Oh deer, what a feast

Every once in awhile I decide to eat everything in my refrigerator except the mustard, chow chow and salad dressings so I can start fresh. It is spring, so I decided a spring cleaning of the refrigerator was in order.

Down at the bottom of the freezer section was a package hand-wrapped in freezer paper and bound with masking tape labeled “deer burger.”

I knew it was there. I was saving it for a special occasion. I will die with a lot of things put back for special occasions: new towels, perfume, expensive note paper. Deer meat should not be in that category.

I took it out of the freezer and put it in the refrigerator for the next day. This meat was a gift. I hadn’t eaten meat from a deer in over thirty years. Occasionally, when I was living in an extremely rural area, I was given meat as a gift: pork sausage made from a pig the giver had slaughtered himself, pork chops, and once or twice, venison.

That was a long time ago.

Eating deer seemed momentous to me. I am not sure why. I am not a vegetarian although my consumption of meat has declined down through the years. Vegetarians always make good arguments. I don’t counter them; I just try not to think about it. I try not to think about slaughterhouses.

I have never been against hunting. Wild animals have better lives than a lot of domesticated animals, and herds have to be managed. All the Hunt men in my grandfather’s generation were hunters. I have a photo of him and his brothers with their hunting clothes on, holding guns.

My father was in the picture too. He never liked hunting but did it, I suspect, because my grandfather insisted and thought that any man who refused to hunt when given the opportunity was somehow lacking. My father was a bookish little boy who didn’t like to kill things. The guns he owned stayed in a gun cabinet and were never used after my grandfather was gone.

The next day I took the deer meat out of its package, formed it into three small burgers and put them in the frying pan. I stared down at the meat. This really was part of a beautiful animal that lived in the woods. It had a life. It was a free-running creature. It lived nearby. I had quite likely tramped through the very places it roamed and crossed a stream where it got water.

The burgers sizzled, and I flipped them over. They sizzled some more until finally they seemed done. I turned off the gas and put one of them on a plate and sat down at the table. Biting into it seemed like a sacrament. I imagined I could taste the green musty smell of the woods.

I thought about the plants the deer had eaten that had become part of the deer, and now the deer would become a part of me. Me: part deer, part hoof and soft fur and big, brown eyes. Me: part forest.

When I finished, I felt different somehow, as if my very cells were now imbued with rain and leaves, sun and stream, and the beauty and freedom of the deer. I felt a link to the world of the deer and obligation to take care of it. I wanted to reflect the beauty I had just taken into me.

I ate alone that day. It was just the deer and me. I appreciate not having any distraction as I ate the deer. No fellow diners. No television or newspaper. Just this one, holy moment.

The person who gave it to me had no idea what a gift it was. Neither did I at the time, but unlike most meals quickly forgotten, this one is staying with me.

Patricia Hunt, of Staunton, is a Mary Baldwin College chaplain.