“The loveliness of deer might go without saying, but still, there it is: The more you look, the more they seduce,” writes Erika Howsare in her debut nonfiction book, The Age of Deer: Trouble and Kinship with our Wild Neighbors. Published earlier this month, the book showcases Howsare’s keen journalistic skills as well as her subtle but sharp sense of humor and thoughtful way with words. Filled with graceful reverence and appreciation for the world of deer—as well as the work of those whose lives are lived in close proximity to it—each chapter cultivates nuance in attempting to understand relationships between humans and cervids. Though The Age of Deer is a departure in genre from her two previously published books of poetry, it hews closely to them in spirit. Moments of aching beauty and stark sorrow abound. The thrum of verse inhabits each sentence.
The book is a detailed examination of an animal world in flux, a record of a multi-generational and multi-species relationship, but it began as a simple question. “I became interested in what we think we’re talking about when we say something is ‘natural,’” Howsare recalls. “When we look at deer, are we seeing wild animals who happen to be here or are we seeing a species that we have deeply affected and that has deeply affected us?”
Growing up in Pennsylvania, Howsare knew about deer hunting. As an adult living in central Virginia, she knew deer enjoyed snacking in her garden. In other words, she thought she knew about deer in the same ways many of us do, as overpopulated pests, tragic roadkill, magical ghost deer, and even internet stars. Howsare decided to test this knowledge, however. Using news alerts about deer to help define the culturally encoded ideas and roles she hoped to explore, she dug in and surrendered to the process.
Talking with experts in a wide variety of fields—from wildlife rehabilitators and historical reenactors, to ecologists and artists—she peels back layers of assumptions to expose ecstatic depths of complexity. “There was just a huge amount of discovery,” recalls Howsare. “Some of it was very serendipitous,” like Meesha Goldberg’s Kinfolk mural, which she stumbled on at the McGuffey Art Center. Combined with focused research, the breadth and depth of Howsare’s explorations are evident throughout, informed by an MFA in literary arts as well as her longtime beat as a C-VILLE contributor. “There’s no way I could have done this without that experience,” she reflects.
Layered atop this reportage, Howsare generously shares more personal transformations that came out of the project, some of which she describes as, “less an intellectual kind and more an emotional kind … discovering a personal connection to things that I wasn’t really expecting.” She adds, “I went into it really cerebrally and I came out of it feeling like a different person in a lot of ways.”
She describes going deer hunting for the first (and then, second) time in her life. Sitting next to her brother in a tree stand, the unsuccessful (in terms of meat) hunt becomes a meditation: “I felt the aching gladness of being alive and among other living things.” The next outing is more fruitful, and she watches a family member gut one of the deer they have killed. “Dark acres of liver, deep ponds of blood,” she writes, the poet’s voice emerging more fully in this section, rhythmic writing and short bursts of language reflecting peak adrenaline.
She takes part in a primitive skills gathering in North Carolina, carving an awl out of deer bone, and travels to England for the annual Abbots Bromley Horn Dance, featuring millennium-old reindeer antlers. She tags along with officials as they collect car-killed deer as well as deer killed as part of a culling program. She also visits a high-fence ranch in Texas to see farmed deer—“a brazen example of the biology of artifice”—prompting questions about ethical land and wildlife management.
Though her research roams far afield, Howsare dedicates ample attention to her home range, recounting time spent investigating the meaning of deer at the Frontier Culture Museum, Early Mountain Vineyards, and Little Hat Creek Farm, even inviting readers to join her as she is led to a culvert running under I-64 to the west of Charlottesville that serves as a wildlife underpass—an intervention that has successfully decreased the number of deer-related crashes along that stretch of road.
Throughout, Howsare weaves in stories of deer as cultural symbols and the subject of myths, Indigenous practices, folk legends, and creative inspirations, from Paleolithic cave art to Leave the World Behind. Deerskins are also examined as sites of social and economic importance for humans since time immemorial, offering warm clothing as well as the cultural production of nostalgia, which Howsare describes as, “buckskin symbolism … invoked at every turn in American history from the Revolution … to Grateful Dead shows.”
She tells of Awi Usdi, a white deer in Cherokee culture who monitors hunters; the traditional dances of the Yaqui people, accompanied by songs that are “said to have been translated from the language of the deer themselves;” and Eikthyrnir, a Viking stag with oaken antlers who was said to wander Valhalla. “On some deeper level, the process [of writing the book] makes it clear to me that there’s something about deer, for humans, that’s very much connected with mortality,” reflects Howsare. “The way we relate to deer has a lot to do with questions of life and death, and it has for thousands of years. To immerse myself in the topic was to get comfortable with death.”
Tracing the ebb and flow of deer populations, Howsare also examines the pre-colonization abundance of deer in North America (and factors that may have led to that), which in turn led to overhunting and habitat destruction that decimated generations, and eventually to the decision by many states (including Virginia) to import new deer, though this was followed by overdevelopment of their habitats. Yet, the deer abide—for now.
These days we also know deer as carriers of Lyme disease and COVID-19, both of which can infect humans, but increasing attention is being given to the accelerating spread of chronic wasting disease, a fatal and incurable condition that spreads easily among deer. “One thing that sticks with me as a source of real worry is … how deep and wide of a threat [CWD] is to the deer population we have now,” says Howsare. “I think there are many people who deeply care about deer but have not let themselves appreciate the reality that may be coming.”
Perhaps The Age of Deer will open the door to contemplate more fully what that change could mean—or even how to mitigate or prevent it—even as the book celebrates the species we think we know so well from backyard sightings and popular children’s movies. Howsare writes, “I’m grateful that, after so many large animals have disappeared with the advance of human beings, there is still this one—an exquisite and mysterious creature—that I can see, often, in my Anthropocene life; one that, despite our caricatures, remains a survivor, a supreme example of life among the ruins. And that we can pause … and ask these questions about how to proceed… For now, we still have the chance to encounter each other.” In one future, The Age of Deer may become a eulogy; in another, it is a jubilant call to attention.
A wild aside
As a companion to her new book, Howsare worked with the Virginia Audio Collective to make “If You See A Deer,” a four-episode podcast co-hosted by writer and academic Tyler J. Carter.
Featuring interviews and field recordings, the podcast builds on the book by engaging scientists, hunters, artists, taxidermists, and deer enthusiasts in conversations about ecology, nature, literature, art and culture, and history—all through a deer-focused lens. Together, Howsare and Carter invite listeners to join them in questioning assumptions that exist about the roles of deer in our lives and their impact on the world we share. Poems, songs, stories, and mythologies about deer are also woven throughout, extensively documented in each episode’s show notes for those who may wish to undertake their own follow-up explorations or deep dives into a particular aspect of the research that went into the production. From taxidermy to tourism, the result is a wildly listenable and wholly entertaining podcast that nonetheless asks difficult questions and skillfully navigates divisive topics related to hunting, roadkill and scavenging, and forest health.
“I have been telling everybody who will listen that this is an amazing and free community resource that WTJU offers through the Virginia Audio Collective,” says Howsare. “We had excellent support from staff who know everything in the world that you would need to know to make a podcast. The audio format is just so rich and has so many possibilities that I have never encountered on the page.”
“If You See A Deer” is available most places you listen to podcasts. Learn more at virginiaaudio.org/if-you-see-a-deer.
