The Boy Who Loved Fallow Deer

A story about a young boy finding a place amidst the Portland's food world.

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The Northwest has always held the promise of a better life than the one lived somewhere else. It held a dream of fertility, clear rivers and streams roiling with fish and a coastline that supported fleets of small and large fishing boats. The rich soil joined to a commodious climate encouraged endless groves of fruit trees, wheat fields, sheep and cattle ranches, and eventually vineyards. Unlike the Northeast, the economy for the most part thrived on land, shepherded by generations of families who cared deeply about its welfare.

The arrival of ambitious 19th-century settlers bent on establishing that better life transformed the region, badly for the people they replaced, sometimes good for the land, certainly a bonus for a nation hungry for all the land could produce. By the time I reached Portland, Oregon, another wave of newcomers were digging into the area. One walk around the city revealed so much of who they were and the ways they were about to carve out their place. Until that stroll, I had never seen so many young, fully tattooed, hat-wearing people with intricately cut and colorful hairstyles in my life—and I’m from Brooklyn. There were also those whose luck did not change for the better—more homeless young people than I had seen in a city in a long time. So, too, as my friend who was traveling with me pointed out, was there a lack of diversity, at least downtown, that, as a black woman, felt uncomfortable.

We arrived in Portland with a narrow chore—to explore the emergence of the Northwest as a food destination. It was the beginning of what The New York Times called a golden age for the city, overflowing with young chefs on the verge of becoming nationally acclaimed. Block after block, I found tiny and not-so-tiny restaurants and food trucks with offerings fed by the concentration of small farms using unique, often heirloom, seeds and strains and the carefully raised varieties of game, meat, and fish. Menus featured the bounty gleamed from foraging in the more or less surrounding old growth forests—unusual greens and baskets of hazelnuts, walnuts, chanterelles, black morels, and matsutake mushrooms. Such abundance that seemed to simply wash up into restaurant kitchens became the envy of most everywhere else in the country’s culinary scenes.

After a lot more walking about, scoping out places and accosting several talented people, we left the city behind and headed into the hills for Wild About Game Week, sponsored by Nicky USA, a major Northwestern purveyor of all kinds of animals, domesticated or otherwise. We arrived in time for the cooking competition, the contestants consisting of several chefs who were eager to advertise their newly opened restaurants.

This was where I met 15-year-old Ed, Jr.—EJ for short—and his parents, Laura and Ed, Sr. They were sitting at a small table in the back of a room in the vendor section, surrounded by handcrafted beers; small-batch barbecue sauces, jams, and condiments; and impressive hand-forged knives. Their table displayed a homemade flyer showing EJ among a herd of strange-looking deer and a plate of cubed meat his mother had cooked earlier in the day. This is how I also met fallow deer.

EJ told us that when he was nine he got it into his head that raising reindeer or elk for market would be pretty cool for his Future Farmers of America project. After a deep search with his parents into all the state rules and license requirements, and the wise decision that elk would be too big and ornery for a nine-year-old to tend, EJ saw a picture of petite and relatively docile fallow deer for sale in Texas. With savings from several odd jobs at neighboring farms and ranches, he bought 18 females and a buck. By the time I met EJ, he’d grown his herd to 110.

A short history of fallow deer told by Ed Sr., who wouldn’t entirely vouch for its veracity:

Fallow deer were prized by Mesopotamian rulers both as pets and for the dining table. They remained in the Middle East until a German man by the name of Georg von Opel heard that the last shah of Iran kept a private purebred herd. He decided to steal a few mating pairs and put together a covert mission involving guns, helicopters, and a cargo plane. Things did not go smoothly—the shah’s palace guards attacked them, but in the midst of the gunfire, Georg managed to wrangle a couple of deer onto the cargo plane. All fallow deer in the northern hemisphere are said to be descended from that probably very traumatized herd. They are now known as von Opel fallow deer.

By this point I had talked to a lot of the attendees, including the soon-to-be-lauded Gabriel Rucker. He had lost his best knife after his cooking demonstration of rabbit arancini with squash mayonnaise—basically a fried rice ball stuffed with rabbit meat. He was also a little perturbed by the crowd, who interrupted him with loud opinions on measurements, herb mixture, and frying techniques. So he wasn’t at his best when I imposed upon him with questions about his cooking style and influences, and I forgave his somewhat disparaging attitude when he asked me if I knew what profiteroles were. But then he settled into answering my questions with a description of how he was thinking of pairing the region’s more rarer provisions with what he called “ghetto produce,” specifically Wonder Bread, Coke, and Dole pineapple chunks.

