SPORTS
But I don’t like eating game meat. Really
By Luke Clayton
Hunting seasons are well under way and chances are good many of you already have afreezer well stocked with everything from venison steaks and ground meat to dove breasts.
Let’s not let all this tasty meat get freezer burned! We will discuss some ways to turn thefruits of your hunt into some memorable meals in this week’s column.
Game meat is far more nutritious than domestic but it does require different cooking techniques. Take venison, for example. Venison is very lean and what fat there is in themeat should be removed; it’s the fat that sometimes contributes to the ‘gamey’ taste that some folks complain about.
I’ve been eating game meat all my life and learned much of what I know about cooking game from an uncle that was a ‘sure nuff’ old time Dutch Kettle cook. He made a pot of squirrel and dumpling that I have yet to duplicate. No canned biscuits for uncle, he made his dumplings the old-fashioned way by rolling out dough. I can still see that old Dutch kettle setting on the outside of the campfire coals slow cooking those squirrels.
I am often asked if wild hogs are good to eat or ‘doesn’t venison have that ‘gamey’ taste. I’ve found it impossible to answer these questions with a blanket statement. I often reply with something like this: “If you were going to a hog farm to purchase your pork chops, would you choose the oldest boar?
Likewise, you wouldn’t choose an older bull for your rib eye steaks! Younger game animals in good condition obviously make better table fare than older ones. This is not to say that venison from older bucks, if prepared properly, is not good eating. I always use the center ham cuts, tenderloins and backstraps for steaks and grind the rest for sausage or, add beef fat to it and make venison burger.
Because of its ‘dry’ nature, larger cuts of venison must always be cooked with moisture. I’ve slow cooked many venison hams with the result a flavorful, tasty piece of meat. Slow cooking at low temperature is the key to preparing roasts from game animals. I usually season the roast well with my favorite dry seasonings and a couple of bay leaves, and using a sharp knife, make incisions into the roast and insert pieces of bacon, slivers of garlic and onion or jalapeno pepper. Then, covered with slices of fatty bacon and a little butter on top, I place the roast in a covered cast iron kettle and bake slowly for about 10 hours at 200 degrees.
The meat falls off the bone and is well received at the dinner table when served with carrots, potatoes and onions (which I add to the roast a couple hours before serving).
Making BBQ from these larger cuts is another great way to please crowd at hunting camp or home. I do a lot of my cooking on an electric smoker and I’ve found it to be a very easy, carefree method of tenderizing larger, tougher cuts of meat. I simply place the roast in a double layer of heavy duty foil, add BBQ sauce and allow to smoke uncovered a couple hours, using hickory, plum, peach or pecan wood. Then, wrapped in the foil, the roast is allowed to smoke at 190 to 200 degrees for up to 12 hours or so, or overnight. This method makes some of the best tasting, most tender BBQ imaginable. I often smoke cuts of wild hog, which have flavorful fat, with venison and blend the two for chopped BBQ.
Chicken fried venison steak is better tasting than the best beef round steak, to my way of thinking. I use a tenderizing mallet and pound the steaks, adding dry seasonings during the process. Then, I cover the steaks with milk and refrigerate several hours before frying. Dipped in an egg batter and dusted with the flour, the steaks need only three or four minutes on each side in hot oil.
Drain the steaks, chop and sauté an onion in a little of the remaining oil and pour a big can of mushroom soup (with a little water) and you have smothered steak! Put a lid on the cast iron skillet and bake or cook on the stove top over low heat for an hour or so to tenderize; serve with hot rice and hot dinner rolls.
Preparing and cooking WATERFOWL requires a bit different technique but if all the duck dinners you have been served in the past tasted like ‘liver’, chances are pretty good the cook didn’t have a clue on how to prepare and cook ducks and geese. Lanell Holland, my wife’s cousin, was married to the legendary waterfowl guide the late Jack Holland.
