3 Sask. residents share why they love to hunt

Hunting can put food on the table, but it can also bring you closer to nature and your community.

That was one of the themes of a discussion among three Saskatchewan hunters on an episode of CBC Saskatchewan's Blue Sky.

Philip Brass, a hunter and land-based educator from Peepeekisis Cree Nation, told host Leisha Grebinski that hunting is a key part of Indigenous people's spiritual practices.

"As Indigenous peoples, the act of hunting is a sacred act," Brass said. "It really is the foundation of our identity and our culture and our language, and many other aspects of our identity connects to that knowledge and that lifestyle."

He noted there are many Saskatchewan First Nations, including his own, that hold an annual band hunt, where people hunt collectively, then bring the animals back to be processed communally and distributed among families.

Brass works to keep the knowledge alive through the land-based learning he brings into the reserve schools he works at, including occasions where he will harvest a deer at 6 a.m., bring it with him to the school at 8:45 a.m., and the teachers and students work together to process the animal.

Brass said he believes the loss of Indigenous languages is directly linked to the loss of food culture.

"In communities in the north, where the Cree language is still thriving, I think the common denominator there is that you have a thriving food culture that's still practised in the communities, and they have that ability because they are living in an intact ecosystem," he said. "Where here in the south, we are losing our languages very quickly because our food culture has been so disrupted."

Brings family together

For Darrell Crabbe, executive director of the Saskatchewan Wildlife Federation, hunting and fishing are activities that bring his family together. Some of his earliest memories are of going with his father on trap lines and learning how to carry around a .22.

He echoed Brass's thoughts about how it's not just the hunting, but the processing of the food that brings people together.

"I like processing my own meat. I find that to be almost a Zen exercise. I bring my family together and friends, and we go through that whole process. We make our own sausage, grind it, right from the get-go."

'The essence of life'

Working with wild game is "just the most beautiful thing in the world," said chef Christie Peters, owner of Saskatoon restaurants Primal and POP Wine Bar.

She said she has always been a bit of a "Doomsday prepper" since hearing stories about the Great Depression from her grandmother, so she values being able to feed herself.

She shared her favourite way to eat some of the tougher leg pieces in a deer: roll the meat in spices, give it a quick sear, freeze it to make it easier to slice, then slice it super thin into a "beautiful carpaccio" with some sea salt and olive oil.

Peters noted that due to regulations, she cannot serve wild game that she hunts in her restaurants, but she loves experimenting at home.

"I think eating and being able to feed yourself is the essence of life itself — being able to have the skill to do that from absolute scratch, where you're harvesting an animal, gutting it, butchering it down, and the next thing you know you're frying up beautiful sausages," she said.

"All those skills from the beginning till the end of it are truly life skills.… Those are the things that are the beauty of life."