I’m sure that now, after reading his cookbook and various interviews—and the racial reckoning in the city—Rucker would be horrified he ever contemplated such combinations. At the time, though, the interview, in conjunction with the slightly manic food industry people and attendees swirling around the room, made EJ and his parents seem like saviors. They even extended my friend and I an invitation to visit their home.

We got in our rental car early the next morning and drove through many small towns, with the ones closest to Portland being whittled away by urban sprawl. Signs along the side of the road for political candidates and calls for changes in land-use laws broadcasted the increasing fear of longtime residents that the character of the Northwest was rapidly changing. The signs lessened the further we went into the country. The road increasingly narrowed and turned hilly until only the experienced wouldn’t be petrified by all the logging trucks and four-by-fours whizzing by.

EJ was working on his pick-up when we arrived but turned right around to begin the tour. My friend, more rational than I was, stayed behind near the car when we disappeared into a barn that was cleaner than my house. He climbed on top of a corralling chute he and a friend had built to funnel the deer into holding pens to tend or to his truck to take to market. I still don’t personally know a 15-year-old who could construct a solid, well-thought-out structure such as EJ’s, but I trusted him and did my best not to shame middle-aged women everywhere in following him up onto the narrow beam.

A few deer were in stalls below us, but the majority were out roaming across a wide pasture. Lord, they appeared happy with all the land, grass, hay, and fresh fruit they could ever want! Several came right up to the fence, hoping for free handouts and a nose pet, both of which they received.

EJ said, “I love them,” but he had no problem pointing out a buck that wasn’t a productive mater and, frankly, was eating into his profits. He planned to shoot him next day after he came home from school.

That was the first indication that the boy was a tough, clear-eyed businessman. As we walked back to the car, EJ explained that the reason he attended the Wild About Game event was to figure out how many more deer he’d need to begin turning a profit. It had also made him realize that, to keep his herd at the quality the Portland market demanded and that would attract a higher price per pound, he would forgo nature and begin to artificially inseminate more of his herd with strains of purebred von Opel semen. He had already obtained fifty strains, each worth two thousand dollars that he kept in a locked deep freezer in the barn. Artificial insemination would also cut down how many of his beloved deer he’d have to shoot each season.

Laura came down to offer tea and biscuits on their porch. EJ returned to his truck. My friend and I followed his mother to the house. The afternoon light waned in a golden rose haze over the family’s pasture as she spoke of her grandparents who left Buffalo, New York, and followed the Oregon Trail until it petered out at Oregon City. They bought some land nearby and established a thriving orchard that Laura’s 80-year-old father still tended. Ed Sr. helped him out but also ran a large nursery that recently began a program to provide assistance to novice farmers who, just like her grandparents, had a bit of a learning curve in settling in to their new endeavors. She, herself, offered classes in canning and preserving at a local community college.

“It’s been nice seeing them come in,” Laura said. “They saved a couple of farms from being lost when the kids didn’t want to take them over from their parents.”

To a great degree, EJ and his parents were passing down to a fresh wave of settlers the traditions that always attracted people to the Northwest—hunting and gathering and sustaining a reverence for the land.

In all the years after my visit, Portland continued its transformation into one of America’s major cooking centers. The environment has changed, though. Affordable rents are rare, the competition more cut-throat than companionable. There’s much more pressure, much more at stake for newcomers to succeed. Covid, as everywhere else, barreled through restaurants with devastation effect.

But then again, Laura’s grandparent’s farm still remains in the family. Ed Sr. just retired from the nursery but keeps a hand in the farmer support network. EJ’s fallow deer business did, indeed, eventually turn a profit. A few years after he graduated from high school, he transferred his considerable ingenuity and ambition to the family farm. A few of his fallow deer roam the dormant pastures but he’s also busy diversifying the farm’s fruit production to supply more of Portland’s famous markets and restaurants.

Thank you for reading today’s story! With your help, I can continue to write about subjects not always told—and celebrate people who should be remembered and acclaimed—in the food world and at the American table.