Through the years at their hunting camp in Southeast Texas, Lanell has served waterfowl many different ways; everything from duck or goose gumbo to jambalaya. She is a stickler for prepping waterfowl before the cooking process begins. Years ago, she instructed me in the proper way to prepare duck and goose breasts.
“It’s the blood in the meat of waterfowl that can give it the strong, liver flavor. Remove the breast halves and butterfly them. Then place in cold water and, using your hands squeeze the meat. This greatly aids in removing the blood in the meat.” she instructed.
I often use tenderizer mallet to tenderize the breast halves, and then place them in a pan of cold water with a little salt. Waterfowl breasts, prepared thus, are excellent when wrapped in fatty bacon and grilled or, believe it or not chicken fried just like venison steaks. Served with hot biscuits and cream gravy, Bryan proved to me it’s tough to distinguish the flavor of duck breasts from chicken fried venison!
Quail and dove can be prepared and fried just like chicken. The late Bob Hood, longtime Texas based outdoor writer and great friend, came upon a method for preparing quail that is the best I’ve found. He places a couple rows of Ritz crackers in a plastic bag and crushes them into a fine meal. Next, in a Dutch oven he melts two sticks of butter, and then coats the quail pieces (or chicken wings) in butter, then covers them with the Ritz meal.
Cooked for about 1 hour, the quail are a golden brown. The Ritz meal batter is crunchy and adds a great deal of flavor to the game birds.
If you’re new to cooking game and game birds, hopefully these tips will serve as a good place for you to expand your culinary skills. Making great tasting meals from game animals and birds is really no great feat but it does require a bit of common sense and adherence to a few basic rules. In no time, I expect you will develop your own list of ‘favorites’!
Contact outdoors writer Luke Clayton via www.catfishradio.org Listen to his weekly podcast “Catfish Radio with Luke Clayton and Friends” just about everywhere podcast are found.
A solid day was had by Montague county high school tracksters at the State Track and Field Meet May 16 in Austin.
Bellevue’s Mattie Broussard had a pair of second place finishes in both the 800-meter run with a time of 2:21.41 and the 3,200-meter run with a time of 11:31.33. Broussard also was 4th in the 1,600-meters with a time of 5:22.18.
Her teammate Brylie Hager was 9th in the 110-meter hurdles in 19.93.
Forestburg’s Brenna Briles was 4th in the triple jump with a 35’9 1’2” leap. Her teammate Jocelyn Rich was 4th in the pole vault with a 9’ leap.
For further details, pick up a copy of Thursday’s Bowie News.
Bowie had a pair of top four finishes at the State Track and Field Meet May 14.
Sophomore Brayden Willett made it onto the medal stand, finishing 3rd in the 1,600-meter run with a time of 4:17.89. Bowie junior Tyler Richey finished 4th in the pole vault after a 14’6” effort.
The top two finishers from Holliday, also in Bowie’s district, celebrated with him after he crossed the finish line.
“It was kind of surprising,” Willett said about Ryder and Noah Stroman embracing him in a celebratory hug. “They’re good guys, so it was kind of cool.”
For further details, pick up a copy of Thursday’s Bowie News.
This past week found your outdoor scribe doing some rather mundane things such as yard work, vegetable gardening and repairs around the old cabin. Oh, I also wrapped up a couple of magazine articles. I always enjoy sharing my adventures with all of you in this column but to be perfectly honest, not nearly as much as my ‘field work’ hunting and fishing which is an iatrical part of any good outdoor column. If you’re like me, you much prefer reading about an adventure that you can also partake.
I am far more comfortable telling you about an outdoor experience I had firsthand knowledge of rather than the reporting part of my job as an outdoor communicator. So, this week, I’d do a bit of ‘reporting’ and share some planned adventures I have scheduled for the next couple weeks. By the time you’re reading this, I will have already been in the woods in quest of a fat ‘eater’ hog and probably have some freshly caught blue catfish fillets in the freezer, details will follow in the next couple of weeks.
