Guns, What??

This is the beginning of the outward conversation, that has been happening inwardly inside my head for a long time now.  Meat meat meat, yes or no and if yes then how.  For so long I have been disillusioned with how the first world eats animals, how they are cared for.  Most people try to not think about the animal at all and what they are eating, because if they did they would fall down the rabbit hole and then have to make choices and no one wants to make hard choices.  Most people want to go to the store and buy a perfectly plump piece of protein, wrapped properly please so the juices don't wreck my car. This is how I imagine the inner narrative going.. "Can I get the smaller, cheaper one please.  You know what they say about too much protein and my God meat is getting expensive"..    "No I have no idea where the animal was raised, how it was cared for, how it was transported, how it was killed, how it was butchered. I only want to know two things, how big and how much"  Well.. I am willing to look into and go down the rabbit hole.
I was raised in a hunting family.  My Dad would go hunting every fall and most of the time would bring home a moose or elk or deer.  He would pull up in his truck and friends would come and help him. Usually the animal had been field dressed at the site (broken down into manageable pieces).  The pieces would then get washed, skinned and hung up in the outside shed with fans to circulate the air and keep insects off.  The pieces would dry age for awhile and then would go to the local butcher to get broken down into steaks, stew meat, with all scraps going into the huge sausage pile.  The butcher was also a master sausage maker.  The familiarity of this process was comforting instead of alarming, we had food for the year.  I moved away from home, went to University and thought about responsibility and caring for sentient beings.  I went to cooking school and thought about how to process meat into food in the best ways possible.  I became a mother and thought about how to teach my child how to navigate her way through all choices.  Through all of these phases in my life, I have maintained a respect for what I eat.  I purchase the best I can afford and inform myself of where the animal comes from.  No antibiotics, steroids, free range, the happiest animals I can find. But, But.... I am still buying plastic wrapped meat and rarely, very rarely do I think about the actual animal it came from, rarely do I say a silent little prayer of thanks to the being that died so I could consume.  I could pontificate at dinner parties and shame others with their lack of thought or actions.  Rail against people who choose to be vegan instead of using their dollars to make choices to make better lives for animals and the way they are raised.  I was starting to make myself sick..  Sooooo...  I took a gun course.

I signed up for a RCMP accredited gun safety course.  It is the first step to me putting my actions where my mouth is.  The next step is to take a hunting course.  Then a field dressage course.  Then I will actually go on a hunt or several with an experienced hunter and guide.  I will also be frequenting gun ranges, where I will practice my shot and aim, so I don't wound or maim something with my ineptitude or hesitation.  I will not have a gun in my house, as that, in my opinion is not a safe thing to do.

My thought pattern is this, I am tired of my own hypocrisy regarding knowing how I feel about this subject and continuing to blindly continue while placating myself with my "good choices in purchasing".  I will get the knowledge to hunt properly, hunt, kill an animal, make sure the meat is properly cared for and then eat it.  I am not saying me and my family will only eat food that I have killed myself, that is not reasonable or time effective.  I am not wanting to return to the time before, back to the land.  I am very grateful for the advances in science and social systems that allow for people to organize and allot their time in different ways other than spending all day looking for and processing protein.  But the natural evolution is likely that we will eat less meat and I will become even more vigilant in procuring meat where I can feel like every aspect of the animals life and end were respectful.  In the event that I kill an animal and am so completely overwhelmed with my own inadequacies as a hunter and feel guilt that I have taken a life, then I will have my answer as well and will have to make choices again .

I want to acknowledge that this conversation is so very first world with "hipster and maker leanings"  I am very privileged to live in a part of the world, and have a job where I have the economic and social allowances that give me time and space to have these thoughts and ponderings while other families are struggling to find protein in any way to put in their families mouths.  I do not take any of my freedoms and privilege for granted.  If anything I feel gratitude to my parents firstly for showing and teaching from the beginning how things could be in relation to food and the thought process around it.  I just had to remind myself and then act on it.