Archive for the ‘Hunting’ Category

Dear moose and elk,

You won this one. You did. But it’s not because you’re awesome, or cause you ran really fast or hid really good. The big reason you got away lucky was cause I was in camp crumpled on the floor with the flu. Otherwise, you were totally, totally, totally in so much trouble. And yeah, whenever we found you we didn’t have a tag for your particular ‘gender’ or ‘age’, but really that’s not something to be proud of. It’s pretty ‘sexist’ and ‘agist’. Yeah, ‘agist’ is a thing, even if you’ve never heard of it cause you live in the bush.

If you laughed at me while my sick self glassed you to determine that I couldn’t shoot you, I’m totally coming after you next year. In fact, either way I’m coming after you again next year. Yeah, be scared. And guess what. My hunting buddies bagged 2 bull elk, 2 cow elk, and 2 moose calves the weeks before and after I was there. They totally have your number. Be scared.

See you next year.

Sincerely - Kevin

Confession: I packed in waterfowl hunting for a number of years for a few reasons. First reason – the more I learned about appropriate practices around animal slaughter in general, the less it made sense to shoot a hundred+ pellets at any and all of the prime cuts of an animal, have it fall from the sky to bruise on the ground, not necessarily killing it immediately, and not to be bled. I would not do that to a pig, say. Second reason – I had yet to prepare it in a fashion that I could really get excited about in the kitchen. There are a million ways to screw it up, and it took half a decade for me to realize that it’s kind of like squid – needs proficient quick preparation execution, or very, very, very long cooking time. Skip absolutely everything in between at your own peril.

Having been served some really nice goose a couple months back by Danny VanCleave – the guide in Episode 52 – I was re-inspired to give waterfowl another chance. And I’m glad I did. Turns out my displeasure with it in the kitchen was simply due to my inefficacy around its preparation. I admit it. Still think the slaughter method is crazy and wasteful, and that plucking in the presence of any shot hole in the body is insane though…

I grew up hunting geese and ducks southeast of Killam, Alberta. This summer, while shooting Episode 49, an outfitter that worked near that area asked if they could hire me to produce a video for their website. Default answer: yes. So down south I went to meet up with the outfitters, their guests, and many, many thousand geese and ducks.

As I get older I increasingly appreciate folks who are passionate about what they do, and carry with them a tremendous respect for some of the more challenging bits in life – like killing animals for food. Unlike many other ‘sports’, when spinning in the right crowds at least, hunting is a celebration of the season, moral fibre, ethical backbone, and respect for both the land you’re on and the animals you’re harvesting. This hunt had that vibe. I grew up around that vibe, but am well aware that not all hunting parties are cut from the same jib. So thanks to the guys involved in this one for being good advocates for what they do.

Having been the benefactor of some of the birds harvested, I can honestly admit that my appreciation for waterfowl in the kitchen has been greatly increased – which I’m excited about. More on this coming soon.

I was lucky this year. I got up to my moose hunt only a day before the snow. Ruffed grouse , although well geared up with cool anatomy to walk on it [see photo below], they seem to go in hiding when it snows. If the trails and roads are bare, they’re often found simply standing about the side of them, especially if it’s sunny. My first outing of the hunt, we happened upon a grouse, and as is often the case, once we found the one, we found more in the grasses and bush around it. An evolutionary foible of the ruffed grouse is they don’t try very hard to get away if threatened. That’s a nice way of saying they’re really dumb and easy to shoot. So I was able to get all 3 of them in this particular group. With the bag limit having been knocked down from 10 to 5 this year, a single group of 3 was happy-making, considering they weren’t our primary objective – calf moose was the goal, more on the big-game portion of the hunt tomorrow.

