Girl Hunter Part 27

1 egg, beaten

2 tablespoons Marsala

1/2 cup bread crumbs

1/3 cup tomato puree

1/2 cup parsley

1/2 cup finely chopped fresh basil

1 teaspoon grated nutmeg

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1. Blend the carrot, onion, celery, and mushrooms in a food processor until fine but not pureed.

2. Heat the oil in a skillet and saute the mixture until softened, about 10 minutes. Sprinkle with salt along the way to help release the juices.

3. Preheat the oven to 450F. In a large bowl, combine the vegetables with the rest of the ingredients.

4. Form the mixture into a loaf and place in a baking dish. You could also use a loaf pan. Bake for 10 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 350F. Bake for 30 minutes more. Let cool slightly, then cut into thick slices and serve.

Also try: other antlered game, turkey A dog in a kennel barks at his fleas; a dog hunting does not notice them.

-PROVERB

10.

NASCAR Hog Hunting There are, of course, limits within each of us, no matter our instincts. In part, those limits are inherent to our makeup, unique to our very fiber as a human. But some, I am starting to believe, are also conditioned. It is the age-old question of nature versus nurture. Could my urbanite girlfriends hunt their food if they had to? Would they have walked up that hill toward the turkeys at the command of a scary chef? Probably. But then there is the question of the word hunt. How far would they be able to take the act?

Much of the hunting I do today is very different from what my caveman ancestors did. I have never stolen from a cheetah in the trees; I have never outsmarted a lion; I have never chased and killed an animal with a sharp object. The day I killed my first turkey for a restaurant was the closest I had really come to holding an animal as it made the transition from life to death. Perhaps that is why it awakened a dormant part of me. There was something that I recognized that had been stored deep in my marrow. It was something that was now active and pulsing, something that made sense. A gun is a tool, useful and efficient when used properly. But it is also a bit of a cop-out. It is a modern luxury. It is how we manage to not expend more calories hunting our food than we get from eating it. Using bows and arrows would make it a slightly greater challenge, but today even they have been so improved by technology as to be virtually unrecognizable to those of our ancestors. But what about hunting in its most primitive form?

The next early morning brings the first sprinkling of Arkansas snow, the kind that melts into your eyelashes, leaving your face gleaming and wet. The Commish and I climb into his white pickup, the backseat filled with waterproof clothing and gloves, the front seat appointed with two McDonald's coffees. We drive along the Mississippi levee in any lane we please, skidding on the loose pebbles and listening to the sounds of country music, then take a steep right into 1,700 acres called the Lakewood Hunting Club. We are here to meet two landowners named Lonny Carson and Jack Bates. Lonny and Jack are serious hog hunters, the kind that own a menagerie of dogs trained and suited just for hog hunting-brave dogs with scars and the remnants of st.i.tches in their chests. There are two kinds of dogs in this menagerie-dogs that trail the hogs and dogs that bring them down. They are combinations of blackmouth cur and mountain cur, with clear blue eyes or fierce black ones.

They sit in beige plastic kennels at the base of the hunting camp, peering out from a patchwork of metal doors, their nostrils wet and br.i.m.m.i.n.g with experience and antic.i.p.ation. Lonny and Jack pull up in a set of four-wheelers. All at once they release the doors of the kennels and watch the dogs erupt from inside, their muscles twitching under their thin, tight skin. They are bred in rural areas as an all-purpose hunting dog; not recognized as a breed but as a type, leaving their appearance for Mother Nature to decide. A tan one hops to the back of the four-wheeler and sits. The only female dog Lonny has ever owned, she is chained to the seat behind him; he revs up the jackhammer sound of his motor, and takes off with her as if she is his girlfriend.

I climb into a two-person ATV with the Commish, as the snow begins to spatter on the windshield.

"Aw, hayell," he says, looking down under his hand. The gear shift of the four-wheeler has been upholstered with a tanned deer s.c.r.o.t.u.m.

We follow Jack and Lonny through the woods of Lakewood Hunting Club, down narrow b.u.mpy roads, and stop along the way to collar the dogs. Once long ago, hunters used to walk their dogs in pursuit of the hog. Then, in time, they rode horses. Years later they began to use four-wheelers with a marginal antenna system to help monitor the location of the dogs as they dashed through the woods. Now the dogs are fitted with collars that track them through a modern GPS system, which will tell the hunter how fast a dog is traveling and how many feet north or south it is from the tracking device. Jack and Lonny enter the names of the dogs into their locators and, one by one, attach collars to their necks. Once fitted, the dogs jump off, their necks blinking.

