The Rational Hunter

The Wolf and the Canary

It is well known that miners used to take canaries into the mine shafts as an early warning signal that carbon monoxide levels were getting to high. If the canaries died, it was time to high tail it out of the shaft.

I want to suggest that the wolf plays a similar role. It is often said that wolves ought to be preserved because of their intrinsic value, their beauty, uniqueness and the added sense of wildness that they bring to the American backcountry. It is also often said that wolves, as keystone predators, play an essential role in the long term stability of the ecosystems to which they are native.

I don't entirely disagree with either of these claims. However, I think that in addition, the wolf is a marker of the quality of our society in much the way that the canary was a marker of the quality of the air. Wolves require huge, largely unfragmented tracts of land in order to thrive without undue conflict with developed regions. They are a potential threat (albeit a very, very small threat) to our personal survival. They oblige us to take on the costs of their presence in terms of depredation, management, accomodation around human habitation, etc.

For these reasons and others, the wolf represents a non-negligible cost to human beings. Consequently, the fact that a society tolerates or fails to tolerate the continued co-existence of the wolf is a partial measure of that society's attitudes toward nature and its level of commitment to the preservation of wilderness. In this sense, the wolf is a measure of a society's magnanimity, broad-mindedness and humility; that is, it is a measure of the collective maturity and/or nobility of the society. And since these are surely the sorts of characteristic one would desire in one's society, the wolf is a measure of how desirable our society in fact is.

Paleolithic Fasting

Off and on over the years (and now almost exclusively) I have subscribed to some form of the paleolithic diet, most notably articulated by Loren Cordain. The basic idea is that human beings have evolved and that, in particular, we have evolved over millions of years to eat a diet that is rich in lean meat and seafood, fruits and vegetables and nuts. We are not well-adapted for a diet high in carbohydrate rich foods like starchy vegetables, legumes, grains or dairy. Even worse are the unnaturally high levels of concentrated sugars and salt.

These basic guidelines give the content of the original human diet. But there is a further question concerning the pattern of eating in hunter gatherer society. Cordain and his colleagues are starting to address this issue (which can be found in his latest newsletter). And it appears that hunter-gatherer dietary patterns are at odds with conventional (though unsubstantiated) conventional wisdom in the health food community. Hunter-gatherers do not "graze" on small meals throughout the day. The typical pattern appears to be one of intermittent fasting: one large meal in the evening (sometimes with a small meal consumed in the morning).

It makes sense to me, that is exactly how I do things when I am out hunting all day. It is only when I sit here behind the computer that I get tempted to hit the fridge for a mid-day meal.