Timothy Egan on American politics and life, as seen from the West.In a memorable riff of candor, Theodore Roosevelt once spoke of something he felt when going to war, saying he knew “what it is like when the wolf rises in the heart.”  Timothy Egan on American politics and life, as seen from the West.  A few days ago, in deep woods that had yet to freeze up for winter, I experienced a similar sensation while watching ducks flutter about on a lake in late afternoon. From “nice landing” my thoughts moved quickly to what those birds would taste like with an olive-oil-and-rosemary rub, a stuffing of sweet onions and green apples, and a red wine thick with tannins to wash it all down.  This doesn’t happen — the wolf rising, that is — when I’m shopping at Safeway. But eating wild duck from a friend who is a hunter, following a feather-and-blood-soaked butcher session in his garage, prompted all kinds of instinctual feelings about my place in the food chain. As I plucked downy feathers and gutted mallard intestines I felt the surge of ancestral DNA.  And then I faced the prospect of a national holiday centered around a bland, flightless bird with the equivalent of breast implants. I decided, a week ago, to drain the splurge bank and buy one of those free-range, organic, emotionally stable heritage turkeys rather than the usual top-heavy, hormone-injected, pellet-stuffed mound of arid meat — the McMansion of American foods.  It was not because I felt bad about how most of the 46 million turkeys served Thursday were raised, or even troubled by how this distant cousin of a wild creature has been bred downward, ever dumber. In a free market, such is the result of an agrarian economy of scale. No farmer on first-name terms with his birds can make a living selling a turkey for 39 cents a pound.  No, I switched because of the wild duck experience. While the un-engineered turkey may not be self-basting, it can run and fly, and so it has more thigh meat, more muscle, a hint of gaminess and a taste of the outdoors. Benjamin Franklin, who favored the turkey over the bald eagle as the national bird, might recognize what we ate Thursday.  Still, aside from this holiday season, you have to go out of your way to find meat with a back story connected to nature. You have to hunt, or have a friend who hunts — no easy task in a nation that is 82 percent urban. I live in a metro area of about 3 million people, and my friend Matt is the only person I know who hunts. He shoots geese, elk, deer, duck, pheasant — the whole game spectrum. He’s also a passionate environmentalist, deeply concerned about loss of habitat and wild places.  In late summer, when salmon are running up the cold veins of the Pacific Northwest, I can usually count on a copper-colored fillet from friends who fish. I’m also lucky enough to have a buddy who brings me oysters and chanterelle mushrooms from his place on Puget Sound.  But an authentic avian feast is much harder to come by. The fact that we even have to call a turkey “heritage” shows how far removed we are from the implications of that word.  Matt’s ducks showed a few blood stains on the coats, from where the shotgun pellets had entered, but mostly the birds were clean. Later, I served thick breasts, the meat red and robust, covered in a huckleberry-and-juniper sauce, at a dinner party. But I was surprised that some of my guests, high-minded foodies who can fuss over foraging, were repulsed.  “Ewwww!” That was one response. (O.K., she had to spit out an occasional pellet, the price of fresh-killed duck). Another diner couldn’t shake the image of a beautiful, green-headed northern mallard brought to an early death for dinner. So, I argued, would they prefer something sterile and chemically processed, bearing little resemblance to the original? Everyone keeps telling us to eat real food. What could be more local, seasonal and sustainable than a Northwest duck? Bon appétit!  In Italy, birds at the market are displayed with the heads intact, so a knowledgeable consumer can examine the eyes for freshness. Most Americans would be aghast at such a thing.  So we settle for a sanitized bird, disconnected from place, even as the land just outside urban America is full of tasty, healthy food — there for the taking, as long as we don’t lose all knowledge of how to bring it to the table.
Food from the wild is the way to go, even if it means having to remove the odd shotgun pellet.