FIRST TIME HUNTER?

Kevin01.2016Uncategorized1 Comment

I’m going to be working on a crew of Neil Grahn‘s on a documentary series about the first time hunter experience. The show’s in development phase which means we’re scheduling pilot work, working out content and logistic details, etc – one of which is lining up the right ‘talent’ for the project.

Neil’s looking for first time hunters willing to be on TV. The show concept is to follow the first time hunter for a couple days in their daily life learning about who they are, why they want to hunt, what they’re going to hunt, etc. There’d be a 3-4 person crew on the hunt itself, then a day or so back at home learning about how it went.

It’s a doc series, so no acting skills required. Just have to be willing to have us document your experience. If you’re interested, email me kevin at kevinkossowan.com.

Oh, Christmas Fawn. I mean, tree.

Kevin01.2016Big Game, Deer, From The Wild, HuntingLeave a Comment

Umpteen years of getting Christmas trees at IKEA. I’m a serious scrooge when it comes to box stores combined with the month of December [thank you online shopping]. I think at some point one of the kids mentioned this fall that we should cut our own tree from the forest. It was a done deal before they’d finished their sentence.

The ‘usual’ week is the first week of December. It’s as early as we dare push collecting an IKEA tree for fear of having no needles left by the 25th. But I figured a freshly cut live tree would fare better [correct, by far], so we headed out November 30th. We could have gone Dec 1, but Dec 1 wouldn’t have been during deer season.

The family had a lovely time [kind of] debating which tree was perfect, and we had lunch in our now very frozen bush camp that they’d only seen in pictures. After a memorable day out, fingers got cold, kids got tired and cranky, and homeward we went, having seen zero game but with a trailer full of ‘not-IKEA’ Christmas tree decor.

As we left the bush, we drove through the last mile or two of crown land, in literally the final hour of hunting season. On the road stood a whitetail doe. It left the road into the woods. I followed the deer.

Top that, IKEA.

Whitetail fawn harvested on Christmas Tree outing

Squirrel, Grouse, and Everything Nice

Kevin01.2016Cooking w/ Fire, Foraging, From The Wild, Game - Other, Game Birds, Greens & Stuff, Hunting, Upland GameLeave a Comment

Bushcamp with prospector tent’s new pole frame.

Hunting season had just started, and Hank Shaw was going to be arriving in a week or so. I had plans for our fledgling bushcamp prior to his arrival, the most important of which was getting a tent frame built out of the surrounding black spruce. I have an aluminum frame for the tent, but hauling it had proved to be onerous the season prior, and for a basecamp we were going to return to often in the coming months/year(s) a semi-permanent solution made more sense than hauling frame poles back and forth every trip.

Enter Allan Suddaby. I’d seen him just prior for the first time in a while, at an invite-only Austrian ‘most herurigen’ he holds to celebrate pig harvest and equally importantly the cider ferment, serving still-in-secondary ciders crushed days before paired with a myriad of Austrian charcuterie preparations. I’ve known Allan since his culinary school days, and felt silly realizing that of all the culinary folks I know around home, Allan is one of the most well versed in wild edibles – and I’ve never been hunting or fishing with the guy. Knee jerk was to ask if he had any interest in a hunting outing. His kneejerk was yes.

Ruffed grouse

It was the second week of September, deer season wasn’t open, but grouse and small game was. The bush was wet from some fall rains, which meant the road into camp would have low spots muddy enough to get me out of the vehicle every time on the way in to walk it first, to make sure we wouldn’t be staying in the woods longer than intended. I learned something that day. Out of maybe 4 walks in the low spots on foot, twice I flushed ruffed grouse. They were hanging up in the wet spots, feeding on willows I’d later learn. This pattern would repeat itself through the fall. We ended up entering camp with grouse in hand. Dinner was sorted.

I put Allan on starting a fire, while I cut black spruce for the the tent poles. Long into my project, Allan was still at it. I decided to give him a hand, thinking it was him. Turns out it was the saturated forest. Took some splitting of standing dead trees to get to the dry centers in order to make progress, which still was not easy or fast. Note to self: leave a water-sealed cache of fire start in the bush.

