DayBreak

Tovar Cerulli has AOH, an increasingly common syndrome. The symptoms appeared in his 30s and were somewhat of a surprise. AOH is the acronym for what Cerulli terms Adult Onset Hunting. Prior to developing a case of AOH, Cerulli was a vegan.

Cerulli is among the growing cadre of people who take up hunting as an outgrowth of their desire to eat healthy, locally produced food even though they may have a deep-seated aversion to killing other creatures. The story of his journey from eating no animal products to killing and butchering deer delivers a fresh perspective to the Vermont writer’s new book, The Mindful Carnivore, A Vegetarian's Hunt for Sustenance.

In a recent telephone interview, Cerulli said he enjoyed fishing when he was growing up. As a teen he began to question eating meat due to what he learned about the ethical aspects of animal welfare and the ecological effects of growing corn and other grains solely as livestock feed. At age 20, he caught a trout and while killing it had a profound feeling of doubt and regret.

"Killing the fish felt unnecessary, because I realized I could eat other things," he said.

He became a vegetarian and then a vegan--someone who doesn’t eat any animal products and, by doing so, purports to cause no harm to other creatures. He followed a vegan diet for about a decade, but eventually found himself with low energy and other health concerns. His doctor and his wife suggested adding animal products to his diet might help him feel better.

"So my wife and I took a radical step and started eating yogurt and eggs," Cerulli said.

He started feeling better. Soon he was eating fish and locally raised chickens, too. At the same time, Cerulli developed a growing awareness of the negative impacts of agriculture on the environment and wildlife—land cleared for crop production supports no other life. He pondered how a vegan diet indirectly relies upon animals. Even organic farmers kill deer to minimize crop depredation and use the manure of domestic animals as fertilizer. Such thoughts began to complicate his view of responsible eating.

“Even my garden had consequences,” he said.

To become personally involved in catching and killing his food, Cerulli took up fishing again. Then he started thinking about hunting—quite a leap for someone who once considered eating yogurt as dietary radicalism. But he enjoyed spending time in the woods and thought killing a deer would provide him with free-range meat while causing less suffering for the animal than factory farming and leaving a minimal ecological footprint. At the very least, hunting would deepen his connection to the landscape.

Once he decided to try hunting, he had to learn how to do it. He corresponded with an uncle living on Cape Cod who was a hunter. Taking the state’s hunter safety class, he discovered most of his classmates were 12-year-olds. He read books about hunting and acquired the necessary gear. His first quarry was a snowshoe hare and he decided to wait another year before attempting deer hunting.

Inexperienced and short on confidence, he began deer hunting alone. Cerulli enjoyed the sights and sounds of being in the woods, but wasn’t successful. Once he happened upon where another hunter had field-dressed a deer and discarded a pair of plastic gloves used in the process, which he found offensive. Late in the season he hunted with his uncle on Cape Cod. and helped process a small deer his uncle killed.

Cerulli hunted for four years before he had success and then he wasn’t sure it was worth the wait. Taking the life of an deer triggered unsuspected emotions.

“I was mostly in shock. It took so long for me to succeed in the hunt and suddenly this animal was dead,” he said.

Most hunters say they feel a mixture of elation and sadness when they make a kill, but Cerulli just felt grief and confusion. He was unsure he wanted to continue hunting until he butchered the deer. Something about the process of taking apart the animal and converting it to food brought him to a place where he wanted to hunt again. Since then, he’s killed several deer and, although it remains an emotional experience, he no longer feels what he calls “the intensity of the initial storm.” Instead, for a day or two afterward, he becomes deeply introspective and reflects upon the reality of killing to live.

As a former vegan, this is perhaps the most radical step he’s taken. Once, he believed, as do many vegans, that unintentional harm to other creatures, such as eliminating habitat to create a plowed field, was a better option. Now he thinks otherwise.

“I’ve found to my surprise I prefer the occasional intended killing,” he said. “I face it, deal with it and make my peace with it.”

