If anyone had been willing to listen the last few years, they know that I had been battling deer in my garden and had been losing. Overnight, my poor fruit trees would be stripped of their leaves, and their odd gastronomic decisions made me think for a while that I had a neighbor that just really hated me (if you’ve never seen what a single deer bite on each of your apples look like, I can tell you they look just like a human’s teeth marks.) It didn’t help that they ate every tomato off the vine (and I had to give up planting annuals in the backyard completely), stripped the leaves off the eggplants, but left the fruit itself alone, and pulled up my myoga ginger, literally tossing them around for fun. They ate my figs to the ground (as in, stem and all), and my paw paw trees had their leaves torn apart. The poop that they left as evidence of their indiscretions were just adding insult to injury.

And the ticks.

Ever work in the garden and go, “Hey, who’s been eating grapes back here?” only to find out that horribly bloated, purplish round thing is actually a blood engorged tick? Thankfully, my muscovy ducks keep them controlled, but sometimes I don’t herd them into all the infested areas. You want Lyme disease? That’s how you get Lyme disease. (And that weird meat allergy.)

I didn’t have the disposable capital (nor would I spend the money) to rip out my four foot fences (which is just a hop and a skip for Bambi) and build an 8 foot fence all the way around almost an acre of land which may or may not stop them, as my backyard is the only one of the block with a whole lotta edible vegetation.

I tried deterrents. Irish Spring Soap, supersonic noise makers (which just got set off at all hours of the night by adventurous raccoons but did nothing for the deer), predator eyes, running like a madwoman waving an umbrella around at dusk, all to know avail. They still came, and they still ate.

So I spoke with a friend and student at our martial arts school, who also bow hunts, about getting him to come and end my deer problem, permanently, if you catch my drift. But due to the fact that it was off season, I essentially needed 45 (I counted because the Town of Brookhaven requires you to show a parcel map with the radius from the property line) of my neighbors’ written permission to be able to apply for a Nuisance Program Application. I was not going to be able to get that many, I could tell you that. I despaired and gave up and cursed the heavens for sending these dratted creatures down upon my hard work.

Then as luck would have it, I’m part of a couple of local Facebook forums on gardening and homesteading and poultry keeping, and someone advertised a post for Hunters for Deer for the 2017 bow hunting season (Oct. 1st to Jan. 31st, sun-up to sun-down.)

Not only will they come and do what I’ve been wanting someone to do for God knows how long, they will also provide me with the venison from what they get. Um. Say what now? Get rid of my deer problem AND free meat? WHERE DO I SIGN UP?

I immediately posted that I was HELLA INTERESTED, filled out a form, and amazingly, the president of the organization himself came to meet me that afternoon to survey the area. He walked, maybe twenty feet into the backyard, and took pictures of huge, steaming piles of deer poo, which validated that yes, I had deer, and from the looks of it, quite a lot of them too. He asked if any of my neighbors had an issue with deer, to which I wryly replied that I was the only one in the area growing things worth eating so they probably all congregated on me.

He explained everything that they were going to do, intent on reassuring me they were going to be as discreet as possible (discreet? You can sit on my roof for all I care about discretion!) and to let them know if I’d be having company over because then they’d just skip that day. Professional, polite, and passionate about their work, I was highly impressed by all the knowledge he came with. The next day, they set up the tree stand (I was not home for this as we had to give an Aikido seminar in Albany that day), he took a picture and sent it to me, and I was ready.

On the car ride to Albany, I subjected my husband to listing all the things that I wanted to make with the meat we were going to get (and how I will need to clear out my chest freezer in the next few weeks)–deer liver pate, sauteed deer kidney, skewered deer heart, thinly sliced Korean barbecue styled deer tongue (in case you haven’t noticed, I’m an offal kind of girl), deer stew, deer chili, deer burgers, deer steak… I only had venison once as a child when family friends went hunting but I remember it being flavorful and delicious, with a springy texture you just don’t get at from farmed beef.

The organization is actually a not-for-profit (working for some of the townships too), and they donate the meat to food pantries in the Long Island area as well, which made me feel even better about giving them access the what is otherwise a headache for me, and a health hazard for my family. They also do mentoring programs for adults and children who want to get into the bow hunting lifestyle, which I think I will definitely sign Sophie up for (and myself) when she gets a little older.

I grew up in a Buddhist household, which occasionally went vegetarian, but I and my family are meat eaters and this will not change in the foreseeable future. I firmly believe in the fact that if I am to eat meat, I should be willing to take responsibility for the animal’s life, rather than to be so far removed from it, and what better way than to participate in the process myself?

So be on the lookout for recipes involving venison in the upcoming months!

Visit their website here for more information, or to download a permission form if you need deer population management: http://huntersfordeer.org/