With tent up, I got to learn something new again at dinner time. Allan was on dinner, and cooked possibly the best grouse I’ve ever eaten. Not because of flavour manipulation, but because of perfect execution on doneness. I’m guessing 95% of grouse I’ve eaten in the past has been overcooked, even if only a little bit, and the margin is thin on getting it wrong. Grouse should be juicy and stringy like a properly cooked chicken, otherwise you’re doing it wrong. I’d suggest starting hot, finishing slowly and carefully, and resting the meat prior to serving. We shared the campfire that night with some guests – Jeff Senger with Trevor and Trinity in tow from the meat shop.

Red squirrel.

The next day, we looked for more grouse, but also were open to any small game, trying to ignore the whitetail doe standing on the cutline staring at me days before deer season. That day’s learning experience was the culinary merits of squirrel. I’d long wondered. Kevin Kent of Knifewear had sworn they were desirable. Here’s Allan’s post on the squirrel stew he made that day: http://buttonsoup.ca/squirrel/. Two more takeaways for me were Allan’s sourcing of dandelion and clover flowers for the stew – in the fall I generally forget about greens in the bush because we’re usually there a couple weeks later. Early season, greens and florals are game on. An even bigger one was Allan’s approach to the stew – he made a tea from labrador tea and rosehip for his cooking liquid in the stew. I’ve since used that technique many times in lieu of stock or water – using steeped bush teas as cooking liquid for things like wild rice, stews, braises, whole grains, etc.

Young dandelion leaves and clover flowers.

Maybe the most important takeaway is that a simple overnighter, without big game tags or cameras in hand, could yield so much learning. You’d think the learning would stop. Thankfully, it does not.

Squirrel stew, labrador tea/rosehip tea, dandelion, clover flowers.

DOPPLEGANGER MEETUP

Kevin10.2015Big Game, Butchering Game Meats, Cooking w/ Fire, Deer, Foraging, From The Wild, Game Birds, Upland Game, Waterfowl4 Comments

So it turns out Hank Shaw and I both eat quickly. We both regularly drink Calvados. We have about the same amount of grey in the beard, both hunt/fish/forage, and generally speaking we see the world much in the same way. Who knew. I told him it’s a good thing we’re not married.

I met Hank online about 10 years ago when he started to comment on this very website. This was prior to him starting his own site, winning James Beard awards, writing books on wild food, and otherwise overachieving. We had tossed around the idea of him coming up here to head into the bush [as he would remind me, the singular bush that we Canadians keep speaking of] in pursuit of wild things, but this year From The Wild was able to see it through. We booked him a flight up here, and now I can’t get Gwar’s ‘Carry On My Wayward Son’ out of my brain. We filmed two episodes of From The Wild – one on waterfowl and one on grouse, both pieces of subject matter I’d long had on the drawing board but was unable to pull together prior to this aligning of the stars. Aligning of the moon, rather – a lunar eclipse happened to be occurring while we were in the bush. The singular bush.

My head’s a bit rocked by the week we spent together chasing and finding delicious things. The whole moon aligning thing meant that we connected on ducks, connected on geese, connected on two species of grouse, and connected on the biggest whitetail buck of my life – a whole other story. It was a week of picture-perfect gold fall leaves, wood fires in the bush tent, and scads of fire cookery – I couldn’t have dialled it in better had I tried for the camera. Just stunning.

Hank’s doing some cooking and posting about his adventure up here, and I’m cutting two episodes of From The Wild about it, so there will be a lot of content coming about the past week. Needless to say, a memorable one. Below: Hank thinks that we Canadians must drink Molson Canadian. When I go down there I’m going to make him drink Coors.

Early Season

Kevin10.2015Big Game, Black Bear, Elk, From The Wild, MooseLeave a Comment

From The Wild episodes are planned out quite a few months ahead of time, and on the roster for season 3 is me going into my family’s ‘moose camp’. I’ve actually never been with tag in hand, as they always call bulls during rut, and I’ve always been chasing calves. The older I get, the more I want to participate, at least once, in this family tradition. There’s a 2 year priority wait for a bull tag there during rifle season, so this year, all I could get for a moose tag was a general archery tag. Hunting rules are complicated.

