From Field To Feast!!!

Well, i went out and bought a hunting license. While I was in there buying one for a white-tail deer I also bought one for birds. Now I am ready to go and today, being remembrance day, we had closed the bar and decided to take a nice drive through the country side looking for upland game birds. While I carried the 12-gauge shotgun, Nicole manned the camera and got this great shot ( in my opinion) of me. I was watching for those little heads to pop up from the long grass. We had seen a few as we drove on the wagon trail and when we got out to follow chase we were greeted by a nice big white tail buck. Sally, our lab X sharpei decided to chase the deer instead of looking to flush out birds. In the end we had to flush them out ourselves usually by driving but we did get a nice walk in too.

We were on our way back to the hotel when one flew from one fence post to the other side of the truck. I quickly got out and retrieved the gun from behind the seat, popped in one shell, cocked and aimed the gun and BANG!!! One shot wonder, the sharp-tailed grouse fell from the fence post. Here is a shot of me with a goofy smile, once we got back to the hotel with our catch.

Quickly we researched how to clean a bird and came up with a few unhelpful videos. One video the thing is gutted prior to the lesson!!! How can we learn from that? So there we sat, staring at our bird and deciding exactly which method we should try.

Well , our super employee had told me that you step on the wings and pull on the feet and... voila!!! You know what? It worked like magic. Feathers and skin of, guts and head pull through the body and you are left with the breast meat attached to the wings. Break off the wings and slice the breast meat away from the rib cage. Since I was so enthralled with Nicole yanking the feet off this bird I didn't take pictures the first time... Ooops! We do have this lovely shot of the grouse breast once it was removed from the rib cage.

We were so excited that everything worked out and we could figure how to clean the bird that we decided to use the last hour of sunlight and see if we couldn't get one or two more.

Off home. We arrive and get out of the truck, walk ten paces and I see a pheasant cock about 30 paces away. By the time I get a shell intwe go again, this time leaving the the dogs ato the chamber, he had flown another ten paces away but I line him up and like the pro I am, one shot
again and the pheasant is down. A short struggle and it's quiet. Well this time I am sure to have a shot of Nicole pulling the legs off the bird and here she is, no fear, not squeamish at all. Gosh I am proud of my girl. Then we cooked it up.

I gave the cooking advice and I guess I was wrong because it was quite tough. The taste was delicious so I am wondering if I would have cooked it on the rib cage if it would have been a little more tender. I guess this is where years of experimenting will come in so I am off to a good start now. I was worried that I wouldn't like the taste of the meat if it was too "gamey" but it really was some tasty eats.