The Omnivore's Dilemma - Michael Pollan [172]
Columbus brought pigs to the New World on his second voyage, in 1493. By the end of the following century the Spanish had introduced domestic swine into the American South and California; it was their practice to release the animals into the woods, let them fatten on acorns and grasses, and then hunt them as needed. In the 1840s, Russian settlers brought domestic pigs with them to Northern California and, some years later, landowners introduced an unknown number of wild Eurasian boar, probably as a big game species. The wild boar and the feral pigs have long since interbred in California and their hardy, intelligent offspring have flourished in California’s oak forests and chaparral. (People commonly refer to the animals as boar, but from the looks of them the genes of domestic swine predominate; that said, California’s wild pigs do have longer snouts, straighter tails, and much thicker bristles than their domestic forbears.) In the absence of serious predators, the population of wild pigs has overrun many habitats, threatening farmland and vineyards and forest; they rip up great swaths of land with their rooting, exposing it to erosion and invasive weeds.
So there was a story I could tell myself about the environmental rationale for hunting wild pig in California. But I also wanted to eat wild pig, more than I wanted to eat venison or duck or all the more diminutive birds Angelo likes to hunt. I like pork, and since coming to California I’d heard how much tastier wild pigs are than either domestic hogs or the more full-blooded boar hunted in the South. (I’d tasted that once, in a stew, and found it a little too musky.) When I asked Angelo why he hunted wild pig he didn’t hesitate (or utter a word about the environment): rather, he just kissed the tips of his fingers and said, “Because it is the most delicious meat. And there is nothing that tastes so good as boar prosciutto. You’ll see. You shoot a big one and we’ll make some.”
In a sense, that’s what Angelo was really hunting, not pigs so much as prosciutti. On one of our drives up to Sonoma he’d talked a little about his philosophy of hunting and fishing. “For me it is all about the eating. Not the ‘sport.’ I am not what you call a trophy hunter. I take what I need, enough to make a nice dinner for me and my friends, maybe some salami, a prosciutto, but then: That’s it, I go home. My friend Xavier and I have this argument every time we go hunting or fishing. He keeps on fishing even after he’s caught the limit, throwing the fish back then catching it again. You know, ‘catch and release.’ I tell him he’s catching the same fish over and over. To me that’s playing with your food. You shouldn’t play with your food.”
On this, my first outing, we were joined by Richard, the property’s owner (whom Angelo had introduced to pig hunting), and Angelo’s friend Jean-Pierre, a Frenchman who works as a chef at Chez Panisse in Berkeley. Jean-Pierre hadn’t hunted in years, though he had grown up hunting boar with his relatives in Brittany. He had on one of those green felt Alpine fedoras with the feather (a hat he managed to wear without so much as a trace of irony) and a pair of tall black riding boots. We didn’t look much the part of an American hunting party (Angelo had on a pair of flouncy Euro-style black pants), though Richard did have on the full international orange regalia and I was wearing my brightest orange sweater. We divided into pairs, me with Angelo, and went our