Ruffed grouse is the lightest, most delicate of the grouse that live around me. Their meat looks like domestic chicken and is mild and delicate, but with a distinctive twang uniquely their own. Spruce grouse is a red meat, and decidedly sprucier. Sharp-tails are somewhere in the middle, I find. I’ll take ruffed grouse 3:1 over any other, any day. This is one seriously under-appreciated local bird, and why that is, I have no idea. It’s not available in a box-store, I guess. I noticed @offalchris is bigging-up local-to-him grouse onto his menu, so props to him for that. @Hank_Shaw, I know, I should have plucked them. Didn’t have time. Had bigger fish to fry, so to speak.

As it’s not a regular meat in my kitchen, I’m going to have to give some thought as to how exactly I’d like to treasure and enjoy it. I bet it’d be good with highbush cranberry jelly – poultry and cranberry done ‘bush-style’. Breaded and deep fried into a chicken-finger with honey-mustard? Fricasseed in a wild-mushroom cream sauce? I’m sure I’ll think of something. And I’m guessing I’ll be wishing we’d found more before the snow came.

Now for something a little different. Or way different as after 600+ posts this is my first post of somebody else’s work. Chris Cosentino [little known fact, Hank Shaw and I first 'met' commenting on Chris' blog] posted this video on Vimeo, along with a write up about it that’s worth a read. Summary: it’s super cool and meaningful but just too real for reality TV. Hence me feeling compelled to spread the good word.

I see this as important work. Important work about education and respect for what we eat. I’m not going to watch another show about 30 min meals [not even Jamie Oliver's], but I’d watch 100 shows like ‘Chef Unleashed’. It’s really sad TV execs have to say no to fantastic content. If it were ’1000 ways to enjoy boneless skinless chicken breast’, I’m sure Chris would get the green light. If he could do it in 30 minutes, wow. Sad. Enjoy the video. I did (clearly). [If you do, tweet up @offalchris to let him know.]

I recently was invited to attend a culinary competition at NAIT. On the menu were local lake fishes, elk, bison, and pulses [legumes] from our province. Pretty cool to see pickerel starters done 12 ways by 12 teams – reminds me of home.

The table I sat at, which happened to be served the menu from the winning team, was attended by the family of one of the competitors – myself being the odd man out. Which led to discussions of why I was there. Which led to the question from a female diner “how do you remove the tongue out of a game animal? I’ve tried, and couldn’t get it“.  I’m fairly certain I’ll go my whole life without being asked that again while eating at a fine dining establishment.

What’s funny, is that I actually had taken photos of the process while on this year’s calf moose hunt. I took the tongues of both the calf moose and the bull elk – which is seen in the photo. I’ve harvested them ever since first trying them on this night.

A few words of advice for those wishing to give it a go. First, although doable, removing it while the animal is hanging is a chore. Things are moving around too much. Get the head set up securely. With this bull elk, the antlers and a stump provided the best setup I’ve ever worked on for the operation.  Next tip. Do it while the animal’s still warm. Every part of the process is easier if you do.

First, expose the bottom of the jaw as seen in this photo.  See that ‘V’ formed by the jaw bones? You need to run your knife along either side to free it up. I’ve found the tricky bit is freeing up the the bottom tip of the V. It doesn’t seem to want to let go there. I keep cutting out that V until I can grab the tip of the tongue from the inside, and pull it out. Once you get there, the rest is easy – simply cut away whatever else is holding it in, and take it off as far up as you can. What to do with it? .

I’m surprised at the bad rap tongue seems to have. It’s not weird. It tastes of the animal meat it’s from rather than like an organ or something funky. My dad made fun of me as I took the cheeks out of this bull elk – clearly not normal for the guys, and as the razzing and teasing carried on about lips and assholes [I did mention that I'd take the testicles if it wouldn't cause an evidence of sex concern while transporting the animal], I shot back with a comment how he who mocks off-cuts and wine drinking probably eats more of both in his hot dogs and brandy than I. We laughed.

This was my 5th calf moose hunt in as many Novembers – can’t believe it’s been that many as I still feel like a newbie. I’ve been giving some thought to why I started hunting big game and continue to do it, and can condense it into the following:

My quest for my regional food culture. I’ve spent far more time and money than one perhaps should traveling to experience the diverse food regionality of Europe. I yearned for that regional pride and passion at home, confused by a past of wild food interspersed with culturally ubiquitous processed cheese food and microwaved prepared foods. Wild local foods seemed like a sensible place to start to explore true regional food.

