Wild Game Feast Menu

Every year, the group from woodcock camp gets together with a large gathering of friends and family once hunting season has ended. We enjoy a meal where woodcock, pheasant, venison, rabbit and whatever other morsels we could secure from sources other than the grocery isles at Meijer with the skilled - or lucky - placement of a projectile or projectiles from a rifle, shotgun, bow or muzzleloader, share main dish honors.

It's time to start planning the menu for the annual wild game feast coming up in March. No, I won't reveal the location and date, to keep away the hungry hordes of party crashers, and because we haven't exactly picked the date yet.

Woodcock
Of course, there will be woodcock. The north woods were kind to our hunting party this year. For our woodcock bagging success; not so much for our grouse endeavors. (I can't say I helped matters with my shooting, or by barging in too soon when we were circling an apple tree where we suspected grouse were congregating. At least five ruffed grouse took flight from out of the tree and surrounding brush before Rick had a chance to take his stand by the birds' suspected escape route, which turned out to be their actual escape route. Sorry, Rich, Scott, Gregg, Mark, Dennis and Andy.)

By saving and pooling our take, we will serve 16 woodcock at the feast. We make kabobs from the breast and legs of the birds, skewered alongside onion, cherry tomatoes, mushrooms, and green, yellow and red peppers. We baste them liberaly with a mixture of olive oil, beer, garlic, pepper, season salt and some honey while they cook over a hot grill. The trick here is take the kabobs off the heat when the breasts are about medium rare, otherwise they take on the objectionable flavor and consistency of boot leather.

The woodcock kabobs with their dark, dense, rich breast meat, akin to wild duck, and their light, white, tender legs, which remind me of good frog legs, provide an almost yin and yang dining experience in one dish. It's definitely a mistake to discard the legs of woodcock. Even though it takes a delicate biting technique to access the tiny bites of meat from the leg quarters, the reward is worth the effort. (Note to self: be sure to soak the wood skewers in water several hours before cooking birds.)

Maybe not surprising, many of the wives prefer to pass on the kabobs. It's my opinion that the objection is not due to the taste of the woodcock kabobs, though for some it takes awhile to develop an appreciation for the dark breast meat. I think part of the ladies' mental ankst comes from the name of the migratory bird and their reluctance to put THAT in their mouths, especially in front of the other wives. It didn't help when we got together for the meal that first year and every time someone ate some kabob Rich would start chortling, "You took a bite of my woodcock! Look, everyone, Megan is chewing on my wood-cock!" At least that's my theory.

Venison
My son Nash took a doe in September, but there isn't much left of that to share. Rich killed two deer this year. He gets some of his venison ground into burger so in addition to grilled whitetail steaks, venison pie, always a crowd favorite, will potentially be on the menu. The key to venison pie, a friend who taught me to make it years ago said, is the green cabbage. I've never omitted that ingredient which adds a sweetness to the burger. Besides two layers each of venison burger and chopped up cabbage, put one layer each of thinly sliced potatoes and carrots between two pie crusts in a pie plate, season each layer of meat with salt, pepper, Red Hot and worstershire sauce. Bake about 90 minutes and you've got yourself a memorable meal.

Most of the cooking takes place at my house and we eat next door at Scott's. Last year, Mark, a wildlife biologist who manages a large hunting tract in northern Michigan, brought along a deer heart, which four of us guys snacked on while cooking. I saved the heart from Nash's deer in the hopes Mark will again prepare the dish, as I believe it would make a fine tradition. As I remember, Mark simply sliced the heart into about half inch pieces and sauted in butter with onions and garlic. Then he added a little water to the frying pan, covered with a lid and let it simmer a short time. By the time we were on our second bites all four of us were digging in with both hands.

Mark is also contributing elk from his Wyoming trip. He's been out west on an elk quest each year we've had our wild game feast, but this is the first year he's actually tagged a bull. He hunts public land. All of us accustomed to bagging woodcock, with weights in the ounces, is looking forward to, and a little intimidated by, eating the heavy, large-hoofed elk, however Mark decides to prepare it. I'm hoping for a roast from the rump, pan seared in butter with garlic cloves stuffed into slits in the side and then roasted until medium rare in a hot oven.

Pheasant
Ringneck pheasants are always on the menu. No matter how many pheasant nuggets I make, it's never enough. Half the batches of the fried breast chunks get dunked in a buffalo sauce comprised of half Red Hot sauce and half butter. Most of the kids prefer the undunked nuggets which aren't spicy hot. A couple beer-can pheasants make it to the wild game dinner table, and I usually use the thighs from the nugget birds in a pheasant and dumpling dish which I prepare in a pressure cooker. That recipe sometimes contains a rabbit or some pheasant breast to lighten the flavor of the dark thigh meat from the pheasant.

Getting enough pheasants for a large group feed in Michigan requires a visit to a preserve. Nearly every year, guys at the company where I work get together with additional invited guests at the Ringneck Ranch in Hanover, Michigan for a tower shoot, which we did two weekends ago. We shot a little less than half of the birds during the European tower shoot in the morning and had the whole preserve to ourselves the rest of the day to field hunt the hens and roosters we missed. If you're not familiar with a tower hunt, I'd describe it here, but it sounds so much easier than it actually is that I will leave the details to your imagination.

It's true the preserve hunt lacks a lot of the mystique, allure and gratification that a hunt for wild bird provides. It does provide lots of fun. There's also a fair amount of performance anxiety to overcome, especially when that horn sounds signaling the first pheasants are being released, then again when you determine that one is actually, finally, coming toward you. Each bird looks like it's going to fly your way, even when they are going directly away from you. I'd hate to admit how many times I had to reset my safety without firing because of that phenomenon. The preserve hunt provides good times with a large group of guys. Even though I like them, there's no way I'd take a big group of buddies like that onto one of my coveted private-property bird hunting tracts.

Sage and Sparty, my German wirehaired pointers, performed very well in the field hunt. The birds cooperated for many points, holding long enough in front of my dogs' noses for us human hunters to push into flight. When it all comes together it's almost regrettable to shoot the bird, except of course, dog and hunter both relish the retrieve too.

The Ringneck Ranch staff cleans and plucks the take and hands to the tired hunters the birds individually wrapped in plastic bags. You couldn't have a good beer-can pheasant if it weren't still in its moisture-retaining skin. The bags are handed out to each hunter in equally numbers, no matter how skilled each shotgunner performed that day. I took home 12 pheasants instead of the allotted 10 because Dennis didn't think he'd eat that many birds before freezer burn would ruin some. Don't worry, he'll be at the game feast, getting his fair (or more) share of pheasant nuggets.

Converts
The number of guests varies from year to year. This is our seventh annual feast, I believe. Think you wouldn't want to be at this table? Neither did Scott's brother and the brother's girlfriend last year. The couple were in from out of town and had plans to leave during the dinner to visit friends nearly an hour away. A quick and heavy Michigan snowfall changed the road conditions and their will to attempt to travel.

Surrounded by heaping platters of wild game, the couple vowed to "eat some salad." With a little cajoling and by observing that none of us were keeling over dead, they got brave enough to sample some of the more mainstream-looking dishes. (I think it helped that they were encouraged by some of the women in our annual group that in the early years had been skeptical of the possibility that wildlife could be eaten and enjoyed.) Soon enough they were filling their plates with all types of the menu items.

I admit to feeling a little victorious at winning over some non-hunters to the joys of eating "exotic" meat as I watched the handsome couple happily filling up with big forkfuls of venison and game birds as they obligingly listened to the stories of the hunters who brought them home.