Gamedinner: Chef Allen Dye

As a non-hunter living and working around avid hunters I often find myself feeling compelled to explain myself. It’s as though a non-hunter ought to feel uncomfortable around people who love the sport, and that the fine people who I count as friends who love to hunt ought to mistrust me for some reason.

Let me say that, having been raised in a family of Quakers, firearms have never been a part of my experience. I have never shot a gun. I have never shot a bow. To the best of my knowledge, the only animals that I’ve killed have been fish, softshell crabs and lobsters.

This is not to say that I in any way judge those who do… in fact… if I have learned anything by my association with hunters is that they often represent the best of what I admire in others. Joe Lasher is a good example. An honest and caring guy.. a good family man.. Someone who thinks hard about his place in the world and who tries to make a positive impact on the lives of those around him. I consider myself lucky to know him and call him a friend.

I might also say that I am not blind to the excesses that hunting sometimes leads to. As a boy in Missouri, I remember how every year at the end of deer season the local paper would publish a photo of a vast pile of dear carcasses that had been collected by rangers that hunters had shot, and lost, in the woods. The pile was bigger than a house, and seemed to me to be a huge pile of pain and useless slaughter.

Perhaps that image is one reason that I feel that my involvement in Gamedinner.com is so important. While I am appalled by such wanton waist, I don’t believe that it is representative of the people like Joe that I have come to know. I truly believe that, when practiced with intention.. when caring and respect lead the sport, hunting can be a valuable and important part of our culture. As a chef I value the food, of course, but as someone who considers our environment to be the greatest gift and responsibility we as humans have, I find a common cause with outdoorsman.

And so, to Joe, and Billy, and Mark, and all of the other fine people that I have been privileged to meet, hats off! Let’s work together to show the world that hunters and non-hunters alike have a responsibility to preserve and maintain the world around us, and that cooperatively, we can and must find a way to work together.

And while you are at it, there is always room in my freezer for some more game meat!

The bow and arrow, as nearly as any evidence suggests, dates back to at least 61,000 years BCE.

This date comes from some stone points found in South Africa, but of course it is likely that the true origins are far older. Something that I find interesting to consider is that it seems many primitive cultures use their bows not only as weapons, but also as musical instruments. The Bushmen of the Kalahari Dessert are known to place one end of the bow in their mouths, and by plucking the string, they can create simple tunes that are inaudible to both fellow hunters and their pray. They will sometimes sit for hours beside an animal path and pluck out the Bushman version of America’s Top 40 while waiting for dinner to stroll past their ambush point.

I find it fascinating that much of what we think we know has these surprising twists… once you scratch the surface.

The turkey is far more than a bird in our culture.  “Turkey” has become so layered with symbol and meaning that, while we all THINK we know all about turkeys, much of what we know has become buried beneath a virtually impenetrable wall of kitsch.

We all know that the Pilgrims discovered turkeys while having a fun little party with the friendly and attentive Natives that they found on Plymouth Rock.  The natives also taught the European visitors how to grow corn, plant beans and draw pretty hand paintings of turkeys by tracing the outline of your fingers with a crayon.

We also all know that Benjamin Franklin offered the turkey as our nation’s symbol, rather than the bald eagle.  I think that this amuses us so because we treat this bird so poorly and with such disregard for it as a creature or a symbol or a meal. 

Much of the reason that the Turkey has gotten such short shrift in our modern world is due to the easy availability of packaged, netted, cleaned birds piled high in every supermarket freezer shelf.  It is natural, I suppose, that in the face of such overabundance we would tend to disregard its’ importance.  This, I believe, is the result of losing that connection to the wilderness that was once inherent in all of us.

This Holiday season, as we gather around our various tables and celebrate family and friends, I hope that we all will take a moment to remember the Turkey…  not as just another meal, but rather as a remnant of something we all once shared. …  The certain knowledge that our own survival has always depended on the health and vitality of the creatures that exist around us.

Gooble on.