The intersection between deer and humans is tangled with emotion and economics in the US. Though it was published a decade ago, this exhaustive look at the ecology and history of that relationship is still the best primer on the subject I've found. When I spent two months researching and writing about the deer debacle in California's Point Reyes National Seashore (there are controversial plans to eradicate white fallow deer), Nelson's insight was priceless, especially to a neophyte. A cultural anthropologist and hunter, Nelson looks at deer management mishaps, from contraception on New York's Fire Island to predator introduction on Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay. His own hunting ethos echoes the mindful conservation of the Alaskan Koyukon people, with whom he traveled for several years: from tongue to testicles, he wastes nothing. The book opens with an unarmed Nelson stalking a doe on a remote Alaskan island and closes with the author witnessing the birth of a fawn on the same island. Nelson visits sprawling game ranches in Texas Hill country where hunters can pick off deer from stands strategically placed by feeders. He joins a group of anti-hunting activists in the Wisconsin woods as they sabotage those in camouflage on opening weekend, when some 650,000 hunters fan out in the forest hoping to bring home fresh venison. And along the way, Nelson continues to drop great historical tidbits: the etymology of American slang "buck" for the paper currency is a legacy of the rise of market hunting in the 1830s when an entire deer carcass would sell for about a dollar. Whether you're a hunter or someone who enjoys theories of wilderness and writing in the spirit of John McPhee, this book will no doubt change how you feel the next time you spot a deer.

-- Zachary Slobig

Heart and Blood: Living with Deer in America
Richard Nelson
1998, 416 pages
$21
Available from Amazon