Brandon Tennis, a former vegetarian, prays before he goes hunting.

Doug Martin, who grew up on  a beef farm, detests factory farming. When it's time for Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner, the signature dish is likely to be deer meat killed by himself, one of three children or retrieved from a roadside.

"The idea of hunting makes me sick," says Wilson Alvarez.

Yet, if there's not enough roadkill around to fill his freezer, he'll hunt groundhogs, squirrels, rabbits and female deer with a bow and arrows he made himself.

Even as the ranks of traditional hunters decline, these Lancaster County residents are part of a new breed: the culinary or sustenance hunter.

 They want healthy food, low in fat, high in protein and not injected with growth hormones and antibiotics. They want the animals they eat to have lived free until the moment they are killed.

Often coming from families without a hunting background, they want to know where their food comes from and to have a hand in its preparation, beginning with the sobering act of taking a life to sustain another.

Ruminations on the trend have been the subject of a flurry of recent books, including "Call of the Mild: Learning to Hunt My Own Dinner" by Lily Raff McCaulou, "Girl Hunter: Revolutionizing the Way We Eat, One Hunt at a Time" by Georgia Pellegrini and "Meat Eater: Adventures From the Life of an American Hunter" by Steven Rinella.

In "The Mindful Carnivore: A Vegetarian's Hunt for Sustenance," Tovar Cerulli gives a non-didactic exploration of what it is to eat ethically.

When the former vegan is told by doctors to consume more protein, Cerulli begins a tentative journey toward securing his own healthy food. He comes to realize that "mortality is involved with everything you eat" and takes up arms to kill deer.

Ralph Martone, a Pennsylvania game commissioner, for one, is delighted by the new blood at the hunting table.

"In the end, this new movement toward sustenance hunting may create an interesting alliance between traditional sportsmen, young urban professionals and former vegans as well as help support wildlife agencies and their conservation efforts well into the future," Martone, of New Castle, wrote in a recent issue of Pennsylvania Outdoor News.

•••

Alvarez, 31, made a conscious decision to train himself to be self-reliant and a hunter-gatherer.

His first option is gathering. He drives roads looking for roadkilled animals. such as groundhogs and deer.

Only when there is not enough wild meat in the freezer does he turn to hunting. And reluctantly.

"For me, taking a life is the largest responsibility I've ever done," says Alvarez, of Bausman. "It's a scary thing to take a life. I've watched an animal go from alive to dead.

"You don't do it lightly or for fun. As long as we do it with respect and make use of it, it makes it OK."

When he hunts for deer, he tries to hunt as through the eyes of a wolf. Thus he looks for a runt doe, one that nature would likely cull in time. His first deer was a 100-pound female that he shot after passing up 10 others.

He hunts with a bow, arrows and stone or steel arrow tips he made himself.

When he kills a deer, he uses everything:  bones for a stew, blood for blood sausage, the lining of the stomach for tripe, intestines for sausage. He eats the heart, liver and kidneys. He makes clothing out of the buckskin.

"There's a whole different relationship with your food," he says. "Every time you eat something with a friend, there's a story there. Even in death you want to keep that deer alive.

"It's not just sustenance. It's for your mind and soul at the same time."

•••

Tennis grew up in a Pennsylvania Dutch family in the Falmouth area and ate meat for every meal.

Then, as he grew older, he says he was turned off by the environmental degradation and animal cruelty caused by the massive scale of growing domestic meat for food.

He became a vegetarian for six years.

Then, he says his girlfriend, Abby Sullivan, helped him redefine his connection to food and eating meat.

At 30, the Manor Township resident says the way food is raised or killed, bought and prepared are guiding principles. "It was no longer something I took for granted," he says.

He got an uncle to teach him the skills of hunting. He began to hunt small game and catch fish. He's taken deer with a rifle and this year began hunting with a bow and arrow. It's important to him that he shoots a deer close to make a clean kill.

"Every animal I've ever taken I have gutted, skinned, cleaned, butchered and prepared myself," he says.

"I hunt because I feel it's important to have a direct connection to my food. It's also why I farm."

He says all his hunting experiences have been spiritual.

"It was something that fed my body physically, my heart emotionally and my mind spiritually."

•••

In the six-member Martin family, venison is just about the only red meat consumed, along with many plants and vegetables the Conestoga Township family grows.

"People know that when they come to our house it's pretty good odds that they're going to have venison," chuckles Doug Martin, who has hunted and butchered deer since he was 14.

Martin doesn't like the chemicals he saw put into cattle on the farm he grew up on. With deer, "I like the idea of knowing that from the time that animal is put down to the time it's being served, I know everything that has happened to it."

To his way of thinking, it's more ethical to pierce a deer's heart and lungs with an arrow as he did several weeks ago, than to put a bolt into the head of a cow at the butcher.

Martin and his wife, Lydia, also like that venison is low in fat and cholesterol and even higher in protein than chicken.   

There are still acquaintances of the family who assume they eat so much venison because they can't afford better meat.  

But the fact is, the Martins, with four children ages 11 to 19, find deer meat darn tasty.

So much so that once, at a summer picnic hosted by Martin's boss, oldest son, Angel, then 11, turned up his nose at the New York strip steaks being served.

"What is that gross white stuff in there?" he asked.

"Fat."

"That's disgusting," Angel retorted. "This is nowhere as good as deer meat."

An anti-hunter in the group accused Doug Martin of brainwashing his children. "No," Martin replied, "they just like very good food."

The family has a goal of having four deer butchered and in the freezer by winter. Roadkill goes toward meeting that quota.

Yvonne, 15, has taken a doe the last three years. Gabe, 12, and Tristen, 11, also hunt. All help with the butchering and packaging of the wild game.

In addition to the nutrition of deer meat, Doug Martin values "the satisfaction that we acquire it ourselves — the sustainability type of feeling."

Adds his wife, "I'm very proud of my family for wanting to hunt and caring about their food source and knowing where it's coming from."

A hard rule in the family is that no animal is killed unless it is eaten. When a son once shot a frog, he was made to clean and eat it.

acrable@lnpnews.com

Follow @AdCrable

For a listing of outdoors events throughout Lancaster County this week and beyond, click here.