28 Eat Your Meat But Keep Quiet About it

Most of the wildlife on the island was relatively tame as we accepted them as our neighbors and left them alone.  By today’s standards many people on the island lived in poverty and the only animals that had to look out for man were the deer, which were hunted to help supplement the vegetable garden.  Most staples however, like shortening, flour and sugar came from town.

Hunting season was never taken into consideration when it came to replenishing the meat supply as any time of the year was hunting season.  I can remember when on one occasion the game warden drove into the bay before hunting season opened and all the camp was a buzz to make sure there was no tell tale signs of the last kill.

My Uncle Irwin provided his family and ours on occasion with venison, as my dad did not hunt.   Uncle’s idea of hunting was to climb the hill behind our house to the apple orchard, where after dark on any given night there might be a half to a dozen deer feeding.  Why waste your time running around through the woods after meat when after dark with a headlamp you could bag a deer in five minutes.  Shine a light into any deer’s eyes and it will just stand there waiting for the trigger to be pulled.  Pit-lamping was very illegal but a very efficient way to obtain meat.  Remember getting fresh meat was considered a necessity, what farmer would untie his cow and let it wander off before he butchered it so he could spend hours looking for it. 

Many of the folks on the island had small hobby farms with maybe a few goats or sheep, a cow or two and maybe the odd horse and a few chickens or geese.

Charlie Rosen was a fine old Swedish gentleman who lived by himself on a small farm by a lake that today is called Rosen’s Lake. We would see him from time to time as he went by our house with his horse pulling a stone boat to pick up supplies at Tipton’s Store.

We never saw Charlie very often but were always pleased when he came by to visit.  On this one occasion we learned that one of his horses had died, and what a shame that was, especially with so much meat going to waste.  That was no problem for Charlie as rather then let it go to waste he ate it.  How much of it he was able to eat before it spoiled I don’t know, but maybe he canned and ate it all.  I will never know.

 It was rumored about that some of the locals even ate the odd cougar.  For whatever reason cougars were considered a pest and if one was spotted you would immediately phone the government cougar hunter who would come post haste to dispatch the varmint.

We did have quite a few partridges in our orchard and even though I was not much with a gun at least on one occasion brought one home for supper.  Except for a bit of a wild taste depending on what they were feeding on, they were much like chicken.

If people today suddenly had to butcher their own meat most would instantly become vegetarians.  I remember when my Aunt Ruth was slaughtering chickens, what an unpleasant spectacle to watch as she lopped their heads off and eviscerated them.  This was not as hard to deal with as when on one occasion I was going by Jim Redfern’s place and he was butchering a cow.  As I said this was the quickest way to vegetarianism.  Here was Jim in the middle of the front yard and up to his neck in body parts as they were laid out all over the yard.  Jim lived off by himself so I was probably the only person by that day, much to my regret.  With no encouragement from Jim I left as politely as possible to carry on home.