You EAT geese?

I always laugh when somebody asks me this one, and I am still amazed by the number of them that are actually fellow waterfowlers.  I hear it all the time, about how Canadas don't make good table fare, and I have no doubt this, more often than not, has been the result of a "bad experience" with a knife and fork.  I just smile and say, "Yes, I manage to choke them down", all the while seeing if they will offer to give me their geese as well...

My hunting pals and I are fortunate enough to shoot quite a few geese each season, and the Brown Dog loves to carry these 747s around.  We have also been fortunate enough to stumble across some very good recipes that make these big birds more than "just edible".  One of my very favorites is this recipe for making pastrami from goose breasts, and it never ceases to please!  I have converted many of the "geese taste nasty" crowd with this one (including quite a few at the OWA Waterfowlers Bootcamp this weekend), and it is SOOOO easy, you just gotta have some time and a smoker...

Meat Preparation
First, you need geese!  To make this effort worthwhile, I usually will do 6-8 breast filets at a time, and I have done as many as a dozen.  Start by removing all the "silver skin", muscle fascia, blood vessels, etc that you can with a sharp filet knife. Remove any shot pellets you can find as well as any feathers that may be in the meat.  This really seems to get rid of a lot of the "gamey" flavor many complain about with geese.

Removing fascia and silver skin

Brine Preparation
Make a brine for the breasts to soak in.  My brine recipe of choice is:
1 pint water
3 tablespoons of Morton Tender Quick
2 tablespoons of garlic powder
3 tablespoons of brown sugar
2 tablespoons pickling spice
(This is generally enough for 4-6 breasts, can easily be doubled if more volume is needed)
*Bring all ingredients to a boil, reduce heat and simmer, stirring to dissolve sugar and Tender Quick

Marinade Time!
Place the brine and the breasts in a sealable container.  If you need to, add additional water to make sure all meat is covered.  Seal container and place in the refrigerator for 7-10 days.  Shake the container daily or every other day to mix the contents.  (For really large batches, especially when it is really cold out, I have used 5 gallon buckets and put them in the garage!)

Into the brine!

Ready for the Fridge!

Time to Cook!
Drain the brine from the container.  Often the fat that is still with the meat will get somewhat "snotty" after a long sit in the fridge, but it rinses off.  Rinse the meat and allow to sit in cold fresh water for 1-2 hours.  Dry the breasts off and apply your favorite meat rub to both sides, liberally coating the surface and grinding it into the meat.  I like BBQ rubs, like Rendezvous Dry Rub, but ground peppercorns, Cajun seasonings, even coarse ground black pepper all work...just depends on your tastes.

Rub(s) added, ready for the smoker!

Get your smoker up to 220-225 F, and smoke the meat until the internal temperature is 150-160F (a remote meat thermometer is a wonderful thing).  I like to use apple cider in the water pan, but experiment to see what you like the best.  Smoking time is generally 4-6 hours.

See you in about 4 hours!

When the meat reaches temperature, remove from the smoker, and allow to cool.  Slice the meat thin with a meat slicer or filet knife and enjoy!  Large batches can be easily divided up and vacuum sealed, for freezing and serving later.  I usually throw a small bag in with my hunting gear to share with friends (and Roux) in the blind.  It's good stuff!  Enjoy!!

Just out of the smoker!

Sliced and ready to pack

Ready for the Blind Bag!

Until next time, remember...

Brown is Beautiful!

Daddy was right...

As I sit here, the heat index is over 100F, and the Brown Dog and I are vying for position as close to the AC vent as we can get.  I admit it, I grew up in the South, but I don't miss Mississippi much in the heat of summer, and I really despise it when Southern-quality heat and humidity follows me to the North Coast.  Sometimes, all I can really do is sit and think of times when I would have given anything for "just a pinch" of the heat that comes in July and August.

Cold and waterfowling go together like peanut butter and jelly.  I will never forget the words of my dear old Dad, when I asked him about going duck hunting one day.  He was not a duck hunter, and I soon figured out it was largely due to his cold intolerance.  He gave a stunned look, and said, "Son, don't EVER get into that.  Duck hunters are crazy...just take the coldest you have ever been and add water."  I still laugh when I think about that, and I have had more than a few opportunities to learn he was largely correct.

My first layout hunt on Lake Erie was a good example.  It was late December, and Sandusky Bay was already frozen tight.  We set a 2 boat rig out in Lake Erie in chip ice with winds over 20 mph.  Ice water splashed over the cowlings of the layout boat and ran down the back of my neck.  Larger chunks of ice ran through the decoys, making maintaining our spread a challenge at the very least.  Sitting in the tender was brutal as well and my hand shook violently as I tried to drink coffee.  But, we were in the ducks, and all that cold was forgotten every time I sat up to shoot bluebills and the occasional mallard.  All I could do was laugh out loud, I was totally hooked.

