I'm supposed to be asleep because I'm gonna be up early in the morning, but I can't sleep 'cause tomorrow I'm either gonna do Something Really Not Dan, or I'm gonna become a vegetarian.
I know too much about modern factory farming, see. It's not like when we were kids, a farmer and a tractor and a few fields full of cows. It's worse than hell. We've made a hell for animals here on earth and hidden it away so we don't have to look at it before we eat them.
And even outside of the cruelty - and it IS cruel, those animals know they're gonna die - it's killing us. The greenhouse gas emissions from producing beef are just too much.
I just can't bloody do it anymore.
But meat is REALLY TASTY and I CRAVE it when I haven't had it for a couple of weeks and I'm a big ol' belly-driven hypocrite
So I figure tomorrow either I kill a deer in one lights-out shot and eat it, or I stop eating meat, that's where I'm at.
I've never killed an animal that didn't absolutely need to die immediately - think birds and small mammals mauled by cats or hit by cars and dying slowly - and tomorrow I'm gonna go kill one, on purpose, so I can eat it.
Or maybe not, and just be vegetarian, but maybe with, like, clarity? Less regret and longing, knowing I gave it the full try?
I did a lot of target shooting with air rifles when I was younger, and I miss it. It's wonderful and peaceful to hold so utterly, perfectly still. I don't shoot firearms because a hideously loud explosion is a crappy way to end a period of Becoming A Stone calmness, but today I spent a long time calibrating a rifle because I'm not confident I could be humane with a bow.
And by humane I mean lights-out, dead before it hits the ground, never knew what hit it.
Because otherwise why bother, might as well go buy tortured animal chunks from costco and try not to think about it. No, the deal is if I think it'll take longer than a second to die, I don't shoot, and if it wanders off and gets no closer then, well, peanuts are a thing, I don't HAVE to eat animals.
My nana and granddad were farmers. It didn't come out until after my grandma died that she was vegetarian, because it would've been scandalous, how fucked is that?
No deer have come by yet, so I still have no idea whether I'm omnivore or vegetarian.
Reckon it's probably 50/50.
Pretty here though.
Those who know me well know that I think guns are a disease, and all firearms without exception should be banned, confiscated, melted down and recycled into free buttplugs for trans youth on YOUR tax dollar (and I'm maybe 10% joking) but here I am, and look what's been sitting in my lap since half six this morning.
Life takes you some bloody weird places sometimes
Quick break for lunch and now I'm back, me and a firearm sitting in a tree. It's sunnier now so it's pretty nice and chill up here.
My headcanon is that during lunch a hundred deer danced past in tuxedos and top hats doing knee kicks
I came out here wanting a yes-or-no answer to my whole "continuing to eat meat" question, I didn't really think of what'd happen if I never got the opportunity.
Carry on buying meat from the shops until next season I guess?
That wouldn't be a satisfying answer, I hope a deer shows up soon.
Well on the one hand I can report that this deer absolutely did not suffer.
Shot her in the back of her head. She fell over, twitched, rolled a little, that was that. I worried I'd done a bad shot all the way over to her, then I saw that no, that flopping was absolutely autonomic, I'm confident of that.
Ain't nobody gonna want to taxidermy that head, put it that way.
Anyway I feel alright with the shot. It was definitely what I intended, instant, no pain or fear or awareness of mortality.
I would've been happier if she was facing me? But that's probably selfish? Because then I wouldn't be dragging around this beautiful creature with this blown-off flapping-pieces nightmare face, that I had done? To the deer itself it made absolutely no difference anyway? I don't know? Is this why people aim for the heart and lungs?
Anyway we removed her organs and her fur and skin and propped open her ribcage to let everything cool and I get the meat on Tuesday and there'll be enough to last me and my wife and kid for MONTHS. All without the pain and torture and fear that my meat has traditionally involved, but, I mean, let's be fair, with a whole lot of unpleasant staring-into-the-gory-face-of-death that's... probably gonna stick with me for a while
And that might not be a bad thing
Some poor bastard has to kill the animals, is the thing. If we're gonna carry on eating them, like. That's someone's job.
When I have other people do a nasty job for me, say it's replace a starter motor on my car in winter, I have them do it because it's easier for them; they've got a lift and a nice warm workshop, it makes sense. If it'll be just as horrible for them as for me then I might as well do it myself.