The biggest lesson Cerulli has derived from becoming a hunter is the moral ambiguity of human existence. He said a basic dilemma of being human is the contrast between a desire to be moral and compassionate and the harm to other creatures or the environment resulting from human actions. In the modern world, we are mostly unaware of the ecological or moral implications of the food and other products we purchase in a store, because we do not see the factory farm or the strip mine where it originated.

“Much of my perspective is rooted in the idea that humans are part of Nature and ecological systems, “ he said. “We are participants, rather than overlords.”

Cerulli intends to remain a hunter and continue thinking about hunting. Having returned to graduate school, his master’s thesis explored the concept of adult onset hunting. Now working toward a PhD, he is examining hunting and its relationship to place and land. He isn’t sure where this academic path may lead, although he expects to become involved with educational efforts and research associated with hunting and, more broadly, the relationship between the food we eat and the landscape. For a yogurt-eating radical, he’s come a long way.

Airdate: February 24, 2012

Photo courtesy of Malevda on Flickr.

Recently, a chef who wrote a book about hunting and cooking was interviewed on Minnesota Public Radio. She talked about making a recent trip to Colorado to do a cooking demonstration. While there, she was taken fly-fishing on a local river, where the guides and other anglers refused to keep fish for her to use in her demonstration. She told the MPR interviewer she was miffed by their catch-and-release ethic.

"I don't believe in catch-and-release," she said. "It's playing with your food."

The interviewer smugly agreed. As a listener, I smiled at the irony. Here's a woman who travels around the country catching, killing and cooking critters as part of her business enterprise--and she's accusing some conservation-minded anglers of playing with their food? As the interview continued, the chef portrayed anglers who release fish as well-meaning but misguided nature lovers. For her, the only reason to participate in fishing or hunting was to bring home something to eat.

Very recently, we've seen a welcome surge in epicurean hunter-gatherers, folks who are drawn to the outdoors as a source of healthy food. Arguably, this offshoot of the healthy foods movement has done more to rejuvenate hunting and fishing than a decade's worth of youth recruitment efforts. It's attracted men and women who have no background or mentors in hunting and fishing. Not only must they learn outdoor skills, but they also must find places to put them to use--a daunting task in places where sprawl dominates the landscape.

Many of these new hunters and anglers say they find interacting with Nature to procure food is a profound human experience, which gives them an appreciation of hunting and fishing traditions. However, because they've come to hunting and fishing on their own, they are minimally aware that the current abundance of wildlife, whether Canada geese on a metropolitan golf course or trout in a mountain stream, is not an accident. It took a century of conservation to restore North American fish and wildlife to the present abundance.

The conservation story, both present and past, is on the periphery of the American mainstream. We may learn in a high school history class about Teddy Roosevelt's role in the formation of the national parks system, but that's about it. We learn very little about the nearly complete destruction of America's fish and wildlife resources in the pioneer era and even about the remarkable century of conservation that led to their recovery.

At the turn of the 20th century, populations of many common wildlife species, including white-tailed deer, wild turkeys, beavers and Canada geese, were severely depleted and absent from much of their original range due to indiscriminate killing and habitat loss. The turnaround began when forward-thinking leaders such as Roosevelt began managing wildlife, a public resource, for the benefit of the common man. Commercial harvests of game and fish were curtailed. The public's fish and wildlife resources were made available to all through regulated hunting and fishing under a system intended to provide the common man with enjoyment as well as sustenance. Licenses are required to participate in these activities, with the proceeds dedicated to fish and wildlife management.

The North American wildlife management model successfully restored a host of fish and wildlife species. White-tailed deer, wild turkeys, beavers and Canada geese are now commonplace or even localized nuisances. The new hunters who just recently become aware of these critters may take this abundance for granted. They don't know that just a few decades ago, a turkey gobbling at dawn or the cries of a passing flock of geese were rare, wild music.

The same is true for fishing. In North America's freshwater fisheries, the restoration of self-sustaining, wild fish populations is a relatively recent phenomenon. Throughout most of the 20th century, we allowed our fisheries to decline as we followed management strategies allowing anglers to catch and kill lots of native fish. When catch rates tumbled and anglers complained of poor fishing, hatchery-reared fished were stocked to make up for natural deficits.

