Morning

Cold and silent, Morning stirs

Eyes still closed, beginning to think about opening

A cold wind blows down the hill and then fades.

In the stillness a deeper chill sets in, her eyes begin to open/

The big pines cut through the dim sky,

dark, still, black sentinals silently suggest she is near.

An owl speaks to the night asking that dark mistress to stay.

A woodpecker shatters the owls plea and all the forest knows she will soon come./

Then she opens her eyes.

A coyote rushes to find a dark hole to crowd into.

A chipmunk chirps again and again in his impatience for her embrace.

Her fiery gaze lights the tops of the tall pines on fire./

All the creatures of the day come to meet her.

An elk barges through the forest following his harem

His crown lit with orange flame.

Aloof in his glorious realm ./

Then she kisses me.

Warm at first on my cheek and then on my lips.

She cozies up to me and whispers coyly,"I want to show you something".

And then she kisses me again./

Then she is passed

and day appears

Morning is gone./

Cooking My Wild Turkey

So once I had everything in the freezer, I was able to think about what I wanted to do with my bird. I had already decided to cook the bird without disguising it too much. When I butchered him it was pretty clear to me that it was fine meat that would taste good. I had left the meat in the freezer for a couple of months waiting for an opportunity to share my bird with the family. My mother in law was very interested in trying it out, since she'd never had wild turkey before. I defrosted the turkey in the fridge over a couple of days. The first dish that I wanted to make was a boned drumstick wrapped in bacon and stuffed with turkey stuffing. This effort turned out to be a disaster. Here's what I did. I cut the meat of the drumstick down at the tendons and then worked the meat off of the bone so that I had a small rectangular slab of meat. Then using a knife I picked out all the tendons and fine bones in the meat. This job was very time consuming and I missed one of the tendons while doing this. I whipped up a little turkey stuffing from a pre-seasoned box that I bought at the store. Then laying some of the stuffing on the meat, I rolled up the meat with the stuffing inside. After that, I took some turkey bacon and wrapped the whole thing in bacon. Once it was all wrapped up, I secured the roll with toothpicks. I took the two wraps and put them in the oven. When it came out, the turkey meat was gray and dry and shriveled, the bacon wasn't crispy, the toothpicks had popped out and the stuffing had squirted out of the rolls. Needless to say, I wasn't very happy with this result. I'm not sure I will do this again, but if I do, I'll pre-cook the bacon some so that it ends up crispier. Also, I used turkey bacon for my bacon, which was a mistake. Next time I will use real bacon. Second I would use butcher's string to tie my rolls shut instead of the tooth picks. In addition, I might use a higher temperature in the oven to sear the bacon on the outside without over-cooking the turkey meat. After this failed experiment I was a little worried about cooking the rest of the bird. I loaded the rest of the meat in a cooler and went over to the in laws to cook the rest of it. I decided to cut everything into strips coat it in seasoned breading and fry it in olive oil. The thighs felt a little tough from the freezing so I de-boned them and pounded them with a meat hammer before cutting them into strips. I took a couple of strips along with the wings and put them on the BBQ to see what would happen. The wings turned out very tough and the strips on the BBQ were dry. The rest of the bird was fried up and the result was very good. My niece had never had wild game food before and is a very picky eater. She ate more than I've ever seen her eat, without complaining. It always really pleases me to see how the kids go after the game meat I bring home. It is a special treat for them, as it should be, and it makes me proud to bring it home and share it with them. There is no ick factor like with a lot of adults that have never had game meat. There was plenty for everyone with four adults and four kids. The thigh meat was a little tougher, but not bad. Also, I think the thigh meat had a fuller flavor, which was very nice. The breast meat was very tender and tasty. I had left overs to share with some of my co-workers who expressed an interest in trying it. They weren't as receptive as the family, but none of them failed to finish what they took. I asked a guy I work with what he thought of it just now and he said it was ok, but that he was surprised and a little let down by the ordinariness of it.

Funny Map

I like looking at maps and think that its funny when someone messes up. Of all things maps should be as accurate as possible. Here's a funny one that I found online recently.

