Locavore was the word of the year in dictionary circles in 2007 and has recently become even more popular. The concept promotes the consumption of local goods, which eliminates the need for shipping meats and produce over long distances.
You’ll find many locavores at farmer’s markets, fruit stands, and other sources of fresh, locally grown produce. Interestingly, state wildlife agencies are seeing an interest from locavores in venison. Generally, these are not hunters or anglers, just those who wish to consume locally “grown” goods. Lisa Rathke takes a look at this new phenomenon.
A decades-long national decline in the number of hunters has prompted states to tap into a new group of hunters ? people who demand locally produced food, but don’t know the first thing about bagging a deer.
Books and blogs on the topic are numerous, and state wildlife departments are offering introductory deer hunting classes in urban areas to recruit newbies who want to kill their own local, sustainable and wild meat in what some say is an ecologically friendly way.
“It’s not easy and it’s not a surefire way to fill a freezer every year but it’s certainly more rewarding than even raising a cow behind your house and butchering it,” said Chris Saunders, hunter education coordinator for the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife. The department offered an introductory deer hunting course in Burlington this fall to recruit new hunters.
The number of people holding hunting licenses nationally had dropped over the last 30 years starting in 1983, mostly because of changes in demographics, such as an aging population and more people moving into urban areas, said Mark Damian Duda, executive director of Virginia-based Responsive Management, which does surveys for federal and state fish and wildlife departments.
But hunting participation increased by 9 percent from 2006 to 2011, the latest U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s national five-year survey found, and wildlife officials around the country suspect that it’s local food connoisseurs ? or locavores ? partly helping to level it off.
Reasons for hunting vary ? recreation, spending time with friends and family, finding a trophy buck. The number of those hunting for meat nearly doubled from 16 percent in 2006 to 35 percent in 2011, according to a national survey of 1,000 hunters published last year by Responsive Management and other outdoors agencies. The survey found that part of the increase was driven by the locavore movement.
