-rattling boom. There was a big cloud of smoke and what looked like confetti. Someone asked what they had loaded in the cannon to get all the confetti and the answer was toilet paper! I was now part of another family tradition.

Retired U.S. Forest Service wildlife biologist Beth Kennedy was a hunter education instructor for both firearm and bowhunter safety for more than 20 years.