I just finished writing my "other column" (it sounds so illicit), which runs in a dozen or so weekly papers owned by Meredith-based Salmon Press, and in my hometown paper in Colebrook, the News and Sentinel.

The subject was “localvore,” or locavore, a movement that seeks to enable people to eat homegrown food and help growers and producers find homegrown markets. Most people know about farmers’ markets, which have proliferated everywhere. But what about backyard and full-time farmers who raise pigs, lambs and cattle for the meat market?

The lack of FDA-inspected slaughterhouses was the theme of the column. There is just one in New Hampshire (Goffstown). The only other within reachable distance for North Country producers is in St. Johnsbury, Vt.

But this “localvore” movement quickly got me thinking about hunting.

I almost made that bridge in the Salmon Press column, but was already running out of room, hence here it is.

In sum, what could be more “localvore” than a partridge, rabbit, deer, duck, goose or moose? Sure, as game animals taken by hunters they’re not for sale, but let’s keep our eye on the ball here. If the goal is to get people to realize the wholesomeness of locally produced food, and its relatively low cost in terms of an environmental price-tag, game on the supper table is about as close to the ideal you can get.

If you think about it, hunting and the localvore movement make perfect bedfellows. Most hunting is undertaken relatively close to home, so long-distance trucking and refrigeration costs, not to mention plastic and foam-tray wrapping, are not in the picture. And talk about fresh — none of this shrink-wrapping an entire quarter of beef to be opened whenever.

Urban (and even non-urban) legend to the contrary, most hunters are not out there for a trophy, but for myriad other reasons, chief among them the excellent meat. They take great care with their kill, doing a clean and decent job of field-dressing and then cutting and double-wrapping it for the freezer. Carefully handled from kill to cutting to proper cooking to table, it is the food of kings. And in the old days in Europe, it was. Here, the “common man” (that would us) can hunt and relish the fruits of our pursuits with nary a doffing of cap or tugging of forelock. And we certainly don’t have to keep to the common path to avoid stepping on nobility-owned land.

All over New Hampshire families are sitting down to suppers that include locally raised meat — in the woods and on the water, that is.

And the family members who have brought this food home for the larder run the gamut — husbands, wives, grandmothers, grandfathers, brothers, sisters, daughters and sons. If they’re even luckier, they got to go to camp.

“Localvores and Hunters, Unite!” Now there’s a bumper sticker I’d like to see.

John Harrigan’s column appears weekly in the New Hampshire Sunday News. His address is Box 39, Colebrook 03576. Email him at hooligan@ncia.net.