Check out my review of Girl Hunter in this month’s issue of The Nature Conservancy’s Science Chronicles at www.conservationgateway.org.
Georgia Pelligrini’s Girl Hunter, an account of her discovery of hunting and eating what she kills, does an outstanding job of reaching a new audience for conservation. The author is a woman in her 20s who lives in New York City, and she is writing for people like herself — many of whom have probably never considered going hunting before.
In this hybrid travelogue and cookbook, she describes a long list of hunts for dove, squirrel, boar, elk, woodcock, duck, turkey — even coot — which were conducted under the careful attention of guides at high-end hunting lodges throughout the United States and in England.
She celebrates the hunting lifestyle: rich dinners with fine wine and good whiskey, classic sporting apparel, and the jaunty look of a side-by-side shotgun over the shoulder. Her stated message is that we should be more in touch with the food we eat and that hunting is part of understanding where our food comes from.
Throughout her book and blog, the author presents the sporting life as an aspirational pursuit: living the good life, looking fabulous while doing it, and being proud that you know how to kill, skin, and enjoy the taste of a squirrel.
Pelligrini makes the outdoor life glamorous. Although Girl Hunter rarely touches upon conservation themes, her writing helps to make the field and forest trendy among a new audience of urban, adventurous eaters — and this is very good for conservation.