All that to say, I was in the boreal during early season, while moose archery was open. There was this window of time between Sept 17 when early elk season was open with a rifle, and Sept 24 when moose archery closed. Whitetail was open, bear was open. I was pretty sure we’d find something to harvest for From The Wild. My major cop-out from long, protracted blog posts is and will be: ‘watch the episode‘. A picture is worth a thousand words. An episode is about 31,000 pictures. [this one will be S2E8, released sometime in spring of 2016]

The short of it. I got to hear for the first time, elk bugling all around me, and our hunting party was successful at harvesting one opening morning. There was an explosion in the black bear population such that they’d spotted somewhere between 15-20 just on their ~1/2 section of land alone in 2-3 days. I ended up butchering 5 sides of bear. I brought in Allan Suddaby to do the cookery segment in the episode, which was long overdue. Overall, a crazy opener to what’s continued to be a stellar hunting season.

CIDER SEASON 2015

Kevin09.2015Apples, Cider, Cider Making, From the Cellar, From the Garden, Fruit from the Yard, Pears1 Comment

Last year there was no cider season for me. I got back from New Brunswick filming for Slow Food Canada [as an aside, both films will be in DEVOUR film fest this coming November!!] and as apples ripened, I finished up the season with Lactuca, was in the field solid filming for the university and the beef industry, slamming out episodes of From The Wild, and by the time the end of cider season hit I was taking a photo of the apples on my tree, unpicked. It was upsetting, really. I decided to not let that happen again. Ever.

To ease my load, I sold my shares of Lactuca to my business partner, stepped away from Shovel & Fork, and promised myself a cider vintage in 2015. I haven’t really posted about my exits from those projects, but I’m happy to report that both were functional and healthy exits. The issue wasn’t the success of those projects or lack thereof, it was that my production business absolutely exploded, and it’s where I wanted to spend my time. I’ve been flat-out since.

The pears top left are from a yard who’s owner I’ve made friends with over the past few years. A classic case of ‘Please save me the work of cleaning up this mess of fruit‘, and grateful we oblige. That single tree yielded 400-500lbs of pears this year. You don’t blame the owner for not putting it all up for the winter, now do you.

The singleton pear on the left is on the tree in my front yard – the first notable fruiting of the young tree. It pleases me to no end thinking about picking a few hundred pounds of pears from my own yard in a few years. It’s coming.

Pears have become a significant focus in our cider making. Most of our ‘apple ciders’ consist of at least 20% pear, and it’s normal to go up to 50%. Pears tend to crush and press really well, and are high juice yielders. Apples can be pretty variable. These pears have a nice acidity to them, are beautifully aromatic and taste the part. We make single varietal pear cider that’s austere in acidity but can smell like pear pie. And we consume the rich juice straight off the press in wine glasses. It’s glorious.

This is the first year I have a utility trailer with side walls – extremely helpful. Post pear pick, we picked the neighbour’s dolgo, picked a few branches of my cousin’s tree, and headed home to pick mine. So essentially a morning. To pick about 1000lbs of fruit, with a couple friends.

What does that yield? Years ago I figured out some ballpark figures that have stood the test of time:

100lbs FRUIT = 20L JUICE

100LBS FRUIT = 1 MAN HOUR TO PICK

100LBS FRUIT = 1 MAN HOUR TO CRUSH/PRESS

20L of cider is a lot, pretty much. The carboys are 23L, so 20 would be your approximate net yield. 40 500ml flip tops. Doesn’t sound like much, perhaps, until you’re consuming #20, and you still have 20 to go. That, and when you don’t just have one carboy, you have 8. Legal limit in Alberta is 400L, in case you were wondering.

