FULL CIRCLE
In the final part of her Ethical Carnivore series, Louise Gray shoots a stag and looks back at what she learned in a year only eating animals she killed herself
Louise Gray’s year of eating meat ethically is drawing to an end
The stag was lying down, his face turned towards me, his chin almost resting on the ground, having a wee midday snooze. ‘Go for his neck,’ said the stalker. ‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘It’s hidden. I’ll have to take him between the eyes.’ ‘If you think you can do it.’ ‘I can do it.’ A year ago, when I started this column, I wrote about looking at a different stag down the barrel of a gun and deciding not to shoot. It was a much easier piece to write. Deer are beautiful beasts. No one wants to be the person to pull the trigger. We all want to eat them, but no one wants to take responsibility for their death. It is this hypocrisy that motivated my idea to only eat animals I killed myself for a year.
In the last 11 columns I have described learning to fish for salmon, shoot rabbits with a rifle and pheasants with a shotgun. In the case of domestic livestock, where I have been unable to kill the animals myself, I have investigated how farm animals we eat, such as pigs, sheep, chicken and cattle, are raised on our behalf. Most of the time I have been a vegetarian.
I have learned a lot about the skills needed to kill, skin and prepare game, and about animal husbandry and welfare. I have also learned how to cook a mean chickpea curry.
The stag was the final piece in the puzzle and in a way the most ethical meal of all. There are now around 400,000 red deer in Scotland. While we all love to see these magnificent creatures in the wild, it is causing serious problems. Deer cause 7,000 road accidents a year. The ungulates also push out other wildlife as they eat baby trees, meaning woodland has no chance to regenerate. The Government order a certain number of deer to be killed every year and across Scotland, environmental groups