A strange love, or, why I learned to stop worrying and hunt elk in Wyoming in December

I was a vegetarian for ten years. My wife is still a vegetarian. Why am I going elk hunting?

In March 2020, like the rest of the world, I walked into my house, closed the door, and started binge watching Netflix. It started with Love is Blind (I even live-tweeted it back when that was my thing and I will say, I stand by those 70 tweets as some of my most important analysis of the pandemic). I made my kids watch Forged in Fire. I watched all of Great British Baking Show. It was the Conti-Brown family cope in 2020-21.

The pandemic reality binge that stuck

I also started watching Steve Rinella’s MeatEater. Unlike these others, this one altered my thinking in a more fundamental way.

Steve Rinella calls himself a hunter-conservationist. He has profound love for nature and the outdoors, which he expresses through hunting and fishing. His TV show – and podcasts – and books – and cookbooks – showcase what all of this means.

In our deeply tribal political system, Rinella tracks as a gun-slinging Republican. He even has a vaguely Southern accent, despite being from Michigan. But his motivations for hunting, his assiduous defense of some quite onerous government regulations and protections, and his general ethos point in a different direction. He also calls himself a “radical centrist,” but he seems to me more like someone who tires quickly of our American love affair with interpreting all individual passion through the lenses of political friends and enemies. (Although I may be projecting.)

In episode after episode, Rinella explains the variety of fauna, their history (including weird stories of invasive species and spunky javelins), brings guests that range from music stars to family  to a compelling, quiet, and bookish expert in the Sooty Grouse Hen (and not much else).

Vegetarian in soul, but not in stomach

It stirred me up. It also challenged my thinking. I was a vegetarian from 18 to 28, with the exception of my two years as a Latter-day Saint missionary in Portugal. (I dropped it then because we very often shared meals with families with limited resources and I made a decision to eat anything I was offered. It was (mostly) a very good experience and occasionally a (very) challenging one.) My reason was ethical and environmental. Peter Singer and others had (mostly) persuaded me that my defenses of my tasty omnivore diet carried less weight than I had supposed. I also hated the environmental impact that US meat production imposes.

I stopped at 28 because the time and attention commitment of vegetarianism relative to the depth of my commitment wasn’t quite there. As I got into serious powerlifting, the quantity of protein I eat – 200 grams a day, roughly – made vegetarianism even harder. Lest anyone dismiss me, then, as a hypocrite, I give you the philosophy of Michael Corleone: “Senator, we are part of the same hypocrisy. But never think it applies to my family.” (My point is that we all make compromises and leave me alone, Nikki is still a vegetarian.)

I watched every episode of MeatEater. I read his books and cooked from his cookbook. I also stopped buying beef almost completely. And I decided I wanted to try my hand at ethical, humane, sustainable meat production.

When I get an idea like this, after making sure with Nikki that it is consistent with the Conti-Brown ethos, my next step is my brother, Sam Brown. Sam is one of my best friends and is, like me, down for just about any adventure. We once traipsed through Vietnam and Singapore in the June heat and nearly melted from the inside out. It was one of the best trips I have ever taken. Another time he, a mountain-biking fanatic, convinced me to do a three-day trail in southern Utah which was simultaneously exhilarating and nearly fatal. I can’t wait to go again (although I will note that my efforts to convince Sam to get into deadlifting only succeed in demonstrating his ninja skills in deflection).

Sam is a man of the Mountain West and is willing to undertake just about any adventure. He was in. So we scheduled a hunt for this December. A friend has a ranch in Wyoming and we are now officially tagged and certified to go. One of Sam’s childhood friends will join us. The point of this is to bring myself into more direct contact with meat production, so we three will also butcher any elk we drop. My plan right now is to bring the meat, 600 lbs on the hoof, back with dry ice in Styrofoam coolers as checked luggage on my Delta flight. (You see, I have thought this through.)

I have no idea quite what to expect from this trip. Sam and I will also do a road century in southern Utah, in case the elk hunting is not the trip Rinella has led me to believe. Time with Sam is always time well spent, but I think – I hope – my meat-eating ways, as and if they continue, will be more thoughtful in my relationship to our planet, my health, and ongoing efforts to integrate various ethical commitments that tend to tarry without examination otherwise.

It could be much worse. I could still be watching Love is Blind.