Butchering My Bird

Once I got my turkey to my dad’s house, I had already planned on skinning and butchering the bird into manageable pieces. I had originally planned enchiladas because reports from more than one source said wild turkeys were gamey and dry. When I pulled the breasts off the bone, after skinning the turkey, it became obvious to me that the meat was far too tender and succulent to hide it in enchiladas. I hung my bird up by its feet at my folks house and cut the second joint of the wings off and saved the wings for the feathers, since I like to tie flies for fly-fishing. Then I removed the beard by pulling on it and cutting off the skin to which it was attached. I put the beard in with the wings. Then I skinned it, starting at the knee joint and peeling the skin away from the leg. I put a relief cut on the inner leg to get the skin away from the drum sticks. Once I got past the legs the skin became easier to remove because there was a gelatinous fatty layer under the skin. I pulled the skin over the drum stick like portion of the wing and then down over the head. At that point the neck was exposed and I cut the neck off. After the skin was off I cut the tail feathers off and put the meaty parts of the tail fan in a box with borax along with the beard and wings. I left the box at my folks house for my dad to ship to me later. Once the bird was skinned I cut the legs off at the knees and put the legs in with the feathers I'd saved. I then took the carcass and washed it well in the sink, picking off some of the fatty tissue and getting all the down off that floated onto the meat while skinning it. I carved the breasts off the body and cut the thighs and drumsticks off as well. I cut the wings off the back. Then I put the wings and the back in a one gallon zip lock bag, the breasts in another and the thighs and drum sticks in a third. I stowed the zip lock bags in my mom's freezer and bought a small cooler from Wal-Mart. The next day I took the frozen meat, packed it with some blue ice packs and lined the cooler with newspaper. I strapped duct tape around the cooler and checked it for my flight home. When I got to the other end the cooler came off the luggage carousel and broke open the duct tape, spilling my frozen meat all over. I re-packed it and was on my way home. Next time I’ll strap more duct tape around the cooler. Next installment cooking my wild turkey.

Field Dressing a Wild Turkey

So after all your hard work learning how to hunt the birds, you've just shot your wild turkey. What now? I'm not sure what the right way to do it is, but I can tell you how I did it. After killing my bird I carried it out to the truck over my shoulder like you see in the books. I think there must be an easier way to do it since my grip was cramping halfway back and the wings spread out making the bird very awkward to carry. In addition I got blood all over my backpack as it dribble out the holes in the bird’s neck. Next time I might try something different to carry the bird back to the truck, although I'm not sure what that is yet. On the other hand maybe I just need to cowboy up and carry that bird out the way God intended. Anyway, I didn't expect that much blood. I put down my game bag and a tarp to protect my dad’s truck from the turkey blood. Later, he said I shouldn't have done that because game blood in the bed of his truck would be an improvement. When I got back to camp I pulled out the camp trash can and plucked the feathers around the vent area of the bird. I was surprised by how much dandruff my bird had in its feathers. I cut the abdomen open from the vent about two inches towards the breast and then using that opening tried to carefully cut all the way around the vent. I remember this was very difficult at the time and I ended up nicking the large intestine while cutting around the vent. I was very careful to not get any of the green gunk from the intestine on anything and then after carving out the vent and starting to pull out the guts the intestine along with the gunk came out of the bird and didn't really get on anything but the guts. Next time I'll be more careful. Once that first set of digestive organs were out, I cut along the original two inch slit another two inches or so up so I could get my hand inside the body cavity. I was struck by how hot it was inside the bird. Once I could get my hand in, I started pulling out the rest of the organs. I would carefully work something loose by feeling around in there and pull out what ever I could get my hands on. I tossed the liver in the trash and my dad was really disappointed. He wanted to cook up liver and onions on the spot and have a little mini feast. Since I had tossed it in the trash it had feathers all over it and I was afraid that the other stuff in there may have contaminated it. Next time I'll save it. I was a sizable piece of meat and I'm sure it would have been very good with onions. The reason I had tossed it in the first place was that the bile duct looked like it would be hard to get off without getting bile all over the liver. In retrospect I don't think it would have been that hard. Someone hard warned me that while cleaning the bird it would smell awful. With my bird this couldn't have been further from the truth. Most of the time I didn't really smell anything, since I was expecting a horrible smell this surprised me and I really opened up and took a good whiff right in the body cavity. The smell was very faint, far less odor than a regular store bought turkey. The smell was rather pleasant like butter. After digging out all the organs I really felt around and got a couple more things from near the spine that where hiding up in there I think they were the lungs. I took some paper towels and sopped up the blood that had pooled in the body cavity and tossed the towels in the trash. Then I put some ice in there and shook it up and then dumped the ice and repeated. Then I took some more paper towels and dried it out in there again and tossed the paper towels in the trash. Then I stuffed as much ice as I could into the body cavity wrapped the whole bird in my game bag and let it sit in the shade while I waited for my dad to come back from his hunt. The air temperature that morning was probably around 40 degrees F. When my dad got back about an hour and a half later, I drained the water from body cavity and stuffed in more ice. Then I wrapped it up again in the game bag and put the package into a trash bag. We drove to the nearest town about 45 minutes away and bought a foam cooler and some ice. We put our camp food in the foam cooler and then put the bird in the big cooler with ice for the trip home. I think putting ice in the bird’s body cavity was a good idea, but if you’re going to have your bird mounted, you'll want to remove it and dry out the cavity with towels after the bird cools off because when the ice melted the feathers got wet and would have not looked good on a mount. I hadn't planned to have my bird mounted because my wife wouldn't have liked a mount on display as it doesn't fit the decor of our home. Once the bird was in the cooler I felt good about the 3 hour trip back to my parent’s house. Don't miss my next post "cleaning and butchering the turkey". I'll try to get the pictures from my mom.

