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Writer's pictureCassidy Schnell

Why hunters might have a more sustainable diet than you.

Think about the meals you’ve eaten in the past week. How many coffee beans did you harvest for your morning cup of joe? Which vegetables in your midday salad came from your own backyard? How many deer did you shoot to get those delicious tenderloins on your plate?


Thanks to the structure of the food market in America, the “hunting and gathering” model of life is a thing of the past for the majority of Americans. With the wide-scale introduction of supermarkets, convenience stores, and fast food chains, consumers in the US can get pretty much all of their meals without knowing anything about where their food comes from. 


This lack of awareness prevents us from living sustainable lifestyles when it comes to our diets. As consumers, we have a responsibility to learn about who grew our food, where it came from, and its environmental footprint so we can make smarter decisions for ourselves and the planet. So for all readers who enjoy eating meat, here are a few reasons why hunters are our best teachers when it comes to food sustainability and animal welfare. 



Three lessons about food we can learn from hunters:


1.Respect for food (and facing reality)

The factory farming industry is not known for treating animals with care. Cattle, pigs, and chickens can go their entire lives without stepping on real grass or seeing the sunlight. Some animal enclosures are so small that animals cannot even turn around, and they are left to sleep on cold, concrete floors. 


With the current purchasing systems that drastically segregate the farm life from the clean storefronts that shoppers face, most consumers will never have to step foot inside these factories to witness the conditions that these animals endure. 


With hunting, animals can live out their lives in the wild, where they are free to roam as they please. Mandatory hunter safety courses teach all hunters how to minimize animal suffering as much as possible when they hunt. Additionally, unlike the everyday consumer who can avoid seeing animals being killed, hunters have to face the reality of taking a life. With this higher level of consciousness, hunters tend to have a higher level of respect for the sacrifice of a life in exchange for food.


2. Environmental Footprint


Factory-farmed beef has the highest carbon and water footprint in the entire food industry, and other animal proteins are not far behind. Here’s a breakdown of why factory-farmed beef has such a negative impact on the environment: 


  • Cattle farming requires a lot of land, causing it to be one of the largest contributors to deforestation. 

  • Cows require a lot of feed, so farmers are using tons of freshwater resources just to grow grains to feed the cows. Farmers require gasoline to power their farm machinery to harvest these grains as well, which releases carbon dioxide.

  • Cows release methane when they fart, and methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide!

  • Most of the time, beef is shipped across the country (or even across the world), so there’s a high carbon footprint thanks to transportation there!





On the other hand, hunted animal proteins have a much lower impact on the planet. Hunters can rely on the natural world to provide nourishment for the animals they hunt. In many cases, the only reason why hunted animals have a carbon footprint at all is due to the drive hunters usually make to get to their hunting destinations.


3. Food waste (take what you need)


When you get animal proteins from a grocery store, you can always rely on the grocery store to have more products in the future. So if you throw away some leftover taco meat, “it’s not that big of a deal” because you can go back for more later if you need it. On the other hand, when hunters run out of game like pheasant or venison, they can’t just go to Walmart to replenish their stock. Not only that, but the government places limits on how much game each hunter is allowed to take each year, so the hunter really has to consider how to best preserve the meat that they have. Throwing away meat, instead of just packing up leftovers or being more mindful of cooking amounts, becomes a lot harder to do for hunters since their supply is much more limited. 



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