— other animals won’t have a place
to live. Species will die.”
I think about this irony; the only
way to mitigate the effects of our
intervention is with more careful
and considered intervention.
Moral question
If animals have to die, the moral
question surrounding meat
consumption has been framed
incorrectly. It requires a caveat: if
the animal has to die, what then
should be done with it? Would a true
environmentalist not eat it? Even if
they disliked venison, would it not
be incumbent on them to lather it
in peppercorn sauce and gobble
it down with a side of skinny frites?
Any alternative seems wasteful.
Bang! Another shot flies past my
head. “It’s not the day for squirrel,”
Tim says, as he squats to look at some
faeces. “But maybe for deer.”
We walk all day, the pain from my
blisters now a welcome focus. I’m so
hungry, the thought of chewing on
dry deer breast is making my mouth
water. I’m desperate, but maybe this
is how it should be.
There’s something morally
dubious about walking into KFC at
three in the morning and devouring
the wings of 12 chickens, only to forget
the feast even took place until you
see your bank statement the next
day. If we find a deer I will enjoy it
like no deer has been enjoyed before,
devouring every scrap I’m given, and
in doing so I will have respected its life
the best way I could.
The mood is stirred when, all
of a sudden, Tim stops in his tracks.
He presses scope of his rifle to his
eye, locked and loaded before the
stock hits his shoulder. Patrick hands
me a heat scope and I look through.
And it’s now that I lay eyes on it,
the most beautiful animal I have
ever seen — a tiny deer, smaller
than I had imagined, but with an
ethereal, dazzling glow that could
light the darkest wood. I explain this
to Patrick. He reminds me that I’m
looking through a heat sensor.
Bang! An ear-splitting crash
reverberates around forest. I open
my eyes to see Tim has already madeoff into the darkness. I follow him.
A young muntjac buck with short
almond hair lies in the shrubbery. It
has a chalk-white chest stained with a
thin streak of blood that runs from the
narrow gunshot wound on its back.
I look into his sightless, button
eyes. It wasn’t afraid, it couldn’t have
been. Do animals feel fear like we
do? The affirmative would require
recognition of themselves as alive
and the possibility that they might
no longer be. If not, death is not the
same for them. I wonder what he was
feeling as he drew his last breath.
I glance over at Tim, who now
has the buck suspended from a
tree. He tears a knife down its chest,
spilling its oily guts on to the dirt
below. Bon appetit.Barbecue
Night has arrived. The air is crisp and
congealed to such a stillness I can hear
a couple of travellers fighting over a
donkey in a neighbouring town. I hold
a candle over the barbecue as Tim lays
a thigh into the crackling pan.
Tim pierces a chunk of meat and
hands it to me. I let the hot, moist flesh
melt on my tongue as I sink back in
my c h a i r.
A sense of great understanding
washes over me. I think about identity
— who am I, really? What is an animal?Wild food
22 • SHOOTING TIMES & COUNTRY MAGAZINE
“Meat can be eaten ethically, I know that
now, I just wonder if enough people care”
Tim Weston fries the
venison — as fresh and
wild as you could get