Tomorrow is Saint Patrick's Day and many of us will be gorging ourselves on green beer, cabbage and potatoes. This is all well and good but I would like to suggest a meal more appropriate to the experience of Irish immigrants in America.A large wave of Irish immigrants came to the United States to escape the great famine in the middle of the 1800's. About a million people died during the famine while another million or so left Ireland. The famine was caused by several things. Best known is the potato blight, which ravaged the primary source of food for about a third of the Irish. But the problem was primarily a social one.
Irish Catholics had been forced by British law through two centuries to live only in rural areas. Until the early 1800's they were, literally, slaves. Prohibited by law from being educated, living within 5 miles of a town, or entering any profession other than farming. The land that they farmed was, almost entirely, owned by the English and managed according to the priorities of landlords rather than the people doing the work.
By the 1840's pretty much all of the agricultural land in Ireland was doing one of two things. The good land was used as pasture to raise beef and some grain for export to England. The cost of this beef and grain was out of reach for Irish Catholics. The poor land with bad soil, being good for nothing else, was being used to grow potatoes for food. When the blight hit the potatoes the Irish had nothing else to eat. The sensible thing would have been to immediately start using some of the grazing land to plant other crops. But no, Britain essentially just let the Irish starve.
People died of malnutrition even as they were surrounded by plenty. Food was still being exported from Ireland. Streams and ponds were full of fish and forests and fields full of deer, but Irish Catholics had no legal right to hunt or fish. Anyone who did so was called a poacher. Poaching 'the King's deer' technically earned the poacher a death sentence, although in practice the sentence would often be commuted to either a long prison term or transportation to Australia.
For the million or so Irish who came to America, a whole new set of opportunities was available. At the time and today, any law-abiding man or woman may obtain a hunting license for a small fee and legally hunt on good public land made available for this purpose. This is one of the truly remarkable distinctions between America and most of Europe. Hunting is not the exclusive province of the wealthy. It seems like it should be a no-brainer that poor, starving, rural people should be able to hunt for food but somehow America is one of the very few western countries that so readily extends this right.
My ancestor, Henry Cassidy, was born in County Donegal, Ireland towards the end of the great famine and immigrated to Woburn, Massachusetts. He did not have the right to to feed himself off of the land in the country of his birth. But I do and I have. Many is the time when I literally did not have enough money to both pay the mortgage and buy groceries. I would have had to choose between keeping a roof over my head and feeding my family. The way that I have survived these periodic crises is by hunting for food. Once the deer is on the ground, I know for certain that no matter what else goes wrong in life, we will not starve.
This is a magnificent right that I enjoy. I have a right to hunt and I have a Constitutional right to possess the arms that are needed to do so. These legal rights have been the difference between the experience of my ancestors starving in Ireland and my own family eating well even when we're out of heating oil and the car won't start.
For this reason, I will eat venison on Saint Patrick's Day. I will revel in my lawfully killed wild meat. I am contemplating a large, covered roast cooked slowly in a broth of root vegetables for 4 or 5 hours. Certainly this will be paired with a pint of stout porter, Guiness or otherwise. I suspect that Henry Cassidy would be pleased to see the damned potatoes and cabbage left off of the menu.
3 comments:
I think this is a little bit of gingoism on your part. Northern Europe, specifically Norway, Sweden, and Finland have very strong hunting traditions. I have a nephew in Norway that is learning to hunt as part of an after-school program. Those countries are experiencing LESS of a decline than the U.S. because more people live in rural areas. Norway subsidizes people living in rural or remote areas, and has slowed the rate of de-population of rural areas by doing so. Hunting participation is closely linked to living in rural areas in both the US and Nordic countries. Also, there are strong hunting traditions in Switzerland and Austria, where there is a significant rural population. Urbanization is the driving factor behind the decline of hunting participation internationally.
Erik Jensen, Minneapolis, MN
Erik,
There are indeed strong hunting traditions in countries like Switzerland, Austria and Germany. But start looking at what is involved in getting a hunting license and compare that to the US. The tests for the license literally involve being able to memorize and perform songs and dances. That sounds really cute and everything until you imagine needing to get a hunting license because you need to hunt for some food and you're getting turned down because you aren't part of the club that grew up learning these songs and dances.
Austria also manages its herds from the top down with trophy hunting in mind, going so far as to feed 'wild' herds of red deer on trucked-in feed in order to support abnormally high concentrations of the animals in small areas. All of this sort of thing gets worked into the cost of hunting them, even on public land.
A tag for a red deer stag in Austria will often sell for around $18,000. You know how much a tag for a buck whitetail costs in Virginia? A basic $46 big game license allows up to 3 bucks, plus 3 does, a black bear and 3 turkeys.
Sure, there are strong hunting traditions in certain areas of Europe. But this is something mostly for wealthy rural people. A guy like me, living in Austria, wouldn't have a prayer of going on a deer hunt.
I stand by what I said about America offering a unique ease of access to hunting for its people. In every state I have looked at, the hunters ed class is offered for free and a basic resident license costs less than $50.
Give me one example in Western Europe of a country that makes hunting so easily accessible to poor people. In terms of licensing, cost and land access it is hard to beat the US as a location for the modern subsistence hunter.
Jack -
Nordic countries are comparable to the US, the license requirements are only slightly more rigorous. In certain rural communities in Norway, over 50% of the male population buys hunting licenses every year. Urban areas are much lower, just like here. Obviously, they're not all wealthy people in these rural communities. Trophy hunting is frowned upon. Hunting has massive support across all parties because it is seen as a healthy outdoor activity and a way to get a natural meat source. There are things I don't like about the Nordic hunting culture, such as the lack of a bowhunting tradition and the use of dogs in moose hunting (it is viewed as a way to make sure no wounded animals are lost). However, I think there is a lot we can learn from them.
My reaction to your post is driven by the fact that the dominant voices in the American hunting culture are conservative and insular, and have little or no ability to see what it is going to take to preseve hunting in America. They often point the finger at non-hunting environmentalists as the enemy, when they are and can be our allies in preserving hunting. We have made this work imperfectly in Minnesota where a coalition of hunter/anglers and environmentalists passed a referendum increasing taxes, the revenue constitutionally dedicated to wildlife habitat (that must be open to hunting, fishing, and trapping), clean water, and parks and trails. We need to work on more such efforts.
Erik J
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