Gradually, we learned if wild fish have clean water and healthy habitat, they can maintain self-sustaining populations. We also learned anglers can easily overharvest wild fish in many waters, from pristine trout streams to vast natural lakes. Using regulations, we limit angling harvests to quantities the fishery can sustain. On some waters, allowing every angler to kill just one fish creates a total harvest that is more than the fishery can bear. So, to permit the common man to derive enjoyment, if not sustenance, from a public resource, we limit angling to catch and release. Within this context, it is unfair to anglers to call catch-and-release fishing “playing with your food.”

I suspect most of the new arrivals to hunting and fishing will develop an awareness and appreciation for conservation as they gain field experience and integrate into the sporting tradition. I am less hopeful the principles of conservation will ever resonate with the non-outdoor-oriented mainstream. For many, maybe a majority of Americans, the only time they encounter wildlife is when they brake for a deer crossing the highway. They are barely aware of wildlife's existence, much less what deer need for habitat and protection from people to thrive.

We have entered an era where many people take the essentials of life--clean air and clean water--for granted. Some even say we can relax existing pollution regulations because they are no longer necessary. It is hard to imagine we have so quickly forgotten the recent past, when an American river caught on fire and air pollution in some cities obscured the sun. While we've made substantial progress in pollution control, it has only occurred within a regulatory framework that--like wildlife conservation--is intended to benefit the common man.

The new hunters and anglers are unlikely to buy into this cavalier attitude toward pollution prevention. They'll seek healthy habitat to procure healthy food. Hopefully, they'll come to understand conservation well enough to demand policies and regulations ensuring the food foragers bring home is safe to eat. If it isn't safe, all hunting and fishing will truly be playing with our food.

Airdate: January 20, 2012

Photo courtesy of heathzib via Flickr.

Empty Bowls, an international event to raise money to fight hunger while promoting art and community action, takes place at the First Congregation Church in Grand Marais this coming Thursday. Artists, community members, and students at every school in the county came together to make bowls and to help support our local food shelf.

On the Monday before the annual Empty Bowls event in Grand Marais down to the wire preparations are underway at the Art Colony. With just a few days to go, volunteers work tirelessly to get things done. Ann Ward is a potter and volunteer for the event she says the last week has been full of back to back kiln firings and community glazing workshops, “It’s been a lot of pretty busy days and nights,” says Ward.

Ward has personally thrown more than 100 bowls for the event. In addition to her own work, she’s helped many other folks in the community with making their own creations for the fundraiser.

Shining a light on hunger in our community is more important than ever. The number of folks seeking help has skyrocketed in the last year. Jan Parish works for the county’s Health and Human Services Department and had been taking a close look at the numbers of people seeking food support. She says, “We’ve seen a great increase in our case load. We’ve started tracking the caseloads from 2006 through 2010 on a chart and the numbers that we see in 2010 are at least double the 2006 and 2007 numbers.”

To be exact, the county has seen an increase of 130 percent in the last year. Overall the state of Minnesota has seen a greater demand for food support since the onset of the economic downturn, but the local growth in need surpasses the state-wide growth by percentage. “State-wide,” says Parish, “the increase for September, comparing that to 2005, is 86 percent. So actually Cook County has seen a little higher increase in the food support need than state-wide.”

The increase in demand for assistance doesn’t stop at the county’s Health and Human Services Department. It’s the same story at the local food shelf. Amy Demmer is the director of the Art Colony in Grand Marais, which right now could be well described as Empty Bowls central. Most of what needs to get done to pull the event off locally happens right at the Art Colony. Demmer says she and other folks on the Empty Bowls committee gathered data on the need in our community. “What we found,” says Demmer, “is that last year we were saying that 75 families in our community use the food shelf from month to month and that had increased from 50 families the year before. Now it’s 100 kids and 160 adults that are using the food shelf every month.”

Demmer is fired up about this year’s event and that’s not just because her office sits right above the Art Colony’s kiln. “We have people in our community that are hungry,” says Demmer, “and it’s not this abstract thing of you know people hungry in Africa—there’s people hungry here in Cook County. You know 10 percent of the people in our county, over 500 people, use some sort of food support program every month…and that doesn’t even address those that remain silent in their need.”

