The Tastiest Meat Americans Can't Buy

"Three hours into our hunt through the frigid New Hampshire woods, Ryan Calsbeek, a rangy 51-year-old biology professor at Dartmouth, guessed that 200 animals were hiding in the trees around us. Calsbeek and I were 20 feet up a pignut hickory, crouching on a creaky platform. His friend Max Overstrom-Coleman, a stocky 46-year-old bar owner from Vermont, had climbed a distant tree and strung himself up by a harness, readying his crossbow and swaying in the wind."

"A bounty of such succulent, free-range meat is currently running through America's backyards. The continental United States is home to some 30 million white-tailed deer, and in many areas, their numbers are growing too rapidly for comfort. Each year, a white-tailed doe can typically birth up to three fawns, which themselves can reproduce as soon as six months later. Wherever deer are overabundant, they are at best a nuisance and at worst a plague."

"I had joined Calsbeek's December hunt to try to get my hands on high-quality red meat. Calsbeek had yet to kill a deer that season, but in previous years, he told me, a single animal kept his family of four well fed through the winter. His young daughters especially liked to eat deer heart; apparently, it's marvelously rich and tender. My mouth watered at the thought."

Three hunters sit in freezing New Hampshire woods, hunting deer from tree platforms and anticipating venison. White-tailed deer number roughly 30 million across the continental United States and reproduce rapidly, with does birthing up to three fawns and fawns breeding within six months. Overabundant deer damage gardens and farms, carry Lyme-infected ticks, disrupt forest ecosystems and promote invasive plants, and cause tens of thousands of vehicle collisions annually in some states. Hunting is used to reduce numbers and supply high-quality meat that can feed families through winter, including organ cuts favored by some hunters' children.

Read at The Atlantic