Kesia Nagata is uncomfortable buying commercially produced meat. “It looks all flabby and grey and not at all appealing,” she says. As a Buddhist-raised, recovering vegetarian, the grisly reality of feed lots, slaughterhouses and the shrink-wrapped denial represented by the neatly packaged meat in her grocery store weighs on her soul.
So Nagata — a 22-year-old filmmaker — is learning to hunt. So is her brother, Kai. Both are in their 20s, raised a stone’s throw from Commercial Drive.
“We were vegetarian growing up, so hunting was never really on the radar when we were kids,” she said. “My parents were trying to make a choice about minimizing evil, both nutritional and ethical.”
Not a lot of the animal protein available met their standard. The environmental impact of what she calls “industrial meat” is enough to put Nagata off her feed.
“I want my meat to be grass-finished, and killed as ethically as possible,” she said. “As much as I firmly believe in the necessity of animal protein and saturated fats, the commercial stuff is all toxic.”
B.C. is experiencing a hunting resurgence, fuelled in part by interest from young urbanites like Nagata and her brother, according to hunting instructor Dylan Eyers of Vancouver-based EatWild BC.
“I’ve done courses for years for friends and colleagues,” said Eyers, who is also a park ranger. Read on….