As hunting season begins, I watch the men around me prepare. Rifles cleaned, bows strung, gear laid out, and freezers ready. Living on a ranch, surrounded by hunters and the rhythm of the land, I can’t help but wonder how many American men still know how to truly hunt and process an animal for food.
According to the latest U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service survey from 2022, only about 9 percent of men older than the age of 16 participate in hunting. But participation is not the same as knowing how to process an animal for consumption. Many people I see come out to hunt on our land want the thrill of the shot but not the responsibility of the harvest. They will bring a deer to a custom butcher or, worse, leave it behind altogether.
Yet inside every man, there remains something ancient: a quiet call to provide, to bring home the meat, to feed his family.
My husband is deeply connected to that call. He can harvest animals with skill and reverence, taking joy in the work and satisfaction in knowing that he has provided with his own hands.
Last week, life on our ranch was especially hectic. The pumpkin patch was in full swing, guests filled our tiny houses, and bow season had begun. During this part of the season, my husband usually does not hunt. We allow the paying hunters their turn and make sure the deer remain abundant and unafraid.
Axis deer are an invasive species here in Texas. Because of the high fences surrounding our ranch, we never have them on our property. My husband often wishes that they would appear because axis can be hunted out of season, and he would love access to meat year-round. He was genuinely surprised to spot two female axis between the greenhouses just beyond the range of the pumpkin patch.
At first, he thought the shapes he saw were goats that had escaped. When he realized what they were, he looked around and noticed that he had no rifle with him, only a 9-millimeter handgun. The deer crossed the road ahead of him, moving toward an open hillside. From a safe distance, with a clear backstop, he took the shot.
In the middle of a busy afternoon, surrounded by guests and activity, he processed that deer himself. Music played, a cold IPA sat on the table, blood under his fingernails, and joy in his heart. Every bit was packaged and vacuum sealed for our family.
When I asked him why, amid so much chaos, he chose to add this to his already full plate, he said something simple and true.
“It is deep inside us, given to us from our ancestors, to put food on the table for our family. We have forgotten what that means,” he said.
My husband is not far removed from those ancestors. His father never owned a car, only a horse. They hunted for nearly all their meat, raising one cow and one hog per year; growing corn, beans, squash, and watermelon; and gathering the rest.
For many men today, that connection has been lost. They are generations removed from the responsibility of bringing home food. They live surrounded by abundance—with supermarkets full of plastic-wrapped steaks and shrink-sealed chicken breasts—but abundance without meaning.
And yet something in them still remembers.
Over the next couple months, many men will come to our ranch. Some will arrive from high rises and office cubicles, wearing expensive camouflage and carrying a gun they rarely use. They are searching for something they cannot quite name. They may be successful by modern standards, but a part of them is restless.
That’s because no number in a bank account can replace the feeling of feeding your family with food you have hunted yourself. No convenience can compare to the honest, sacred work of taking a life and honoring it through nourishment.
I suspect that every man who has never harvested an animal for his family is missing a small piece of what it means to be a man. That truth may feel outdated to some, but I do not believe it is. I believe it is ancient, essential, and worth preserving.
My children will learn this from their father, who learned it from his father, that providing food with your own hands connects you to something bigger than yourself.
Inside every man is the call of survival, the call to feed, to protect, to provide. And that call is worth answering.
