The cover photo of “Girl Hunter: Revolutionizing the Way We Eat, One Hunt at a Time” shows author/chef/popular blogger Georgia Pellegrini standing in a meadow cradling a shotgun and wielding a large cast-iron skillet.
It’s a clever representation of Pellegrini’s chronicle of a year spent shooting and cooking wild game in an omnivore’s quest to come to terms with what it means to kill what you eat.
Since the book (now in paperback, $14.99, Da Capo/ Lifelong Books) was first published in 2011, it’s been followed by many more adventures and a series of Girl Hunter Weekends hosted by Pellegrini, including the latest, Thursday through Sunday at Springbank Plantation at Barnsley Gardens in Adairsville.
During a recent phone call from her Hudson Valley home base, Pellegrini explained that the women-only weekend will include clay shooting and traditional Georgia quail hunting, and she’ll teach bird dressing and cooking classes.
“It’s a wonderful thing because you have women of all different ages coming from very different parts of life,” Pellegrini said. “Some are just starting careers, and some are retiring. It’s a very emotional experience for a lot of them. They’re getting out of their comfort zone, and they’re challenging themselves to do things they’ve never done before.”
Amy Johnson, a married mother of two who lives in upstate South Carolina and writes the home and garden blog “She Wears Many Hats,” went on one of Pellegrini’s Girl Hunter Weekends in Texas last year and will be at Springbank Plantation this weekend.
“My husband just bought me a Beretta over/under 20-gauge shotgun for Christmas,” Johnson said during a recent phone call. “My husband is a hunter, and I think he’s more than willing to pay for me to go hunt for the weekend with some girls. It will be the first time I’ve shot an animal, and I feel much more comfortable going to do that with a group of girls.”
Pellegrini said that after writing “Girl Hunter” she gained some different perspectives on hunting and a better understanding of why it’s easier for women to get started in the company of other women.
“I’ve been a little lucky and sheltered in my hunting experiences,” Pellegrini said. “I learned from a commissioner of fish and game, who has become a very good friend. But I realized that there is a very different side to hunting out there.
“I’ve seen why people are afraid of it. I’ve had run-ins with the underbelly of the hunting world. And it’s been a really challenging thing for me to think about why I do it and what kind of outdoors person I want to be.”
Though Pellegrini grew up fishing and foraging on the Hudson Valley property her family calls Tulipwood, her path to gun-toting — and silently stalking wild turkey and chasing down feral hogs on an ATV — wasn’t exactly a direct one.
She’s a Wellesley College graduate who worked for Lehman Brothers before deciding to ditch Wall Street to learn to cook at the French Culinary Institute.
Working in four-star restaurants in New York and France, where she regularly butchered animals, awakened a primal curiosity. “I still wanted to know more, and soon found myself going one step further down this path, from the grocery aisle and into the wild,” Pellegrini writes.
Each chapter of “Girl Hunter” evokes a particular place and hunting trip in vivid, often humorous detail, ending with recipes for the likes of quail kabobs, fried venison backstrap and squirrel Brunswick stew with acorns. And each chapter opens with a famous quote about hunting or the natural world.
Asked for a personal quote about hunting, Pellegrini thought for a moment.
“I hunt to pay the full price of the meal,” she said. “It makes me a more conscious chef and a more awake human being. I want to participate in the cycle of life in a meaningful way.
“I think when you’re out in nature, it’s a very visceral experience, and for me it’s a very spiritual thing. Harvesting an animal is a very intense moment. If you’re going to eat, something has to die, whether it’s an animal or a vegetable.”
And her advice for omnivores who don’t hunt?
“Find some way to be more conscious of your ingredients,” she said. “If it’s not hunting, it’s going to your local farm and participating in a slaughter. If you can’t do that, just become more aware of the origins of what you’re eating. What’s put into animals ultimately gets put into you.”
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