Demmer says she hopes the event helps address the silence and stigma surrounding the issue of hunger. “One of the really interesting facts we found out is that for every $5 in food support it generates $9.20 in economic activity for our community,” says Demmer. “That’s a really powerful figure that says when people spend that it creates economic activity in our community and that says that this is a really good thing for our community,” Demmer concludes.

Empty Bowls is this Thursday, Nov. 11. This year, there will be both a lunch seating from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and a dinner seating from 5 to 7 p.m. at the First Congregational Church in Grand Marais. Between then and now you can bet the kiln at the Art Colony will be going non-stop. But for Grand Marais Potter and event volunteer Joan Farnam, the big pay off comes when the public gets a look at all the hand-crafted pots, “Well I’ll tell you what,” says Farnam, “for me personally there’s nothing like seeing a table full of bowls that the community has made, that are beautiful, and are donated to help other people. I love it!”

A bowl of soup costs $10, but you keep the bowl and the money raised goes to the Cook County Food Shelf.

The election turnout in Cook County was once again large with 77 percent of registered voters casting their ballots. The highest turnout was in Cascade Precinct 7 with 89 percent of the eligible voters voting.
 

The Cook County Schools ISD166 Operating Levy Referendum won approval from voters. The final vote total was 1,487 yes and 1,336 no.
 
In county commissioner contests, incumbent Janice Hall kept her District 1 seat defeating Bill Hennessy 315 to 134. In Commissioner District 3 Sue Hakes defeated Lloyd Speck 361 to 261. In the 5th District it was incumbent Bruce Martinson winning over Diane Parker 387 to 215.
 
The Grand Marais mayoral race saw write-in candidate Larry “Bear” Carlson defeat former mayor Mark Sandbo with 329 votes to Sandbo's 308. For city council the two winners were Bob Spry with 357 votes and incumbent Bill Lenz with 355 votes. Dave Palmer placed third with 332 votes.
 
For ISD166 school board, Mary Sanders ran unopposed in District 3 and got 463 votes. Jeanne Anderson got 328 votes in District 5. Challenger Michael O’Phelan had dropped out of the race but his name remained on the ballot and he got 217 votes. In ISD166 District 1, Deb White pulled 298 votes to Andrew Warren’s 116.

The 6th District Court race went to Mike Cuzzo, who topped Tim Costly with 60 percent of the vote. Locally the breakdown was a bit different with Tim Costly getting slightly more votes than Mike Cuzzo (1,283 to 1,240).
 
DFL 8th Congressional Rep. Jim Oberstar was defeated by Republican challenger Chip Cravaak. In Cook County however, Oberstar took more votes than Cravaak receiving 1,606 votes to Cravaak’s 1,152.
 
In Cook County, 6th District DFL State Sen. Tom Bakk easily defeated Republican Jennifer Havlick 1,910 to 923. He won district-wide. In Cook County, District 6A DFL Rep. David Dill handily defeated Republican Jim Tuomala 1,911 to 873. He also won district-wide.
 
The governor’s race Mark Dayton has a narrow lead of less than 10,000 votes over Republican Tom Emmer. The race may be headed for a recount as Minnesota law requires all ballots to be recounted if the margin of victory is less than one half of 1 percent of all votes tallied. In this case, a vote difference of around 11,000 or less would likely trigger a recount. Cook County gave the nod to Democrat Mark Dayton 1,673 votes over Republican Tom Emmer’s 878 and Independence Party candidate Tom Horner’s 292.

In the Secretary of State race, Cook County voted for Democrat Mark Ritchie over Republican Doc Severson. Ritchie won state-wide.
 
For State Auditor, Cook County went for Democrat Rebecca Otto over Republican Pat Anderson. Otto won state-wide.
 
For Attorney General, Cook County chose Democrat Lori Swanson over Republican Chris Barden. Swanson won state-wide.

All local election results are unofficial until certified by the canvass board on Friday, Nov. 5.

Check out a county-wide breakdown of the results.