I also get asked about how I bottle, etc. I still love the purist method of bottling before the cider ferments dry to capture a natural bottle ferment with the residual sugar. Probably my favourite, but as aforementioned, my schedule can be cranky, and doesn’t always allow the finessing of that timing. We now keg most of it, like you would beer. The kegs sit in our cellar. Most of the year we have cold cider on tap, whenever one wants. #wealth

Below: a shot of the fruit crusher we’d been wishing we had for many years. A friend picked one up when I was unavailable last year – a solid byproduct of my 2014 vintage failure. We’ve spent many dollars and loads of hours trying to put together what this thing can easily do. If you’re going to make cider for years, suck up the expense and buy one. Game changer. You can dump a whole box of apples in the top and it’ll zip through them. It kept 2 large presses going all day, and sat idle and wanting more most of the time. This means my large rack press will be exploring multiple cheese pressing with plastic racks next year – something we could never do because the crusher would overheat and needed to cool down before its next go. Not anymore.

Many thanks to the many friends that were here lending a hand with picking, crushing, pressing, the pommeau tasting, dinner, the pear dessert, all of it. Beautiful living, and satisfying work. I sure missed it.

COOK IT RAW ALBERTA – CAMP

Kevin09.2015Bison, COOK IT RAW, Cooking w/ Fire, Fish, Fishing, From The Wild, Northern PikeLeave a Comment

Today Cook It Raw launched the first teaser piece from our stay on Cucumber Island – pasting it below. The series will be broadcast on Munchies – the first piece on Sept 15, which happens to be my birthday. The second part is a mid-length piece explaining the project, and providing a glimpse of life on the island, our bison hunt, and the resulting dishes our Alberta chefs were inspired by. Part 3 will be filmed in October in Calgary and the Kananaskis, with the international chefs in tow – that one will be roughly 22 minutes.

I’ve had a few questions about what exactly Cook It Raw is about, and rather than answer it here, I’m confident I did a solid job of making it clear in Part 2, so I’ll just leave it at that.

Wanted to include a couple photos from camp life on Cucumber Island. My bunk buddies for 6 days were Alessandro Porcelli, Blair Lebsack, and Brayden Kozak. It was sunburn-hot during the days without a cloud in the sky for protection. The tent would be roasting and uninhabitable during the day. At night, it got so cold that one morning our water jug had ice in it. Yes, that’s my sweet cot at the back. From The Wild has me living in the field for 40 days or so every year – in S2E2 we slept 2 miles off shore on the ice of Lesser Slave lake. One eventually figures out how to be prepared.

My prospector tent. Note to self: bring a wood stove in May.

The first 3 days were without the big crew – it was largely just the 4 of us, and the odd guest who’d drop by the island to import supplies for the impending chaos. The island was completely uninhabited, and our days were consumed by hard labour building a wood oven on the beach, a huge grill, multiple fire-cookery stations for the incoming chefs, setting up camp – all on top of the usual day-to-day necessities like meal prep over fires, fishing for lunch, and drinks in the evenings around the fire. It was a memorable 3 days. My camera gear stayed in their cases, and we really just lived out there getting ready – ready for the boat to bring the rest of the Cook It Raw team, and for the adventures to begin.

The wood oven base and its rock-pile prep counters.

The 4 of us around 10pm. The weather was so stable every night looked exactly the same.

Our pot for boiling water. Not the best place to learn that it leaked.

I feel really, really fortunate to have been chosen to work on the documentary pieces attached to this project – and really appreciate those that put in a good word for me [you know who you are]. Only a few more days and we’ll be back in the field.

SUFFOCATING A FISH

Kevin07.2015Burbot, Fish, Fishing, Food Politics, From The Wild, Ice FishingLeave a Comment

“Oh man, you can’t show that…”

I’m sitting with the From The Wild crew, showing them some footage in the field. Keep in mind that over the years we’ve shown beef being decapitated on the kill floor, used a drone to film black bear being field dressed, got up close with a mule deer being field dressed after being arrowed in the guts, and a host of other ‘unpleasantries’. Unpleasantries that are the reality of killing animals in order to eat them. The intent has never been ’shock and awe’ – although it admittedly has that effect – the intent has been to close the loop on how we related to our food, if we’re going to be eating meat. To show field to plate, including the horrible moments required to get it there.

The scene I was showing the guys was of a burbot that some neighbouring fisherman had caught and put on the winter lake ice. Not bambi, but rather arguably the ugliest fish in our waters here. The issue was with how the fish died. Or rather, that while I was filming it, it hadn’t yet died. It was in the process of suffocating to death.