I’ll kick things off early in the week heading down to my friend Jeff Rice’s Buck and Bass Ranch located on the upper end of Lake Fork. Jeff produces our weekly TV show “A Sportsman’s Life” which airs on Carbon TV and YouTube. Our plan is to film a segment of our show on stalking wild hogs. It will be a challenge to capture the shot with all the thick grown spring vegetation. It could happen fast and require a fast shot. We will be breaking in my CVA Cascade scout rifle in 308 caliber. This short barrel little rifle is light and easy to handle in thick cover, ideal for this type of hunting. Our plan is to hit the woods during the last couple hours of daylight and ease along the trails, watching and especially listening for hogs. Wild porkers are vocal critters and it’s common to hear them before seeing them. We will play the wind and attempt to get downwind and then close the distance for a shot but you can never guess how a hog hunt will unfold. Wild pork or not, Jeff and I always have a great time together and I plan to bring a side of wild pork ribs already slow smoked and covered in brown sugar and BBQ sauce with a side of camp baked beans!
After a tasty dinner we plan to get a good night’s sleep and head out the next morning for a planned fishing trip with guide David Hanson at Lake Tawakoni. Both channel and blue catfish are on a very good bite right but it’s hard to pass up those snow white blue catfish fillets when the bite is good. David is, to my knowledge, the most veteran catfish guide on the lake and became friends close to a quarter-century ago when we first began fishing
together. The plan is to use freshy cut shad in shallow water and target eater size blues weighing between 2 and about 10 pounds but as every catfish angler knows, it’s always possible to connect with a big trophy size blue when fishing Tawakoni.
Next week, I plan to join my long-time friend J.C. McCollough on the Red River below the Texoma dam. I’ve been fishing and hunting with J.C. for many years and look forward to getting with him again. I would describe this to catching big catfish in a barrel but in this case the deep holes in the river are comprised of several acres. The water level in the river below Texoma are dictated by the water release at the dam by the Corp of Engineers. When there is a current in the river, fish move upstream to feed on baitfish coming through the dam. When the water recedes, they fish move into the deeper holes where baitfish also seek refuge from the falling water. Catching will be fast paced with the chance to connect with some big fish as well as limits of “eater” size fish. We’ll be rigging with big live gizzard shad fished weightless on a free line, using medium spinning gear. The bigger fish will often nail the frisky live shad and the fresh cut bait is a sure way to connect with lots of smaller fish. There is something very exciting about fishing big live baits on a slack line. One minute your bait will be darting around and you will occasionally feel it taking up slack and the next when a big blue catfish grabs the bait, the rod will bow and the fight will be on. There is usually no ‘setting the hook’, by the time you feel the fish, it will already be hooked and making a strong run to the nearest submerged brush. Your job will be to keep the drag set just enough to keep pressure on the fish but not so much as to cause the line to break.
J.C. uses his airboat to access these deeper holes because of the very shallow water. While it’s not impossible to portage a kayak or small boat in the river, it often requires a few miles travel to get to these deep holes, this is best accomplished by experienced kayakers with plenty of endurance. There was a time when I was game for this type fishing but I much prefer to do my river fishing these days from a boat designed to negotiate the shallow waters.
Squirrel season is underway in many of the east Texas counties and there’s some pretty good fox squirrel hunting here close to home in Kaufman county and I’ve been thinking about how tasty a big skillet of smothered squirrel with rice, gravy and biscuits would be. Bream are on the beds now and my friend Edgar Cotton invited me to come do some ‘perch jerking’ with him and his son David-it’s in the plans! Well, hopefully next week I will have a ‘sure nuff’ adventure of two to relate you you-I’m ready to get some relief from all this work around the homeplace! LC
You can contact Tawakoni/Fork catfish guide David Hanson at 902-268-7391. Contact J.C. McCollough at 580-372-0320.
Listen to Luke’s podcast, “Catfish Radio” just about everywhere podcast are found.
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