FOOD: Grilled wild deer with pomegranate, fig and mustard leaf.
This year the New South Wales government announced it will spend $9 million on a deer control program delivered by the National Parks and Wildlife Service. Methods used will include trapping and baiting along with aerial culling. All of which allow very little to no delivery of resources into our food system. In Victoria, removal of 400,000 deer a year has been recommended by the Victorian National Parks Association to control numbers of the invasive species. More than 100,000 deer were taken in 2017 by game licence holders (recreational hunters), which leaves a large gap in numbers to maintain Victoria’s ecology.
I started hunting 12 months ago on the basis of an ever-growing desire to be more connected to my own food system/ethics. It has absolutely been the most challenging thing I have undertaken. I have long sourced food from invasive species – from mushrooms and plants that are offshoots of our introduced agricultural system, to sea urchins and other incidental marine-based pests. But not all invasive species have a face.
Hunting has also drawn me closer to my surrounds. A walk into a pine plantation and the observation required to find mushrooms is very different from the myriad markers that must be discerned in pursuit of deer in a native forest. Sensitivity to wind direction, careful foot placement and a keen sense of smell, sight and hearing are required to locate sambar deer. Because their natural predator is the tiger, these deer are extraordinarily evasive, even in their introduced environment.
Deer now makes up 90 per cent of my red meat intake, so I have turned to old and global techniques of utilisation. This recipe is reflective of a dish that might take place in camp.