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In their quest to be local, Maine chefs have served dishes that feature the crispy tails of pasture-raised pigs, seaweeds from the deep and hen of the woods mushrooms pulled from oak trunks. All these local foods are fair game for the innovative local chef who relishes the concept of terroir – the French term for the distinct flavors of the environment foods grows in. But not local wild game, which can’t be sold commercially in the United States. It was regulated out of the retail market so long ago that even some food professionals don’t know why they’re not allowed to serve it. If you find venison on a Maine menu, it was probably imported from another state or country. The only Maine venison ever on Maine menus comes from one of the state’s deer farms, such as Edgar and Patricia Dolbec’s Applegate Farm in West Newfield, which supplies chef Cara Stadler with venison for Tao Yuan in Brunswick, but that is red deer, native to New Zealand. Confusing, especially given how many whitetails you might see grazing near 295 on your morning commute. Which explains why Stadler and other area chefs would like to see a re-examination of laws preventing the sale of wild game that date back to 1885 on a state level and 1900 federally. “Outdated barriers,” chef Evan Mallett of Black Trumpet in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, called them. “There is a disconnect between relative abundance and legislation that dictates we can’t serve that,” he said. He noted that wild deer, which face few predators today thanks to man’s widespread slaughter of wolves and coyotes, are so abundant that some communities pay to have them killed. “It is a big issue for chefs.” “If we can harvest a wild mushroom, we should be able to harvest (and serve) a wild deer,” Mallett said. This “hot conversation,” as he called it, about allowing the commercial sale of game has been percolating nationally, too, as well as in response to the overpopulation of a species that carries the tick that causes Lyme disease, chews up forestland and has a tendency to get in the way of cars. Mallett and Stadler would both love to serve native wild game, but getting over the political hurdles would be an enormous challenge. Some say an impossible one. “That’s never going to happen,” said Bonnie Holding, director of information and education at the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. “Unfortunately, people don’t know when to stop.” Holding was referring to the first century of statehood when it was practically open season in Maine woods. Between the “sports,” mostly city gentlemen who popped up to not-yet-vacationland to enjoy time off in the woods, and the Maine farmers and woodsmen trying to feed their families and get a little cash into their threadbare pockets, the state’s native game stood little chance. Maine hunters would roll into markets with wagonloads full of deer saddles or the hindquarters of a massive moose, which fetched $21 in 1858. The “sports” would board the train in Bangor, headed to Boston or farther with their trophies, the dead deer piled on each other like suitcases. The wild turkey and the caribou fared even worse. There were rules, frequently ignored, and both sides blamed each other. Out-of-state hunters were banned and then allowed back, town moose wardens appointed. Soon there were game commissioners, some of whom branded the locals “hoodlums,” poaching past their limits. Meanwhile the sports were “intelligent gentlemen,” (actual language from commissioner reports in the 1880s). Game wardens were said to leave the sports to their own devices in the summer, which included killing for pleasure and abandoning the meat, while chasing after the locals in the winter. Historian Edward Eves called it a full-out Game War. By the turn of the century, the wild game population was depleted: the caribou and wild turkeys gone, the moose and deer in trouble. Protection and conservation became the aim of both state and national governments, and within 40 years, hunters were forbidden from selling any meat a state wildlife agency deemed game, i.e., a native local species. “Whenever money is involved, it seems like things go downhill,” Holding said. Holding is not just the spokesperson for Inland Fisheries but a hunter and longtime Maine Guide herself, who appreciates just how delicious wild game is. “What could be more organic or free range than game meat?” she said. “It is so good.” As well as good for you. “It has very high nutritional value,” she said. “And there are some minerals we can get from wild game that we can’t get from farm animals.” Both chefs and consumers are increasingly aware of these benefits. At Union in the Press Hotel in Portland, chef Josh Berry serves venison carpaccio. “With the autumn season upon us, I love using these ‘other’ local ingredients,” he wrote in an email. “With the venison dish in particular, I think of the deer and its natural habitat.” He seasons it with spruce bud oil and fresh ground juniper to highlight “the forest theme.” He sources his venison from Yankee Farmers Market in New Hampshire, so there’s a chance it comes from the Dolbec’s farm, where it would have spent some time in the woods, albeit inside a fence and with daily handouts of hay. In other words, it wasn’t wild and therefore not subject to ban. According to State Veterinarian Michele Walsh, who oversees the state’s roughly 60 deer farms, only about a dozen raise deer for meat (others treat the deer more as pets, she said). It’s been a hit or miss business, but lately, at least for the Dolbecs, more hit than miss. They are down to just 13 deer from a high of 140. Why so low? “There was such a demand for the venison,” Edgar Dolbec said. If you want to eat true wild game from Maine, be it bear, moose, deer or fowl, you either need to hunt or befriend a hunter. Vinland chef/owner David Levi butchered a moose cow a friend had shot a couple of years ago. His friend brought the moose back to his Cumberland backyard and the two of them tackled processing it together.
