"What we have here is a radial pattern of wild meats," Jeff Jackson says, pointing his spatula at a cast-iron skillet. Four small mounds of mangled protein, each a different shade and texture, lie in a perfect parabola, like tissue samples from a crime lab. "First you'll eat them," Jackson says. "Then I'll tell you what they are." Lifting my fork, I probe a mushroom cap brimming with a gray, speckled, liverish substance. To my right, Jackson's wife, Phyllis, picks at her salad and watches. "Back before we were married, we spent a whole summer living off roadkill," she says. "I remember one time, we ate a mink. That was one tough little animal. Can't say I liked the taste, either. There was this urine flavor, like the kidneys hadn't filtered out all the impurities." Jeff settles into the chair across from me. "Leeches were disappointing too," he sighs. "Tasted just like the marinade. Didn't have any leech flavor at all."

Glancing up at their expectant faces, I feel a wave of peer pressure such as I haven't experienced since junior high. It's early April, and the air is thick with the scent of sweet gums and pines, of things busy being born and busy dying. I have come to Georgia to expand my palate, to see what pockets of resistance remain in the South to the advancing army of Whoppers and Big Macs. But I was hoping to ease into the topic more gradually. The Jacksons, I thought, could offer a sober, academic accounting of the politics and economics of hunting and gathering for one's own table. After all, Jeff, 60, is a professor of wildlife management in the School of Forest Resources at the University of Georgia, and Phyllis, 55, rounds out her homemaking and carpentry by documenting the vegetation of the Smoky Mountains for the University of Georgia's Center for Remote Sensing and Mapping. But scientific dispassion, I find, makes its own gustatory demands.
Two centuries ago, an explorer would have thought nothing of sitting down at a stranger's table and eating whatever flesh was placed before him. When Indian guides led British explorer John Lawson through the Carolina wilderness in 1701, he dined on beaver, polecat, and bear, among other delicacies. ("A roasted or barbakued Turkey, eaten with Bears Fat, is held a good Dish," Lawson wrote in his diary. "And indeed, I approve of it very well; for the Bears Grease is the sweetest and least offensive to the StomachÉof any Fat of Animals I ever tasted.") As late as 1909, the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce served persimmon beer, turtle soup, and barbecued possum to the president-elect. "Surely the famous smile of William Howard Taft never kindled across a happier evening," a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote. Years later, another reporter at the paper mused: "It was believed to be the last time that a U.S. president supped on marsupial."

But in the decades since, the American diet has cut loose from its wilderness moorings. I grew up in Oklahoma, where southern cooking once left off and cowboy carbo-loading began. Yet after two years spent researching and writing a book on clandestine southern traditions, I am led to believe that everyone eats the same stuff. To most northerners, the South is the last refuge of strange food—of Moon Pies and pig organs and pickled eggs bobbing pinkly next to the cash register. But from what I've seen, southerners are the least adventurous eaters of all. Their cities are girdled with an extra layer of fast food, their vegetables invariably canned or overcooked, their palates tuned to the twin wavelengths of ketchup and processed meat. And so I've left the beltways and strip malls and gone in search of something more savory.

Now, chewing on another rich yet fibrous flap of mystery muscle, I wonder what it is, exactly, that makes something inedible. Is it just a matter of physiology, of nutrient deficiencies and taste-bud densities, or is it more psychological—a habit of mind shaped by culture, temperament, and parents telling us to eat our vegetables? Taste is a mind-body problem of the most intractable kind, and nothing brings it into focus as vividly as eating something unknown and potentially disgusting. Jeff, smiling faintly, informs me that this particular mouthful is armadillo meat. Why should that make my throat constrict and my stomach leap into my diaphragm? Does the fact that some southerners call this "possum on the half shell" make it any less palatable? The answers may determine whether true southern food can ever rise again.

The Jacksons, I'm happy to report, no longer content themselves with roadkill—though Jeff says he might eat a monkey if it was served to him. In fact, they exemplify a new kind of southern land ethic, one that is cosmopolitan yet self-sufficient, discerning yet omnivorous. In their house, everything has a dual purpose: The chimney is a nest for swifts; the cabinets, made of salvaged oak, are a lesson in recycling; the pear trees are food for deer and an orchard of heirloom species. Whenever a hunter leases his land, Jeff takes him around front to see the pyramid of deer skulls nailed to the front of the house. Arranged in order of size, with the largest on top, the skulls are a point of pride—an austere decoration, a warning to trespassers, and above all, a teaching aid. See those? Jeff says to the hunters, pointing to the ones with horns just budding from their foreheads. Those are less than a year old. Don't kill those.

One afternoon, Jeff takes me on a tour of his 350 acres, a patchwork of hardwood forest, hay meadow, and fruit trees outside the town of Arnoldsville. With his graying beard and kindly manner, his beat-up hat and blue eyes that go wide with feigned amazement, he looks like a latter-day Merlin. Living off the land isn't worth the bother anymore, he declares—"In terms of protein per effort, you can't justify it in any way"—but hunting still has its rewards. Jackson believes hunting is the missing link in most Americans' environmental education. Boys once learned how a forest works from spending hours in it, keeping perfectly still. But from 1975 to 1996, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, annual sales in hunting licenses dropped from 16.5 million to 15.2 million, and the percentage of Americans who hunt dropped even further. To Jeff, the main effect has been a rise not so much in ignorance as in sentimentality.
Take our attitudes toward deer, he says. As hunters have dwindled, deer have multiplied: There are nearly as many whitetails now as when the Pilgrims arrived, though only four percent of America's old-growth forests are still standing. As a result, songbirds and small mammals are being browsed out of house and home, rare plants are under attack, and hundreds of thousands of motorists crash into deer every year. And yet when new hunting permits are granted in places like Hilton Head, South Carolina, to try to control deer, wildlife-conservation groups protest and file lawsuits. "Deer aren't stupid," Jeff insists. "They realize that the rules have changed. Subdivisions used to be where they got shot; now it's where they're safe." As for the Jacksons, 95 percent of the red meat they eat is venison. Whenever the freezer is empty, Jeff simply wanders out into his meadow with a shotgun. "If I see a deer, I'll shoot it," he says.

The next morning Jeff has a class to teach in Athens, and I have hundreds of miles to drive by noon. But we head into the woods before dawn anyway, to stalk wild turkeys. Hunters sometimes go an entire season without bagging a bird. Nevertheless, only minutes from the house Jeff signals for me to stop. "Hear that?" he whispers, as a chortling sound echoes through the oaks. "That's the love song of the male turkey." He sits down, pulls a small cedar box from his pocket, and gently draws the lid across the frame, mimicking the female turkey's high, piping response. A few calls and responses later, he lifts his 12-gauge double-barrel and sends a ragged blast ripping through the trees. "This was an efficient hunt," he says, carrying the turkey back to the house by its feet. "It didn't take time away from other income-generating activities." He wraps the bird in a garbage bag, throws it into the trunk of his car, and strips off his camouflage. Beneath his canvas coveralls, a suit and tie emerge perfectly clean and unwrinkled, ready for his morning class.

As I head south from the Jacksons' across the Piedmont hills, the country clubs and subdivisions give way to brick-and-magnolia county seats and the tarmac turns to red clay. "This program is brought to you by The Last Resort Grill," an Atlanta station announces, "featuring nouvelle southern cuisine in a casually elegant setting enhanced by the work of local artists."