With hunting season progressing, I’ve been thinking about the wildlife surrounding me.
It’s a notable day when I don’t see deer nearby, or at least the evidence they leave behind. Over the summer, they ate all the buckwheat I planted, nibbled the tops off my cucumbers, stunting their growth and lowering my harvest.
The deer (I suspect exploring fawns based on the height of damage and size of the hoof prints) also pruned my pole beans — eating all the leaves in the middle of the poles, leaving the leaves at the top and very bottom.
The result reminded me of poodles. While not a bad association, it did significantly impact my harvest of the heirloom Fat Man pole beans.
Even with these losses, I got off easy this year — some years the deer take down the whole garden.
The fencing attempts I’ve made thus far have not kept deer out of my garden, nor have most natural repellents (Deer Off liquid fence works for short intervals).
Although I’m a lifelong vegetarian and would love to peacefully coexist, I’ve come to believe that since the deer no longer have natural predators, humans do have to participate in population control if I want to eat vegetables I grow.
Not surprisingly, I know a lot of folks who hunt and who eat venison. This makes sense to me, since it seems like a natural and healthy option — we all know I believe in eating lots of local food, plus it’s meat without added hormones, etc.
Knowing we have such an overpopulation, I was floored when I learned recently that venison is imported from New Zealand.
Years ago, I learned that in the United Kingdom it is more environmentally friendly to import lamb from New Zealand than to raise it locally, because in the UK there is not as much pastureland so the animals have to be fed grain.
The overall process of growing and harvesting grain produces more fossil fuel emissions than are produced by shipping purely pastured lamb from halfway across the globe.
But venison from New Zealand to the U.S.?
After a little research I learned that European settlers introduced deer to hunt for sport into the Islands. Of course, the population got out of control and deer started damaging local landscapes. Invasive species, anyone?
Then Kiwis figured out that venison was a profitable export, with large markets in China, Europe and the United States.
The deer were over-hunted before deer farming began. Now in New Zealand, there are about 2,000 farmers with roughly one million deer.
As of a few years ago, 25% of New Zealand venison exports came to the U.S. That meat was put into fancy pet foods and restaurants. Fancy restaurants serve New Zealand venison (sometimes advertised as elk), and even Arby’s bought 50 tons of venison steak for a limited-time burger in 2017 and 2018 (maybe in the last couple years too, I’m not totally up to date on Arby’s news).
Per my (albeit limited) understanding, the main reason that we can’t put our own deer into this major market is that we don’t have the systems set up for it. We lack regulations and testing in place to ensure quality of wild deer meat.
Apparently, venison is quite a healthy meat — good for humans and animals. Since we have so much of it available, I wish we could set up the necessary regulatory systems and help balance our ecosystem and economy at the same time.
