EatWild Asks a Big Question: Is Hunting the Most Ethical Thing a Meat Eater Can Do?

Miki Dutca cares a lot about food. Beyond the taste, cooking techniques, or what wine might pair best with it, she cares a lot about where it comes from, the journey it took to get to her plate, before she’s even taken the first bite. Several years ago, the more she learned about that part, the more conflicted she felt.

“I’ve seen videos of industrial farming. They’re quite sad, and they’re quite impactful,” she says. “I was considering becoming a vegan, vegetarian, you name it. Then I met a few hunters who opened my mind to a different possibility.”

There’s no getting around it: in order to eat meat, something has to die. To Dutca, being involved in the process was a responsible solution. “I wanted to be very aware of the pain I choose to inflict as a meat eater, and to be present and honor that life,” she says.

That search brought her to EatWild, an organization dedicated to educating people on hunting, foraging and cooking wild food. She met founder Dylan Eyers, and discovered a whole new approach to meat consumption.

Today, Dutca and Eyers are married, with a freezer full of consciously sourced meat.

“It’s very rare that we come across a chicken that isn’t a grouse,” laughs Dutca, over a plate of homemade whitetail deer osso bucco and risotto in their East Vancouver home. The two split their time between Vancouver and their home in Secret Cove on the Sunshine Coast.

Happily ever after aside, Dutca’s search for a more conscious path to food sourcing is a common entry point for folks interested in the EatWild programming. The EatWild mission is to introduce and educate newcomers on how to hunt in B.C. There are many satellite skills that accompany hunting: firearms safety, wilderness survival, regulatory knowledge. Eyers and his team at EatWild can help with all of that.

“Hunting is about curating knowledge,” says Eyers. “I just happen to have really good mentors, and I’ve come to spend a lot of time in the same little bit of woods.”

Part of EatWild’s goal is to pass that mentorship onto hunt-curious urbanites who don’t have someone in their lives—traditionally a relative—to mentor them. And as the popularity of home cooking rises, people have become more interested in food sourcing beyond the grocery store.

It isn’t just about hunting, either. Foraging, fishing, and locally sourcing food is something Eyers and Dutca are passionate about.

That common ground has connected them with lots of people in the Vancouver food scene. They namedrop Salvio Volpe and La Quercia as places they’ve connected with people over a shared interest in hunting, foraging and harvesting. And it doesn’t take a long conversation with them to see that they believe there’s no better place in the world to discover the rich cornucopia of wild meat and plants than Canada’s west coast.

“Every chef we talk to wants to learn how to hunt,” says Eyers. That gives them unique access to Vancouver’s food community. “Having somebody from the chef community say, ‘We want to spend time with you guys because you’re doing this thing we want to learn,’ it’s great.”

Inspiration goes both ways. When they find a dish at a restaurant they really like, the couple tries to replicate it back at home. It can spark connections and collaborations.

“There’s a bounty come springtime of all the nourishing plants that rear their first shoots, which are edible and delicious,” says Dutca. “They provide that excitement for going out in the forest and looking for something as soon as the days get a bit longer and the forest is greener.”

EatWild is neither Eyers’ nor Dutca’s full-time job, but they still manage to host a full calendar of events that combine wild foraging and harvesting with cooking and eating.

For their ‘Wild by the Sea’ trips, they spend the day harvesting shellfish and end the day with a picturesque long table dinner on the beach. EatWild’s mushroom foraging workshop ends with attendees taking their haul of fiddlehead and oyster mushrooms to a friend’s restaurant in Secret Cove to make fresh pasta ai funghi.

One of EatWild’s most popular offerings is their animal butchery workshop. Participants are taken through a step-by-step dismantling of an animal, usually a pig, and shown where each cut of meat comes from, and what cooking technique each pairs with, cooking wise.

READ MORE: How to Talk to the Butcher Like a Pro

Hunting veterans attend to learn how to be more efficient with their field dressing. Hunting newbies attend to learn how to process a deer in the wild. Home chefs attend who want to learn more about each cut of meat. Some come just for fun or to expand their life skills.

“I think that a little light goes off in that workshop where people are like, okay, so it’s not just how it goes together, it’s more like why.” says Eyers. “You’ve got half that group of hunters, half that group of interested foodies, and by the end of it, they have common ground. That’s the coolest part.”

For someone like Dutca, who has a passion for food and wine (with a level 3 WSET to prove it), any opportunity to showcase wild game in new, interesting, and creative ways is a win. One of her goals is to convert folks who aren’t as familiar with some of the more obscure cuts. “I’ve made numerous liver pates, for example, that are more of a liver mousse,” she says. “People have received them extremely well. You often hear people say, ‘My experience with liver in general—not even wild liver—has been not that tasty growing up.’ That’s been my passion project. To make organs palatable and exciting to unsuspecting people.”

The EatWild pitch is that anyone dedicated enough can become a hunter. But Eyers is interested in beyond just the hunt, he cares about everything that happens before, to prepare for it, and then afterwards: the responsible harvesting, and ultimately cooking and consuming. For him, that’s what creates the best parts of the EatWild community.