I don't think killing animals SHOULD be easy.
Like if you do it enough maybe it gets easier... I don't think that's better. I dunno if that's defensible, that I've participated in making someone numb to that.
And now I'm petting Carl, a cat I love, an animal every bit as warm and beautiful as that deer, the difference being I know him personally and he's probably not as tasty.
If anyone's watching this thread and thinking of trying it themselves, aye, still having intrusive thoughts. Probably gonna be seeing that face for a while.
There's a cost, even if the animal would've had a worse death than the one you gave it, even if it was painless. Maybe especially if it was painless, given how seeing the explosive nature of "painless" drives home how weirdly unnatural it is to die without pain.
I've got eleven kilos of grass-fed, humanely-killed, as-close-to-carbon-neutral-as-I'm-ever-likely-to-get meat in my freezer, enough to last for months on end if we stretch it just a little bit.
This is gonna be the least harmful-to-the-world animal meat I ever eat, and I keep reminding myself of that, because mental health wise it's been a very up and down week. The deer haunts me.
One thing I keep coming back to is the peace of it all, as weird as that sounds.
Having nothing to do but wait for a deer. Watching the squirrels play. Not having any sense of "I can't just Sit and Be, this is frivolous, I should get on with something useful," because the Sitting and Being is literally the job. Being still, being quiet, and watching and listening to the nature all around.
I mean, I did post here a bit, but didn't feel I HAD to.
Another thing I didn't mention at the time, but it struck me; that deer didn't move like a deer, not like the deer I know. The deer that live on our street *creep,* they know they're kinda living in our place, not theirs.
This deer bounded, she frolicked, she was utterly at home and just so, so different from the timid, stealthy deer of my street. Absolutely confident in her mastery of her surroundings.
I actually thought she was a dog at first. She moved like a happy dog. The rifle I was using had no safety catch, ancient bolt-action thing, so I had the action open when I raised the scope to get a closer look at this dog.
Then totally without hesitation or thought or consideration I closed the action, sighted in and exploded her brains from, oh I dunno, maybe sixty metres away.
Guns are HORRIBLY easy to operate.
All day I figured I'd have the deer's head in my sights and think, really think hard, about whether to shoot; I expected to feel doubt in the moment.
But this wasn't like emergency euthenasia of cat-mauled birds or mice, done with my own strength and whatever implement is handy at the time; this was the sort of effort involved with clicking a mouse button and bang, an animal's head explodes.
It was FAR too easy.
The gun takes the physicality out of violence. Takes away the need for strength or cunning or really much effort of any kind. Instead of a moment of finding out whether I'm a vegetarian or not, I had an almost-automatic, no-real-decision kablammo followed by "Oh god."
I feel like I understand how people fire guns with disastrous consequences and then one second later go "Oh god. Oh no. What have I done."
Guns are awful machines.
And then, of course, there's a contradiction there isn't there - because for the death to be humane, you really DO need a high-powered rifle. You need a machine whose sole function is to kill, and kill messily, and do a tremendous amount of damage. So in that respect it did exactly what it's supposed to.
It just can't tell what it's being aimed at.
So yeah. Just an update for anyone still following and wondering whether or not to do what I did last week; it had an emotional impact and a toll on my mental health, I'm not okay, and I expect this impact to last a while longer yet.
I'm still not 100% sure I'm not a vegetarian-in-waiting.
I both regret and don't regret it. It's not an easy or clear-cut thing to process. I don't know whether I'd recommend trying it or not. I learned things I guess?
When I was small, before supermarkets had swallowed the shops, you went to the baker and the greengrocer and the butcher in sequence, and the butchers' was stark white and stank of blood and there were carcasses hanging behind him.
You had a more vivid sense, there, that you were eating animals, a sense that modern supermarkets have kinda hidden away, so when you see a steak you don't think of the cow.
I'm still emotionally all mixed up and the whole experience has probably raised more questions about eating meat than it answered, but I think I've reached one tentative conclusion: it's cruel to make other people do this.
Even if the animal lives a happy, free life and then immediately dies without pain or awareness, it's cruel to make someone do that to them, and if we're gonna carry on doing it then they should be paid a LOT.
It's been another week and I'm coming back for an update.
