Meating the Deer: A reforestation of culture

by Santiago Rial

I never imagined, during my long journey to Ireland, that she’d make an environmentalist out of me. But having co-directed a very active volunteering reforestation Charity for the last 3 years has taught me more than any course could about the crude realities of Ireland’s environmental shortcomings, laws, challenges and contradictions. But I’ve also learned much about its ancient, complex, beautifully networking-based and diverse ecology, and how immense yet fragile it is. How much we’ve impacted and transformed it since the first forests were cut down to create plains in which to farm crops and build circles of stone.

One of the biggest challenges to Irish ecological restoration is that, after the killing of the last wolf, the many deer herds of Ireland were free from predators. Naturally inclined for consuming native species, deer grazing makes any effort of creating a long-standing native woodland almost pointless. The monoculture sitka-spruce forestry planted all over the country offers them the perfect living spaces, off the wind and rain, where they can safely come out of to graze the fields and whatever native tree is daring enough to try and go for it. The government spends millions every year in culling them by the thousands, without grace, or honor – as they’d have if at least the culling translated into a source of wild food, clothing, crafting materials, education or ceremony.

3 years ago, I attended a workshop by Wild Irish, held by Diarmuid Lyng and Diarmuid McGivney, where we learned over a long weekend how to butcher a deer and tan its skin. The experience gave me something I had never had the chance to do: sit in the presence of what had to die to give me life, and take it graciously. I understood that eating wild game meat is not only more sustainable and vastly less ecologically harmful than anything brought in a shop; but almost a duty to the animal as well, if we’ve destroyed its natural predator and imbalanced the whole darned arrangement. 

Last weekend, me and GWP founder Eoghan Connaughton attended the workshop’s 2nd iteration at Wild Irish new HQ base in Co. Kilkenny. Joined by a sound and merry crew of men and women, held in the warm home that Diarmuid and Siobhán have created, we spent the weekend sharing stories, working hard, singing songs, looking after babies and toddlers, being visited by local elders, laughing copiously with barely a smartphone in sight. I was once again surprised at how natural the process can be if you approach it with honor, if you appreciate the way in which life demands death and what a peaceful thing that can be if you let it, if you infuse it with “grátitude”.

The vow to waste no part to the best of our ability, and make not just food, but craft useful, beautiful things that serve and serve well. I could again feel a sort of ancient memory in my body, that switched on after giving grace, and allowed me to begin perceiving the deer as nourishment, slowly transmuting from being into ingredient. And it doesn’t have to be complicated. Ritual has its place and importance of course, but when there is a lot to learn and not much time, a simple flame traversed with whispers of gratitude and blessings of intentions can suffice to do justice to the dead creature before you; as much as the reverence for the knowledge that is being passed on to you does to yourself. And it was raw, real and red. I can’t even imagine the sort of healthier relationship with food I’d have if, like little 4-year old Ériu waddling around the butchery all weekend undaunted by the visuals we’ve been taught to think of as gruesome, I too would’ve been exposed to these things at an early age.

And then there we were, coming from our modern lives into an enchanted Tír na nÓg State of Mind for four days, looking for reconnection with something ancient, something bigger than us, something that is useful and helpful. The same feeling that inspires my volunteer work with the Gaelic Woodland Project. The conversation about the deer-grazing problem was very present, and the convergence between ecological impact and cultural impact. How many out there would think we’re mad for doing this on a bank holiday weekend, but not for buying minced meat wrapped in plastic in some major superstore. There was, though, a general feeling that these things are inevitably intertwined. That a shift in culture is needed as much as a shift in ecological approach and that they will always impact each other. There was the story of an old man that someone knew, who’d spent his life hunting the deer, but never ever consumed it, and how our ecological disinheritance has affected our cultural relationship to food, to death and to community. There were mighty conversations about the gravity of and lack of spaces for learning the ancient skills of firelight and making; and that a return to the old understanding of and care for things that grow can be a map towards a new way that serves the present if done properly, with both new science and old stories leading the way forth.

The deer is the spirit that welcomed me home to Ireland. During those early years I was lucky to call an ancient woodland in Offaly my home, and I resonated with its presence and its gifts, but I had never consumed it. Last Samhain, I served wild venison stew to my friends and family, and we dined in the presence of the stag’s head, placed on a simple altar by the fire outside. I wanted to share with them what that feels like, what a difference it makes even in your digestion if you can connect in any way with the death that gives you life. I want to help build a world where this experience is a birthright again. I think it has much to teach us humans about how to move around our environment. There is something that feels undeniably truly human about consciously and graciously impacting our surroundings. That if this being, plant or animal, must die so I must live, there are ways to make it happen in awareness, respect and balance. Ways in which we can give back. What Native-American botanist Robin Wall-Kimmerer calls having a “beneficially reciprocal relationship with place”. And if we don’t know how our ancestors did it, then we can also find our own ways, finding the sacred in the mundane, experiencing spirit through the good and helpful work.

Diarmuid and Siobhán are creating a vessel where this can be felt and experienced, because it is no show or mummery – this is their own approach to these things, the values in which they’re raising their family, and you’re invited to go experience it with them alongside an expert to teach you things. Spaces like these are becoming rare, and these two are now beginning a process of crowdfunding to purchase the land they’re renting, in order to level-up the reach and capacity of their offerings in Irish language, practical ancient skills and cultural reforestation, a concept that summarises, to me, the daróg that Wild Irish is tending to.

At the end of it, having been raised in the big city of Buenos Aires but now returning home to Co. Meath with my new skin, bones to make things with and bags of butchered venison for the freezer; I kept thinking how incredibly lucky the people in Ireland are that these spaces and skills, like that Tír na nÓg mindset, are never too far away if you go looking for them in the land with an open heart and excitement to contribute.