Have the gumption. Buying meat at a box store takes as much emotional effort as buying iceberg lettuce. I felt compelled to man-up and be willing to kill the animal I was going to ogle in the kitchen rather than purchase it in the same breath as I did toilet paper. An animal’s life is taken before we eat meat. We know that intellectually, but I’m not sure the masses ‘get it’ at a level that would respect the life of the animal. I never understood vegetarianism more during this journey, believe it or not.

Tradition. Because I was born into a long heritage of hunting [which I did not value as a young adult, btw], I am blessed with family and friend elders to guide and mentor me. A hunt like this becomes a communal annual event that’s exhilarating, hard work, and full of bonding and memories. Anything that adorns that kind of noble description is welcome in my life.

In the cold of January, it’s the arrival of seed catalogs putting your head into the coming years’ gardening season – knowing that in a couple months you’ll have seedlings starting their journey.

With hunting, at least in this province, today’s a similar kind of day. It’s mid July, our gardens are just staring to catch their stride, but it’s already the day that decides what our big game hunts will look like. All the animals I choose to hunt are on a draw basis in the zones we hunt in – meaning every year they figure how many people put their name in, how many tags they can reasonably release, and divvy tags out according to a priority system that gives a higher priority to those that didn’t get last year. I you forgot to get your draws in in June, no tags for you this year.

So this November, I’m going calf moose hunting again! For the 5th consecutive season since 2006. I’m really happy, as I REALLY missed having calf big game over the past year – last year the hunt yielding no calf.  For the first time since perhaps 2003 or 2004. [2007 was crazy successful with 2 calf moose and 2 calf elk]. I’ll also have an anterless elk tag [a December hunt] in that same area. That one I seem to get every other year. And although my priority score has been bumped up again this year, I’m only in year 2 of drawing for my antelope tags which for non-trophy and trophy take 5 and 7 years respectively before ‘you’re in’. That’s commitment.

It took me a while to get my head around the fact that from year to year, I had little control over what hunt I went on and when. I could be down south in September hunting antelope, up north in November for calf moose, or in December for calf elk. All of that got decided for me today. Time to start planning the hunts!

Quick comment on some recent flak I took in a national news forum.

First, the author’s intent was genuine: to promote the ‘interesting topics you write about’, and I thank her for the exposure. But in the comments, a couple themes emerged.

A couple readers felt that my use of the word ‘product’ to describe game meat severely disrespects the animal and voids any value in slaughtering and butchering my own meat. I would ask that anyone sharing this viewpoint offer the appropriate terminology.

The second theme that emerged was that since I have not experienced living off the land out of necessity, I am a poser of epic proportions – even reportedly making one reader ill. Another suggested that I should ‘make the effort more sporting by confronting [my] prey completely naked and armed only with [my] bare hands’ – a comment that wouldn’t have surprised me were it not followed by the suggestion that were I do have beat ‘across the prairie on snowshoes to bring home the rabbits and occasional deer’ like their father, that it would somehow validate what I do.

I’m not surprised at all that someone would object to the killing of animals. In some way, I object, as it’s not exactly a pretty process – which was a point I tried to make in the article. What I did not expect were objections from those with backgrounds in outdoor-living. I am not hardcore enough. And because I choose to hunt rather than have to hunt to survive, I am a shameful and offensive wanker.

I do have to thank Jeff for the laugh – suggesting that killing an animal with one’s bare hands is not exactly a humane or respectful suggestion. And that naming one’s onion ‘Joe’ rather than ‘product’ might help one connect with one’s food.

Jason, a commenter who actually reads my blog, posted the following: “I’m surprised you bothered to spend time responding to the douchebaggery that is the average internet forum flame. Can almost guarantee you a rebuttal will not be read. Want some really awesome feedback? Post on YouTube.” He’s right.