Tom van Engers is professor at the UvA but in his spare time hunts in the Dutch forests
Professor of Artificial Intelligence Tom van Engers is a hunter and, as a fauna manager, shoots deer, boar and other game on a monthly basis. This is part two of a three-part series about UvA’ers in nature. “I have been face to face with a wolf a few times.”
“There I saw it, the wolf,” says UvA professor Tom van Engers as he searches the vast moors this afternoon. Through a thermal vision camera (a kind of infrared lens), his gaze slides down the Veluwe horizon from a small hill. The predator often roams the heath in search of secluded deer. “I have been face-to-face with the wolf a few times from just a few metres away,” says the hunter. Frightened, he is not. “In the end, I have a gun and he doesn’t.”
Normally, Van Engers hunts in his own area in Drenthe. There, he is a volunteer fauna manager with Staatsbosbeheer. “Fauna managers are needed to count populations, keep an eye on sick animals and, via shooting, ultimately maintain the balance.” This keeps the desired biodiversity.
The wolf can help, as it does part of the big game hunting normally done by paid hunters or busy volunteers. “But eventually the wolf will also have to be shot.” Indeed, the first wolf arrived in 2018 and already there are more than nine registered wolf packs, from five to nine wolves. “The growth is exponential and that can lead to unbalanced nature, damage to livestock and danger to domestic animals.”
Deer shooting
Today, Van Engers studies wildlife in the Veluwe, near where he lives. Relaxedly, he climbs further up the hill. “Deer, over there!” He points to a small tree on the plain where, with eyes squeezed together, some brown spots can be observed. Van Engels can relate endlessly. “Deer and wild boar used to be brought to the Netherlands by the Royal Family for hunting. Roe, on the other hand, they settle in all the places where there is room for them in our country.”
That also means they sometimes have to be “taken out”, as Van Engels calls shooting them to death to maintain a healthy population. “But idem we hunters shoot game hit by cars.” From his perch, a chair or hut in a high spot in the forest, Van Engers spots deer in sometimes visibly suffering across his hunting grounds. Or often due to disease, starvation or simply old age. “Ultimately, shooting then is a form of, albeit unsolicited, euthanasia, so that the animal does not suffer further. It is precisely this pain that I find difficult to see.”
Van Engers walks further into the forest at a brisk pace. In the distance, he sees a male deer with awe-inspiring antlers. With his large binoculars in front of his eyes, he describes how shooting such a deer is done “humanely”. “With sight and heat camera you aim from “the sheet”, the area between the shoulder and the diaphragm.” A shot from a shotgun then certainly perforates the lungs and heart. “That happens in a millisecond. The deer is dead before it has been able to hear the bullet leave the gun.” Sure, Van Engers does have a feeling about taking a life every time, and so he doesn’t do it lightly. “But it is necessary.”
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Eating animals
A whole ritual follows the sudden death, the professor explains. Meanwhile, he walks attentively on through the twilight of the forest. “The hunter puts half of a twig in the beast’s mouth and puts the other half on his cap: the dead animal’s last food.” Then the shooter often, and Van Engers himself always, blows a hunting horn as a final tribute.
Van Engers also hunts with friends, in Drenthe and in Germany, where there is also a hunting culture founded on togetherness. “When it is the first time the hunter shoots a species, he is lightly beaten with a branch by his fellow hunters. As revenge on the prey that can no longer defend itself.” After the rituals, Van Engers skins the animal himself and uses almost all parts of the animal. “I eat game ninety per cent of the year. After all, that has a much lower ecological footprint than animals from the agricultural sector,” states the UvA professor as he gets into his car.
People should therefore know more about where their food comes from. “Some children these days think milk comes from a carton. Or people want to eat green beans all year round, which can only come from far away. Ultimately, for a better environment, we need to go back to eating more seasonally and from our own land.”
Van Engers acknowledges that our population cannot eat from the game in the Netherlands alone. Eating less meat and then more from the populations that are already in excessive numbers helps sustainability, according to the hunter. “Together, we have a great responsibility for the ecosystem we depend on and are allowed to enjoy.”
Dangerous boars
As he drives past other wildlife-rich areas of the Veluwe in near darkness, Van Engels gets restless. He was hoping to see boars today. Overgrown patches of forest land in excess, but the culprits are untraceable. “Pigs, as we call them, have a huge overpopulation in the Netherlands. But they are timid beasts, living in the night.” You do have to watch out for them, though, especially in spring and autumn when they have young. “I always wear reinforced trousers when boar hunting. A blow with the speed and tusks a game possesses rips apart your leg from your knee to your thigh. That pulls open your entire artery,” says the professor. He gets out of his all-terrain vehicle in search of such a hog.
Returning to the open field where the red deer were earlier also making their way, Van Engers looks through his thermal scope. “Look, look, here they come, see those little white dots through the lens?” About ten wild boars have gathered at the edge of the forest in the dark. The deer just fanned out to the other side of the field. “Boars are omnivores so they sometimes eat meat. I have even seen a big pig walking with a roe deer cub in its mouth once.”
Critical questions
Full of experiences, the professor happily gets back into his grey Toyota. “I spend all day behind my computer working with figures, then I enjoy breathing in nature in my spare time. I also deal with the complex issues in my lectures. I have my students build models with which they study the impact of nitrogen emissions and livestock reduction proposals, for example. With these, nature can be stimulated.”
However, Van Engers also believes that students should be able to ask critical questions about his hobby. Often, acquaintances ask him why humans should intervene in nature by killing animals. “I have enough critical conversations about the relationship between nature, agriculture and human culture. In our densely populated country, we all have to try to find a balance in that. Hunters collectively try to contribute to the balance. Not only by shooting, but also by striving for biotope improvement, counting wildlife and educating the public.”
In the car, the hunter takes off his cap and sneaks a look through the open car window into the darkness with his thermal camera. Maybe driving through the last bit of forest, he can still see a boar up close. “This weekend I will probably go to Drenthe again, hunting at night. We need to avoid collisions there by shooting the right number of roe deer.” Tonight, however, he has a break from hunting. “Or well, we will rehearse with the hunting horn ensemble for a while. After all, I will have to blow my hunting horn a lot in the coming period.”