"You can practically see what they're thinking on this," Lonny says.

"Soon they'll be using video."

"h.e.l.l, y'all need an IT person with y'all," the Commish says as we wait for them to tinker.

"Look at 'em. He knows they're hogs out there," Jack says, fitting a gray spotted cur.

"What's his name?" the Commish asks.

"He got a bunch of names," Jack says.

"What's his name today?"

"Uh . . . Bobby."

"He's Bobby 'til he messes up, then he's Sonofab.i.t.c.h."

The last dog jumps from the kennel more slowly. He has piercing blue eyes and the round head of a cur. He has a mess of fresh st.i.tches on his chest. He is the oldest and the wisest of the menagerie. He has seen things.

"If the other dogs can't find one, you turn Beau loose and he'll make one," Lonny says. Beau jogs off slowly, ready to go to work, unamused, his neck blinking.

The low pressure and the moist, snowy air improve the dogs' sense of smell. This morning they are fervent with the burning perfume of hog in their throats. We follow them until all we can do is watch them as blinking red dots on a screen, as they disappear into the woods. We stop to listen from time to time. Lonny bites into a McDonald's biscuit as the Commish sips coffee, and tucks his cup next to the deer s.c.r.o.t.u.m. I sit smelling the wet air, feeling the snowflakes settle onto my lips. The light glints off the long knife holstered against Lonny's hip, attached to a chain dangling in a loop from his leather belt. We sit and wait with the motors turned off, the snow in our faces, and the fumes of McDonald's biscuit in the air.

Then a distinctive howling sound fills the woods. In a few swift movements, biscuits are gulped, engines roar, and the four-wheelers are hiccuping and jerking through the woods toward the baying dogs. "This is NASCAR hog hunting," the Commish yells above the thundering engine.

You don't know what you will find when you arrive at a standoff between hysterical dogs and a 300-pound boar with needle-sharp tusks. Sometimes you will find an injured dog and a boar running away through the woods; sometimes you will find a dog with its jaws on the neck of the beast; sometimes you will find them face to face, working each other into a lather; sometimes it will be a dance of all three possibilities, changing and transforming by the second.

When we arrive, three dogs surround an angry boar. One dog has a firm grasp on his neck, and the others jump forward and back, yelping and seeming a touch unsure about what to do next. More dogs emerge from the woods now, attracted to the noise, and Beau comes forward and looks on at the scene, coolly impervious to all the fuss.

Lonny and Jack thrash through the woods toward them all and begin to yelp, too, and as they do, the boar tears loose and runs for the brush. The dogs follow until we see that they are under a dense patchwork of branches fallen over a ditch and overgrown enough to serve as a stable floor. I climb onto the floor of branches, walk toward the center, and look down through the cracks. In between the s.p.a.ce in the branches is a mess of flesh and growling and stench. Lonny draws his long, glinting Rambo knife that makes a whistle as he pulls, kneels down on the floor, and thrusts his hands between the cracks to try to stab the boar. When he pulls his knife out, it is dressed in a thin layer of blood.

"I don't know if that was a dog or the boar I just got," he says.

As I stand on the floor, the grumbling in the cracks below me becomes more violent, sticks snap, and the Commish and old wise Beau look on stoically. Jack holds a pistol without purpose.

The boar suddenly breaks away, tearing through the floor, which shakes beneath me. Snorting and wheezing, he runs through the tall gra.s.s, but the dogs overtake him once more. Jack and Lonny stumble and run after them until they can reach the dogs to pull them off. When the Commish and I catch up, the dogs are beside themselves with excitement, and Jack and Lonny are sitting on a prostrate hog. I stand looking down at him, big and long haired, with a tubular snout and miniature tusks. He emits steam into the air in small bursts and chortles. I hear the ring of the Rambo knife coming back out of its holster and someone say my name. When I look up I see the red-stained knife in the air and a look of curiosity on Lonny's face. "Do you want to do it?"