My mental/emotional health has settled down a bit and I'm feeling more like my usual self. We haven't eaten any of "my" deer yet, but we had some of last years' deer (shot by my hunting companion) marinated in fajita form, and now having such intimate experience of The Toll I suggested we try and stretch it a bit.
So we included rice in the fajitas and used less meat than we were planning to and it was just as delicious, maybe moreso.
So, I'm eating less meat, and treating the meat I do eat less as a Default Filler Material, and enjoying that meat more, which is good.
Meat feels more important now, more of a Big Deal. Which is also good.
So I guess now that the horror has scabbed over a bit I'm inclined towards calling this a worthwhile experience?
@ifixcoinops Yeah, I remember going to the butcher's with Mum as a boy... that cold smell.
I just wanted to say thanks for this thread, it's some pretty remarkable thinking-out-loud.
(I went veg, not vegan, about 15 years ago, mostly as a response to factory farming. Don't feel good about eggs and dairy but found vegan lifestyle difficult to maintain.)
@ifixcoinops it’s tough. I went vegetarian for four years after I had to put a sick rabbit down. I saw the hypocrisy. However with my fast metabolism, vegetarianism was not good for me. I see the environmental costs too.
I don’t know. But I admire you for doing this.
Question: Did you have experience shooting before this?
@colorblindcowboy Lots, yes, that's why I felt okay with trying it and being confident in a shot to the brain. Not as much with firearms, but I spent a lot of my childhood in England plinking at targets with air guns, because the calmer and stiller you can be, the better a shot you are. Plus out in nature is always nice :)
I'm as anti-gun a person as you're ever likely to meet but I honestly recommend air-rifle marksmanship as a cheap and rewarding hobby. :)
@currentbias @ifixcoinops Yeesh, that hits home for me. I was adjacent to that as a teen - Dad and I picked up "bobby calves" (waste product of the dairy industry) for a while, and I should probably unpack what it did to me someday, but not today.
We'd buy+use our own ammo because if we didn't, things were much worse, so we never brought a live one in. That experience probably would have turned me vegan if not for the same stupid craving Dan's got.
@fwaggle @currentbias A recurring theme throughout this thread and replies is it really only takes a couple of up-close-and-personal Experiences to make a person reevaluate the meat-as-default-filler-material mindset huh
Probably why the slaughterhouses are so quietly tucked away
@ifixcoinops @usernameswift
I bet.
I had to kill a trapped dying mouse once, and instinctively held back so much I couldn't do it in one hammer-blow.
Hunting isn't scalable to the population-size. We can't all do it and also have wildlife.
Factory farming is a murderous horror show that is so distressing they won't let you film it.
Dairy isn't much better and I ought to quit that too.
The vege burgers aren't even bad now.
@ifixcoinops my understanding is that heart/lungs because it's a larger target and "more likely" to be fast.
note: am not a hunter, so YMMV
@ifixcoinops It's been a very long time since I hunted, but as a kid I was taught to aim for the heart/lungs because the head shot is *hard*. Not just "smaller target" but the head moves a *lot* very quickly, so there's a lot of random chance involved in getting an actual brain shot.
I do remember being taught not to let the animal suffer - take the shot, aim for the clean kill, and then you best bust your ass getting there to end the animal's suffering.
Congratulations! :D
Have a stamp on your meat licence. :D
Similar stories from helping out with one of the common flocks back in Scotland. :D
You don't really appreciate the taste until it's an animal that you helped birth, dug out of snowdrifts in winter, shear in autumn, and, slaughtered & butchered for leather & meat. :D
"You can take the bumpkin out of the country, but... " :D
@Austin_Dern folk around me today congratulated me on the shot, I'm looking down at this no-longer-a-head and going well I'm not exactly proud of this
Aye congratulations isn't quite the right thing at all, more like... relief?
@ifixcoinops Yeah, maybe relief is it.
Well, I hope this brings you nearer the answers you're hoping to find.
@ifixcoinops as there are no apex predators in the west of Ireland, the deer have to be managed.
Although venison is very much an acquired taste and you need a big freezer ... but at least when consuming it you don't have quite the same ethical / environment concerns.
Being aghast at factory farming and trying your hand at hunting feels more like a step to make yourself feel better than actually decreasing suffering. An animal is still going to experience fear and pain and death because your needs are more important to you than theirs.
No one can decide whether killing something to avoid suffering a craving is healthy balance but you, but in my experience the cravings stop after a few weeks
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