The “Eat What You Kill” Lifestyle Explained
There is a new trend in organic living: eating only meat that you personally hunt and kill. It may sound barbaric to shoot an animal in the wild, but it may be the most humane way we could possibly eat meat today.
Most of America’s meat comes from horrible places. Animals are stuffed inside confined pens, fed antibiotics and hormones, and sometimes physically abused until their heartbreaking existence comes to an end where they are processed and packaged en masse and shipped off to grocery stores across the country. It’s a practice known as factory farming and it accounts for more than 90 percent of our meat.
So while some shop at organic grocery stores like Whole Foods and others stick to local farmers markets, there are some who take food into their own hands. Literally.
- Humane Hunting
When you compare the life of a factory farmed animal to one in the wild, a single bullet wound starts to make sense as the ideal way to eat meat. Humane hunters believe that every animal deserves a good life in the wild, and that even free-range, organic animals on farms are still confined to life in a theoretical cage.
That’s why some people are dedicating their entire diet to meat only sourced from their own hunting. It’s a lifestyle adopted by anyone from city dwellers to celebrities like comedian Joe Rogan, who is more known from his work with the UFC than living off the land. Bryant Gumbel of HBO’s Real Sports sat down with Rogan to talk about why he only eats what he hunts. He said that eating only what he kills is his way to enjoy meat while being as humane as possible to animals. Rogan told HBO his diet is now 100 percent weaned off of factory-farmed meat.
- The Carbon Footprint
Aside from the moral argument behind “eat what you kill,” factory farming has a huge negative impact on the environment. Roughly 10 billion land animals are raised for dairy, meat and eggs each year. Not only do the animals themselves have an effect on the environment (food consumed, methane from waste, etc.), the machines required to process them add to the carbon footprint exponentially. Hunters who only eat what they kill do their part to chip away at this detrimental impact to the planet.
- An Eco-Friendly Lifestyle
The stereotypical hunter may not seem eco-friendly, but anyone who lives off the land like an “eat what you kill” hunter does is certainly just that. On top of the eco-friendly motive behind hunting for food, hunters will even outfit in environmentally friendly hunting boots, gear and make the least possible impact on the land when out hunting (such as leaving no trace behind).
- Simply Delicious
Have you ever tried venison chili or a slowly roasted elk steak? Wild game, when prepared correctly, is simply delicious. So while hunters will only eat what they kill for moral and eco-friendly reasons, they also enjoy the benefit that the food they hunt tastes amazing. And is it really any surprise? Stuff a cow inside a cage its whole life and pump it full of hormones, and that’s going to ruin the quality. But a deer that gets to roam freely and eat naturally its whole life is going to make for an incredible meal.
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What a GREAT article. After researching vegetarianism when one of my close friends became vegetarian, I understood exactly why he was doing it but could never give up meat. I went hunting years later and could see how much better it was for the animal than the industry. Since then I have had this mindset. Unfortunately I ran out of meat before having the opportunity to hunt again but I am planning the next hunt and hope to be completely off store bought meat soon!
Thank you so much for this article I will most definitely share it.
HI Micheal,
I totally agree with you about meat and there and I have been reading a lot lately that vegan or vegetarian diet is not as healthy as some experts thought. Of course there always a lot of controversy pro and con with this issue and it sure doesn’t work for every one. Thank you so much for reading my article, commenting, and sharing. Good luck on your next hunt – I can from a family that hunting and I grew up on wild game so it is very natural to me. Have a healthy, happy & blessed day!
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I’m so happy that i am not the only one living with this motto ” eat what i kill”. I have been vegeterian for 6 years and fully agree with this atricle, and am going on a hunt soon. I will then eat what i kill.
Thank you for the article.
Hi Nienke,
Thank you for stopping by and commenting. I hope you have a good hunt and please come back and check for regular updates on many alternative health and green living ideas and solutions. Have a healthy, happy & blessed day!
I have had my hunting license for a couple years, but still haven’t actually made it out to go hunting yet. I don’t like to go alone and it’s hard to find someone willing to take a girl out with them. We raise most of our own meat, but it would be nice to supplement it with wild game. Plus, we do love venison chili.
Thank you for sharing on the Homestead Blog Hop.
I grew with hunting and eating what we kill. We also had pork, chicken, and other sources of food that we raised and lived on. Thanks for hosting Homestead blog hop, stopping by and commenting.
Wow, this was a really interesting post. I never really thought of hunting as being humane, but it really is much more generous to the animal. You’ve given me plenty to think about! Thanks for sharing on Simply Natural Saturdays. I’ll also be sharing this on my Facebook page.
Hi Melissa,
Glad you liked my article and thanks for sharing it – I appreciate it very much! Hunting is so much more humane than factory farming. I grew up eating and hunting wild game. Have a healthy happy & blessed weekend!
All great points! I think I’ll still leave the kill to my husband and I’ll still do all the cooking 😉 Seems to work out ok for us!
HI Victoria,
Sounds like a good plan to me. Thanks for reading my article and commenting. Have a healthy, happy & blessed weekend.
This was so fabulous! it is exactly how my husband and I feel and live. As of right now we have not purchased beef in over a year (and NEVER will again as we have totally lost the taste for it in many ways) instead, our freezer is full of venison we shot and butchered ourselves. My rule on our farm is simple; “If you kill it on our property I will MAKE you eat it!” We have never wasted life here and have stopped buying fish entirely too, being in the state of 10,000 lakes honestly buying fish just seems silly and my husband loves to fish. The only meat we buy in the store now is poultry and sometimes pork and I really hope to start raising ducks and/or chickens next year to eliminate our support of the commercial poultry industry too. Thankfully we have neighbors where we can buy eggs 🙂 Thank you for a great article!
HI Tarahlynn,
I envy your way of life and am so glad to hear that you liked my article. Where I grew up this is how we lived we ate vension and other wild game as part of our regular diet – lived on a farm so we ate what we produced and raised and what nature provided. I now live in a different area and we only eat organically raised and local meat and produce. We aren’t able to kill our own meat but do grow some of our vegetables and whatever we can. Thanks for stopping by and commenting. Have a healthy happy blessed weekend. Marla