Sounds dramatic. We had this collective moment of realization that we’d never in a million years treat a pig, cow, deer, or any other animal intended to be eaten in that way. Suffocation over a period of many hours? Brutal. I’ve seen perch gills pumping a day or more after you’ve pulled them from the water. Do that to a lamb and you’d have an army of haters after you – the whole army. What happened to stress minimization, swift death, and humane animal handling systems?

All of us around that table had been beating the drum of well-raised, ethically killed meat for years, yet this issue of how fish die had never even crossed our minds. Not once.

So why is it acceptable for us to kill fish that way? And by ‘us’, I mostly mean ‘you’. At least when I’m catching the fish we eat, I bonk the fish on the head to at least attempt to kill them swiftly. I admit the odd time they survive it, but we try. Now I’m not a betting man, but will wager a guess that the majority of commercially caught species that you’ve purchased either for home or on a restaurant plate were netted, put into a hold, without the luxury of being dispatched any time soon, if at all. Suffocation. And/or evisceration? Maybe a little from column A, little from column B?

“and, a lot of people would say ‘it’s just a fish’ – but I’ll tell you one thing, working in the slaughter business there’s one thing that’s for certain – and that is an animal is not a vegetable.” – Jeff Senger [FTW S2E2]

I realize I’m not proposing a solution. And I’m not trying to place blame. Just asking a question: why do the mighty ethics we carefully apply to killing creatures from the land evaporate when it comes to creatures from the water? Completely illogical.

I’m grateful this simple fallacy finally became obvious to us, and that when we’re in the field we have the opportunity to make it right – to even out this ethical playing field.

Thoughts?

Yes, the burbot footage did make it into S2E2 of From The Wild, along with a discussion around the issue. A critical reason we’ve kept FTW online and not on broadcast – they’d never touch this kind of content. You can watch the trailer for the episode below, or the full discussion and footage in question via the full episode: vimeo.com/ondemand/fromthewild.

FROM THE WILD – S1E11 – MATCHES & TINFOIL

Kevin04.2015Antelope, Big Game, Deer, From The Wild, Game Birds, Hunting, Upland Game, WaterfowlLeave a Comment

This is the first episode where we get to meet ‘the’ John Schneider – a dear friend who happens to have a former life as a high profile hunting and fishing guide. John also happens to be an organic grain farmer [@goldforestgrain]. John also happens to be a super nice guy. This episode, title included, is a nod to the story arc of his journey with hunting.

This was a difficult three days. The second half of the journey is one of the most fondly remembered legs of season one – the first half one of the least.

We’re starting to look tired on camera – I know I am. This episode was shot 4 days after getting home from S1E10. The very day I got home from this one I flew to Japan to shoot Springhammer 2. It was a busy time. One where I’m glad there were cameras involved all the while, as without them, it would just be a blur of insane memories. The big gift of post production is that I actually get to slow down and re-live some of the crazy moments when life is hammering me with its experience. I’m grateful.

FROM THE WILD – S1E10 – KINDERGARTEN

Kevin03.2015Big Game, Butchering, Butchering Game Meats, Deer, From The Wild, MooseLeave a Comment

Apologies for the cliff hanger in S1E9 – wasn’t the plan. Just so happened that when this journey hit the edit desk it was far too long for a single episode, so S1E10 resolves that piece for you, but we’re then thrown into a whole new mess.

We’ve had a lot of feedback on S1E9’s cinematography [positive feedback, thank you], and this episode is in a similar league. I’d like to give credit to the grasslands. A landscape that we thought could be boring, flat, and scarce of living things proved to be the exact opposite. Credit is also due to bowhunting itself – the very nature of the pursuit forcing the cameras into the fields multiple times a day on stalks, providing rich content. A big take away from season one was that some hunting styles are conducive to loads of visuals [these two episodes included], and some aren’t: S1E5 would be a good example. When copious hours are spent in a vehicle, the cameras don’t see much play. Season two has been designed accordingly.

Speaking of season two – shooting of S2E1 is wrapped, and we’re just about to leave on a longer than normal outing for S2E2. S1E11 will be out in April, S1E12 in May, and Season 2 should see the light of day come June 2015.

You can watch the full episode here.

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