Standing in the meat aisle of the grocery store, surrounded by steaks and shanks, a realization dawns on me:

Real men kill their own meat.

Like the guy I once knew who shot a deer with a bow and arrow, only to have it not die right away. He was painted from head to toe like Rambo and chased the wounded deer 12 miles through a frozen swamp outside Kluberville, Indiana. Finally, he cornered the deer and punched it to death with his bare hands. He couldn’t get the head mounted (you understand why), but he told us all about it (he also didn’t have photos). Boy what a man!

Real men survive in nature and are exposed to the elements. They build a fire in the snow and escape being done in by hypothermia. They build a small shelter out of brush and start a fire by rubbing two soaking wet tree branches together. They find sources of fresh water, because dehydration is the true killer of the woods. But mostly,

Real men kill their own meat.

They wear camouflage, so that the deers can’t see them. They get up well before dawn to sit silently on a log or a bucket. They douse themselves in deer urine, a true attractor of other deers, whom they’ll shoot with their gun that only has one bullet, because real men only need one bullet.

They are highly skilled, they are one with the deer, they become the deer. And they wear fluffy orange hats as they wait in the underbrush, concealed.

Or maybe, they wait inside a large tree house for adult men with a heater and a beer fridge and satellite television. Real men know that it can get a bit nippy outside in the winter and it can be uncomfortable, and with everything going on lately who wants to be uncomfortable and cold? Not only that, but it’s dull to sit in the woods and stare at a bunch of old trees, waiting for deers to walk by. Better to have a few tall boys to pass the time and while you’re at it, flip on some college football – I think I saw New Mexico State was playing Akron. After all, this isn’t easy, but it’s all for a higher purpose which is:

Real men kill their own meat.

Real men take large bags of oats, corn, apples and crunchy breakfast cereals that deers like to eat and dump them in the corner of a field every day for 364 days straight. By the 365th day, when it’s time to go hunting the deers have become so used to this feeding arrangement that they’re basically nothing more than a glorified pet, wagging their little deer tails when they see you coming and licking your smiling face. They’re emotionally enmeshed with these men in Cabela’s camo.

Not only that, but real men use a trail cam with night vision, which is nothing more than a baby monitor for deers. They know the comings and goings of the deers, and so it’s really not too terribly inconvenient to find them on opening day. The deers will probably come skipping up when they hear you coming - hoping to eat some baby carrots out of your hand or play fetch with the frisbee. So deer hunting is really more like putting your dog down than anything. You can go out at halftime and still be back in time for the third quarter kickoff.

And sure, it’s not exactly pleasant. You may recoil from the laws of nature and evolution that have been so nakedly laid out here, but there’s no way around the fact that:

Real men kill their own meat.

And real men use an aerial drone with thermal imaging and tiny laser guided missiles to go deer hunting. After all, why would you muck around with the mud and the wet of the woods when you could be hunting from the comfort of your own sofa? It’s unreasonable to demand we go outside to hunt or to somehow assert that hunting from the couch is an inherently inferior form of deer hunting. Who are you to say otherwise?

In fact, the Real-real men hire somebody else to go hunting for them. For who can be bothered to go to the woods? That smelly, ancient graveyard where weirdos covered in deer piss sit silently in solitude with nothing to entertain themselves but their own long thoughts, yuck!

Send someone else and tell them to bring back what they’ve captured. But make sure to clean it all up when you’re finished! Dispose of the carcass, cut out the gamey parts, and please, please get all those little bones out of the meat. They are such a hassle to deal with!

And if you need to build a sprawling industrialized farm that stretches for miles and miles go ahead and do that too. Though it’s a lot of work, it may streamline the deer hunting process in the long run. Oh, and instead of venison, let’s raise beef. After all, nobody eats deer meat nowadays – just hillbillies and woodland recluses. When you’ve got it all packaged up, send it over to the local store and we’ll pick it up on the way home from work, because

Real men kill their own meat.

Standing in the meat aisle of the grocery store, surrounded by steaks and shanks, I am proud to be part of such a long lineage of fierce hunters. Like my forebears who carried sharpened poles to kill a mastodon, I am also taking precious meat back to my cave to roast over the fire for dinner.

Real Men Kill Their Own Meat