Fur, Hunting, GMO's, and other things Hippies Hate.

Currently, I'm working on my SCA armor, by making it more period and less "bulky black plastic".  The issue with this is my persona is Viking, who did not wear much in the way of "protection", and what they did is not acceptable for SCA.   This leaves me with one of two options: wear big clothing over my armor to hide it, or cover it in fur and leather.  I choose option two.

The issue for me is that I don't wear, or use, fur for hobby needs.  I was raised in the old school methods of hunting: You eat what you kill, and you waste nothing.  This means that I will wear a leather jacket, because I will eat the hell out of a cow.  If chicken made good leather, I would wear chicken leather.  I don't particularly like rabbit fur, because there isn't a market for rabbit meat, and it requires a ton of rabbits to be used for anything other than food.

I like venison, and deer hide is very nice.  Also, those antlers have many practical uses.  What I won't wear, is wolf pelts, because there is no market at all for wolf meat.  The North American wolf has been hunted to the point where we're not even sure if they truly exist anymore.  Every so often, a wolf is seen somewhere in the north mid-west, but it's like Bigfoot at this point.  There is no point to hunting wolves: we don't eat them, their fur is not large enough to make even a blanket out of, and it's not like we need protection from them.

So, I use as much fake fur as possible when making my armor pretty.  Fun fact: I use wool, that's been made to look like sheepskin, which does nothing but make me laugh.  Using these materials, I can hide all the stuff that makes my armor non-period, and nothing was killed for no good reason to have it.

Speaking of that, I support hunting.  Why? Because if you live in this area, you have to either support the consuming of animals, or you can starve.  New England's weather dictates that we cannot have vegetables for half the year.  From late September to practically May, the area is a frozen wasteland.  I've been told that we shouldn't hunt/wear/fur/eat meat, because it's cruel to animals.

Strangely, this is usually told to me by a person who tells me never to eat GMO's or processed food...

Two things that are a part of any non-homegrown vegetable, which we've explained can't be grown here for long periods of time.  This means that I have to buy them, and they're expensive as hell.  One cannot buy all this "farm fresh" food, or from a farmers market, and expect to survive during the winter months.  There's a reason there's nearly no giant farms in New England.

Two deer, with a small stock of vegetables, rice, and various other bits one can acquire during the summer months, can feed two people throughout the winter.  Which is how a lot of people I know up here, tend to get through those months.  No, they're not risking starvation, they're basically offsetting their bills with smaller food bills.  Done right, someone could cut the purchase of meat out of their budget, imagine if you only paid for canned vegetables for two months.  That's about $1 per meal?  50c if you can cook well.  That means your food budget for the two months, is around $40.  Add in the cost of meat, and $40 is a single purchase.

Hunting, is a viable financial undertaking.  Unless it's cut by huge costs for licences, permits, gun/bow and ammo costs, bad winters and just plain bad luck.  Good hunters know that you can't just kill ten random deer, you have to harvest like you were farming them.  Take the ones that have bred, or are pushing into over population.  Remember those wolves we killed? They helped keep deer from exploding and dying off, we sort of have to take up that task now.

So, if you want to live the "cleaner life", where you don't spend your days shoveling chemicals into your body as fast as possible in a race with death, you have to either be very wealthy, or have the ability to hunt and gather your own food.

You know, like the persona's we take in the SCA did.