Hunting Series Part 5: Korean Grandma & Big Game Hunting
East Meets the Wild West: Korean Grandma (Halmonee) and her wild take on deer, bear, and hog hunting
I was so proud to have harvested many deer throughout my hunting career. Influenced by mainstream North American hunting media such as Field & Stream, it seemed like the ultimate prize was harvesting a trophy white-tailed buck with an impressive rack of antlers and having hundreds of pounds of venison to share with loved ones. Yet every time I would bring harvest deer meat home (albeit never really a trophy buck), my grandma was not impressed. Additionally, she would rant how hunting doesn’t make sense or that we were doing something that she did not condone.
This all changed when my brother and I decided to try bear and hog hunting. I never knew this but a bear’s gall bladder is a prized possession in traditional Eastern medicine practiced in countries like South Korea. There is something about how the bear’s bile is supposedly magical for gut health. Thus, having possession of a bear’s gall bladder is rare but also incredibly expensive in countries like South Korea where my grandma immigrated from.
The first year I harvested a bear in Maine, we brought home all the meat yet my grandma was confused. She asked us why we did not save the gall bladder? When we asked our bear hunting guide about it, he said he tosses out the gall bladder with other organ parts every single time he dresses and processes the bear for his clients. My grandma, who was clearly not a fan of our hunting, started to bug us every month on when we would get back up to Maine for our next bear hunt to get her hands on the prized gall bladder that she could brag about to her friends.
August rolls around and me and my brother gear up for another attempt to harvest black bears. This pursuit no longer became about feeding our families or who is the best hunter, it was a race to become the favored grandson for our beloved grandma. Fast forward the grueling and mosquito-ridden hours went spent in national forests and we both harvested black bears. Our guide preserves the gall bladders for us and we vacuum sealed them for the airplane ride back to Georgia so that they could sit in my grandma’s freezer. She was thrilled. We later learned that she dry-aged the parts and followed a process toward using it for medicinal purposes. We’re not sure if she ever actually consumed any of it, but we learned something new about her values, Eastern medicine, and I felt so connected to my grandma in unexpected ways. Our bear guide joked that he was missing out on a side business for years.
A year later, with some of the friends we met at bear camp, we decided to do a Spring hog hunt together in Florida. Now hogs are pretty low on the list of big game. But again, to my surprise, my grandma was elated when we brought home a cooler full of hog meat later that weekend. I didn’t really think of it at the time, but wild pigs are more commonly found in South Korea and pork is a staple within the country’s cuisines (find more data and historical context here). On top of that, I learned that our family used to own a pig farm in Korea until the pork market crash of the 80’s. My grandma immediately went to WORK in the kitchen and created some of the tastiest spicy daeji galbi (marinated pork) dish. This experience has challenged me to think about how my own cultural identity can reshape the ways I hunt or what type of game. As I reopen my exploration into hunting, I am feeling likely to focus on wild hogs so that I can recapture the experience of shared excitement with my grandma within the realm of my outdoor passions while getting to enjoy the tasty and comforting experience of eating familiar Korean dishes with friends and family.