From the Sound of the Shot to the Table

One of my biggest worries before I began my first hunt was what to do once I finally killed a wild turkey. I had no idea then that I'd have a long time to think about it. For those of you who may be just beginning, I'll relate in a series of posts my experience with the wild turkey I killed from the time I shot it to when my family ate it. Of the different animals that I've hunting since beginning this journey into becoming a hunter, I have been able to kill two other game species. My first kill was a pheasant in South Dakota. That trip was a wonderful beginning to my experience with preparing and eating game birds. I had no idea at all what to do and I got a lot of practice during that afternoon. All of my cousin Hobart's family and extended family from South Dakota converge on his three section farm that he hobby farms specifically for rasing game. That year was the best year for pheasant in 10 or 15 years and everyone limited out. We set up an assembly line operation cleaning the birds. With 8 dedicated people on the line and everyone else supporting the operation it took us about an hour to clean all the birds. I was lucky enough to get to participate in all aspects of cleaning the animals and after going through that many birds any feelings of grossness had turned into weariness. The other game animal that I've had the pleasure of cooking is mourning doves here in Arizona. After doing the pheasants the doves were fairly easy to figure out. Having these experiences before I finally got my bird really helped me. In my next post I'll talk about after the kill and field dressing my bird. Keep in mind these posts will address what I did with my bird. I can't tell anyone what is the best thing to do since I have only had this one experience. Hopefully, I will be able to experiment and come up with new and better ways of cleaning and cooking future wild turkeys.

Getting into the Sticks

Bush whacking through forest even when it’s not that dense is really slow and difficult. It’s tough to get into thick woods away from the roads. According to some of the stuff I've read online, that is where the birds are. It would stand to reason that turkeys, as twitchy as they are, would like to be away from the hustle and bustle of the dirt roads and in the back country. The issue with that, especially in the areas that I hunt is the lack of water in the back country. The mountains of New Mexico can be pretty dry in drought years. Creeks will sometimes completely cease to flow much of the summer. What is left for the forest animals are muddy cattle tanks. Even some of these sources of water can go dry during bad years. Much of the national forest in New Mexico is leased for cattle grazing so cattle tanks with water will often have cattle near them. Generally the better tanks will be near roads and those roads will be maintained for the cattle leases. In addition, cattle tanks that don't hold water still had to have been built with heavy machinery, so at some time there had to be a road to it. Once a road is built people often find other uses for it so they are often maintained even if the cattle tank doesn't hold water. The result is that everywhere there is reliable water there are almost always roads as well. My dad and I have done our fair share of bushwhacking through thick woods as much as 3 miles from passable roads, but haven't found much in the way turkeys due to (I think) the lack of water. In places that I've been where there is plentiful water everywhere it seems like the turkeys are hard to find and I don't see much sign. Maybe this is due to the turkeys spreading out over a wider area, but it seems more like they just aren't around to me. Needless to say, it is really hard to hunt turkeys that you can't find. I bet if I could find a forgotten cattle tank that holds water, with its road un-maintained and 2 miles from the nearest good road, the place would be crawling with turkeys. Cattle tanks that hold water are important resources for ranchers in the dry country I hunt, so I don't think it’s likely I'll find such a place with out looking long and hard.