The Tao of the Fair Chase

“He means well, feebly.” ~ Teddy Roosevelt

Gentle Readers,

I got a chance to hunt the wily pheasant in the Southwest Corner of Nebraska back in Nov.  But before I can tell that travelog, I have to tell another story. 

As usual, I will ramble a bit.  

Ethical hunters, a group I am feebly determined to be a part of, pay homage to the “Fair Chase.”   In my own words, to give Fair Chase means don’t mistreat the game birds Rowdy and I hunt, dispatch them with as little suffering as we can manage and always eat what we kill.

The Woodcock gave me a challenge on that last point.  Back in the early fall, before the woodcock season, while there was a Jones’ family quorum present up at the cabin, Ann and I prepared pheasant poppers for everyone.  Pheasant poppers are wrapped with bacon, tooth picked and grilled.  They are just flat delicious.

Because I also had a refrigerated Woodcock breast left over from a year ago, I made that into poppers too.   Unlike the pheasant, the Woodcock poppers were – frankly – execrable.  No one in the family including yours truly, could swallow them. Imagine Hollywood comedic actors trying to hide spitting out the meat behind a napkin....

They were dry, over-cooked, tasted like bad chicken liver… and well, I think you get the picture.  I found myself apologizing to the family for them and to the departed spirit of the woodcock for wasting its meat. 

   

Which devastated me, because hunting the tricky little guys is just a heck of a lot of fun for both Rowdy and I.  We have absolutely no intention to stop hunting them.  So, I really needed to find a way to prepare the meat in a way that someone would find edible.  I asked around to various good friends and got anywhere from “Yeah, woodcock really tastes bad, bummer huh?”, “Don’t try to foist the meat off on me!”, and finally, a fairly good suggestion: “Let the meat soak in some strong marinade, the longer the better.  Try Italian dressing.”

Moving on in this story, we come to my stopover at the cousins in Omaha, Neb.  Two years ago, when the Total Solar Eclipse path ran just south of Lincoln, many of us got together down there for the first time in years and we had a really good time.  So, I called Greg, said I was coming through and offered to buy dinner.  Negotiations ensued, and I found myself planning to spend the night at Greg’s where he would grill some famous Omaha Beef.  I would bring the bourbon. Many tales of human failure, tragedy and suffering begin with what I am about to utter.  

This got me to thinking.

   

I decided to bring along some pheasant and some woodcock for appetizers that night.  Greg has a really nice grilling setup, he’s a truly great cook and I figured if anyone could cook a woodcock, it’d be him.  The night before I left, I filleted a couple of pheasant and woodcock breasts I had from this year.  I put the woodcock meat in a double sealed plastic bag with a generous glop of Italian dressing so that it would marinate over night and all during the drive down to Omaha.  The whole caboodle went in the really nice Yeti bag cooler Jaybo gave me for Christmas with a big blue ice plastic block to keep it all chill.

 

Rowdy and I loaded up and set off on our adventure. 

Once at Greg’s house, we visited a while, I met his daughter, son in law and his two really neat grandsons and I explained what I had planned with the birds.  I tried to be honest that my only other attempt with the woodcock had turned out repulsive, but we were going to experiment with the marinade.  I guaranteed that the pheasant would be great.  Which it was.  

Greg did a great job cooking the birds with indirect heat and got them perfectly done.   

We served them up and the boys, who are evidently fidgety eaters, tried the woodcock first.  Which surprised us all.  But not as much as what I heard next: “These woodcocks are really good!  You got any more?”  

I was frankly shocked.  I cut a small sliver of one for myself, tried it and found that the Italian dressing marinade had suffused the meat, sweetened up the livery taste and it was in fact, quite delicious.  

So, I feel comfortable that I have met the Tao of the Fair Chase.  I am sad that the first woodcock had to make the ultimate sacrifice for my lesson to take hold, but I really look forward to next year’s Woodcock migration.

We had a great evening, the beef was excellent and I got a good night’s rest before continuing the drive down to Culbertson, Neb.  On that happy note, I remain,

Dad/Geoff