Carla Brauer was a vegan and animal rights activist in her teens. These days, she's a farmer, stockwoman, hunter, and... wait for it... a taxidermist! We talk about how you can change your diet without changing your ethics, dermastid beetles, and what it's like to give a TED Talk on your transition from vegan to hunter.

2:00 Dallas, Oregon (not The Dalles... and not Texas) 

3:00 Living that double-freezer life - one for food, one for taxidermy

5:00 #pandemicpig in the freezer AND king pigeons... they're like big white fat doves (AND... Oregon's big bad rats)

8:00 Rat terriers to the rescue! 

9:30 The personal journey of a former vegan/animal-rights activist who became more open-minded to eating meat, animal husbandry, and even taxidermy

13:00 Meeting a woman who took in 50-some chickens as rescues... and ended up selling their eggs to help pay for their keep. Vegan eggs? A eureka moment: You don't have to change your ethics to change your diet

16:00 The problem with a black-and-white approach to food (example: veganism has a hard line in the sand)

20:00 That gap between thinking 'maybe I want to try hunting' to actually getting out there... where do I even start? Like, how do I learn to shoot a gun? (It started with someone's generosity.)

22:00 Years of hunting with no success

23:00 Public lands hunting... it's intimidating. Finding a farm with a deer problem was a better first start

26:00 Reconciling your former vegan self (and social circle) with your emerging hunter/farmer self

28:00 Farming and making money farming are very different things... also, that point when you realize you're making more off quail skulls than vegetables

31:00 Dermastid  beetle husbandry

33:00 "I had a lot of access to severed heads... as one does."

34:00 Carla's TED Talk

36:00 Hunting came (long) before agriculture... but does innovation allow us to evolve away, morally, from animal consumption?

41:00 Hiking/birdwatching/other outdoors pursuits... are they a surrogate for what hunting used to give us?

45:00 The hunting mindset follows you everywhere outdoors once it's in your frame of mind

47:00 The experience of doing a TED Talk (!!!) - and also of seeing animal rights protesters at your talk

54:00 ANYONE can be a hunter... and it's important for the sporting community to embrace that

55:00 The goal of meaningful conversation isn't to change minds... it's to plant seeds 

58:00 Skulls to hides... and a self-built, wire-wheel fleshing machine

Join Artemis Southeast online for a fireside chat - Jan. 14 at 5 p.m. Mountain! Register Here!