SAMA HOOLE: A deer shot in October has built up fat reserves for winter. The back fat, kidney fat, and marrow are all substantial. This deer is valuable. The meat is rich. The fat can be rendered and stored. This is prime hunting.

1800s, North American frontier. Hunters, trappers, and indigenous peoples all share knowledge that's considered basic survival skills. The fat content of game animals varies dramatically by season. Autumn game is prized. Spring game is often avoided.

A deer shot in October has… pic.twitter.com/4VWenO6x0R

— Sama Hoole (@SamaHoole) December 20, 2025

1800s, North American frontier. Hunters, trappers, and indigenous peoples all share knowledge that's considered basic survival skills. The fat content of game animals varies dramatically by season. Autumn game is prized. Spring game is often avoided. A deer shot in October has built up fat reserves for winter. The back fat, kidney fat, and marrow are all substantial. This deer is valuable. The meat is rich. The fat can be rendered and stored. This is prime hunting. The same deer shot in March has burned through those reserves surviving winter. The back fat is gone. The kidney fat is minimal. The marrow is thin and watery. This deer is lean. The meat is tough. It's emergency food only. Every experienced hunter knows this. Autumn is hunting season not just because of pleasant weather but because that's when animals are fattest. Spring hunting is avoided not because of spawning seasons or conservation but because the meat quality is poor. Native American hunting practices reflect this completely. Tribes schedule major hunts for autumn. Buffalo jumps happen in fall when the animals are fat. Deer and elk hunting peaks in late autumn. Fish runs are targeted in early autumn when fish have fattened preparing for spawning. Spring hunting happens only when winter stores are depleted and there's no choice. And even then, hunters are selective. They avoid lean game when possible. They target beaver and bear emerging from winter dens because these animals, surprisingly, often retain some fat. They fish for species that migrate upstream in spring and are still relatively fatty. Trappers and mountain men follow the same patterns. Their journals record explicit preferences for autumn game. They describe spring game as "poor," meaning lean. When forced to eat lean spring game, they supplement with anything fatty they can find: bone marrow, brain, any organ meats. One trapper's journal from 1843 describes shooting a spring elk: "Took the tongue and liver only. The beast was too poor for the effort of butchering. Fed the rest to the dogs." Too poor means too lean. The tongue and liver had enough fat to be worth taking. The muscle meat was so lean it wasn't worth the work to process. This selectivity seems wasteful to modern observers. But it makes perfect metabolic sense. Processing an entire lean elk carcass requires significant effort. If the caloric return is minimal because the meat is lean, the effort isn't justified. Better to shoot another animal or wait for fattier options. The dogs got lean scraps because dogs can handle higher protein ratios than humans. They still need fat, but they tolerate lean meat better. What's inadequate for human consumption works fine for dogs. The hierarchy is clear: humans get fatty portions, dogs get lean portions. This seasonal selectivity disappears with domestication and year-round meat access. Modern grocery stores sell the same cuts year-round. Everything is consistently lean because fat is trimmed before sale. The seasonal variation is eliminated. But your biochemistry hasn't changed. You still process autumn-fat venison better than spring-lean venison. Your metabolism still runs more efficiently on adequate fat than on excessive protein. The only difference is that modern food production has removed your ability to select for fat content seasonally. Traditional hunters had that ability and they used it. They structured their entire yearly cycle around hunting when animals were fattest. This wasn't cultural preference. This was nutritional optimisation through empirical observation. Your meat comes from a grocery store with no seasonal variation. Their meat came from animals they hunted when those animals were at peak fat content. One diet is optimised for retail consistency. One diet was optimised for human biochemistry. The frontier hunters who survived and thrived understood this. The ones who didn't learn it died or struggled. The Arctic didn't care about your protein calculations. The wilderness didn't care about your lean meat preferences. Only the fat content mattered for survival.