There is a fairly new book out, "The Omnivore's Dilemma," by Michael Pollan, which has become very popular in California. He talks about the problems with modern agriculture, and in particular how much corn we get in our diet, which outside from corn itself, is an additive in many other foods as corn starch or corn syrup, and is a prime animal food. So when we eat processed chickens, we are eating corn to a much greater degree than would have been the case in earlier times. The excessive corn is one cause of diabetes and of course there are other problems with food grown on factory farms on soil that is depleted of minerals, etc.
So in this book, he explores ways to solve the problems of the modern diet. He isn't the first author to take issue with the modern diet, but for whatever reason, people like the way he writes about it, and he has sold a lot of books.
But the way he proposes to solve his meat problem is to go out and shoot wild pigs, since they eat a natural diet and don't have some of the heavy metal problems of fish. He doesn't eat very much meat in his diet, and he figures about one wild pig a year should do it for him.
So of course everyone who has read his book who isn't actually a member of PETA has jumped on the band wagon. I usually go pig hunting with an old fellow I know every year (20 years ago he was an old fellow, and he was my age then. What does that make me?). We rifle hunt, since that's what my friend does, and earlier this spring, we called the ranch we usually hunt at, and guess what? No pig reservations available for the whole summer!
I would imagine most of these people will try it once and not like it and things will get back to normal after a while. But it is amazing what impact a popular book can have on things you would never think about. It probably won't have much impact on bow hunting for pigs, since that is more work than most of these folks want to get involved with.
But it could be funny years from now if somebody tries to analyze what caused that blip in California hunting licenses around 2008.
Topic: Decreasing number of hunters... (Read 2540 times)