It is true that in addition to guns, four-wheelers and GPS systems are also luxuries not afforded to our ancestors. But there is also the matter of practicality. Today's Western humans are more starved for time than for food. There isn't time to put on a suit in the morning and hunt by foot with a knife in the afternoon. And so there are two shortcuts that we can choose from-the meat section of the grocery store; or the gun, the GPS system, and the deer stand. How often do humans in this age use a knife and their bare hands to bring home their food from the woods? But more so, how often do humans become this entangled with nature? Hunting, after all was a physical endeavor for our ancestors; it was about bringing home food but also living close to the land. There is no doubt that some hunters are attracted to it for that reason, for the physicality of it. But, in a sense, this most primitive act brings our role in the cycle of life back to its most basic level: We eat animals, animals eat animals and plants, plants feed from the dirt, and we turn to dirt. The opportunity to partic.i.p.ate so honestly and physically is rarely offered to us anymore.

I reach out my hand and take Lonny's red-stained knife and kneel on the gra.s.s beside the boar. I grasp the bone handle tightly in my leather glove until I can feel the blood in my hand pulsing. I look down at the skin above the heart and point the tip of the knife toward it. And with all of the weight and strength of my body I push the knife in, and feel Lonny grab my wrist and pull me forward, too, my body moving forward with it all, until I am draped over the boar. When I pull back, and watch the river of blood come with me, it is quite simply all over. I have, for the first time, channeled the primitive woman, and for a few fleeting moments recognized what it was once like to be a human-I recognize the casual way in which nature treats life and death.

When I stand and step back, Lonny and Jack begin to field dress the boar on the forest floor, removing all of the insides until he is much less heavy, yet still too heavy to carry. We tie a rope from the four-wheeler to his front hooves and pull him out of the woods. After skinning and power washing, the large boar becomes a piece de resistance, marinated and smoked whole for a day, dripping in mola.s.ses, oozing in crisp fat. If I were living thousands of years ago, my status within the community would have been greatly improved with this wild hog. Although even now, as I watch a table of people lick mola.s.ses from their fingers, I think perhaps it still has.

Boar Loin in Sherry Marinade

Serves 4 to 6 The loin is also referred to as the backstrap and is the long, thick portion of boneless, tender meat that runs on either side of the spine on the exterior of the rib cage. The tenderloin is the most tender part of the animal and is smaller. It is located on either side of the spine on the interior of the rib cage. These cuts of meat are extremely lean, and are best eaten rare in the case of antlered game. But in the case of wild boar, they must be cooked through to 160F, which means they will benefit from a marinade or brine first, to retain moisture.

1 1/2 sticks (12 tablespoons) b.u.t.ter, melted

1 tablespoon lightly crushed juniper berries

2 teaspoons coa.r.s.ely cracked pepper

2 teaspoons kosher salt

6 whole cloves

3 cups Amontillado or other sweet sherry, cooked for several minutes to burn off the alcohol, then cooled

2 wild boar tenderloins or backstraps (see Note)

1. Combine all the ingredients and pour over the tenderloins in a roasting pan. Cover and let sit covered in a cool place for 4 to 6 hours, turning over periodically so it marinates evenly.

2. Preheat the oven to 475F.

3. Tie the tenderloins with kitchen twine, the way you would a roast. Place the roasting pan in the oven and roast for 10 minutes. Lower the temperature to 350F and continue to roast for about 10 minutes more, or until the internal temperature on a meat thermometer reads 160F. Turn the meat over several times to help it cook evenly. The sherry will begin to caramelize onto the meat and separate from the b.u.t.ter.

4. Remove the pan from the oven, place the tenderloins on a cutting board, and cover loosely with tinfoil. Let the tenderloins rest for 20 minutes before serving so that the juices retreat back into the meat.

5. Remove the string and serve thinly sliced, drizzled with some of the flavored pan b.u.t.ter.

Also try: javelina, antlered game, bear, upland game birds Note: Sometimes you'll hear the term boar taint in discussions about wild boar. Most people don't cook the male wild boar because they have high testosterone levels, which can give the meat an unappealing flavor. Some hunters will go so far as to trap the boar, castrate it and release it, then hunt it a year later. If given a choice, female Eurasian boar or feral hogs tend to taste better, but I'm of the mind-set that a male can be made to taste good with a clean shot, impeccable field dressing, and a good brine prior to cooking.