Several years ago, our public land blind had been frozen out for a week or better toward the end of the season.  A brief "warm-up" occurred, and a couple of our group discovered several acres of open water in front of our blind, but not the rest of the lake.  Even better, the open water was lousy with ducks!  These adventurous friends broke ice from the ramp, down the channel, and across the lake to open water.  They shot some ducks but were not very well hidden, preventing a real shoot-out.  Another friend and I took advantage the next morning, as a cold rain started to fall, with the promise of snow and falling temperatures, motoring a small marsh boat camo'd to the hilt to the open water.  We backed against the shoreline and when legal time arrived we started shooting, limiting out on mallards, blacks, and even several bluebills in a little over an hour.  The rain never let up and we were soaked to the skin as we had no cover on our little boat.  Snowflakes the size of silver dollars began falling on a hard west wind as we made our way back to the ramp.  The rest of the lake and the channel re-froze by later that day, not opening back up until well after the season was closed.  That little lake was surrounded by houses, and all I could think about was some yuppie couple coming down on Sunday morning to enjoy the fire in the fireplace and a hot cup of coffee, looking across the lake and seeing a couple of frozen waterlogged idiots across the lake, shooting ducks, laughing, and trying to keep their cigars lit.  Ahh, good times...

Probably one of the most surprising examples of cold weather duck hunting was this past season in Ontario in early December.  Two partners and I huddled in a more or less open boat against the reeds while the wind blew like a gale over our heads.  The temperature was in the 20s and I don't even want to know what the wind chill was.  Roux sat on the bench seat in front of me, periodically looking at me, like "seriously"??? Snow and sleet squalls rolled through, hitting us in the face like pellets from an air rifle.  I noticed a small amount of snow had piled on the gunwales of the boat, meanwhile, a lone mallard swung into the decoys in front of me.  I raised and fired, and the drake splashed down.  Roux dutifully bailed out into the freezing water, and it immediately balled up into ice on his coat when he climbed back into the boat.  I looked to my left and found my shotgun hull had hit the gunwale brass-first, and was now frozen in place, with the rest just hovering in open space....now THAT is cold!

Never saw this before...

As it turns out, my Dad was (as usual) probably right.  However, I honestly wouldn't change anything.  In fact, I wish I had "just a pinch" of that cold right now....

Stay cool and remember,

Brown is Beautiful (even when it's cold)

Introduction

Welcome to my blog. You could/should rightfully ask, "who is THIS guy?"  I'm  a veterinarian in Ohio, and a hopeless duck hunting addict.  I grew up in Mississippi, went to college and veterinary school at Mississippi State University, and went on to pursue advanced training in small animal cancer medicine at both Colorado State University and The Ohio State University.  In this blog I hope to cover a lot of different things....dog training, veterinary issues,  widgame cooking, and, of course duck and goose hunting.  I look forward to (trying to) entertain and hopefully impart some knowledge.  I freely admit I am no "expert" (who really is?), but I am willing to try, willing to learn and willing to teach what I DO know.

With my upbringing, surprisingly,  I never really hunted ducks in Mississippi, although I spent every available minute deer hunting, even structuring my classes around deer season.  It took a couple of chance occurrences and crossing paths with some (now) very good friends in Ohio to put my duck hunting obsession into play, and I have never looked back.  Between layout shooting on Lake Erie's Sandusky Bay and dry cornfield hunting for big Canada geese, (and just a little bit of everything in between) I was squarely hooked.  I didn't think I could enjoy it anymore than I did...but boy, was I WRONG!

Being a veterinarian, and a duck hunting veterinarian at that, the logical next step was, you guessed it, a dedicated duck dog.  I had always been partial to black Labs, and most of my buddies that had dogs hunted with yellow Labs.  I was laying the plans to get a female black Lab when I ended up going in a direction I would never have predicted.  As we all know, sometimes things just happen for a reason...

In the summer of 2010,  I got a call from a good friend and fellow veterinarian about a male chocolate Labrador puppy he was dealing with out of a very promising litter.  Seemed this puppy had issues with regurgitation that was noted as soon as he was switched to solid food...did I have any thoughts??  After discussion of the work done so far, we became concerned about the possibility of a congenital defect that encircles the esophagus, preventing the passage of larger amounts of solid food.  I helped coordinate an appointment for the puppy with one of my associates for confirmation of the diagnosis.  When this beautiful 12 week old puppy came in, I found myself playing with him, and he dutifully delivered tossed items to hand over and over...I was in trouble.  With the diagnosis confirmed, the prescribed treatment was a chest surgery, to correct, if possible, the esophageal constriction.  Unfortunately, this was not in the breeder's budget, and made the puppy unsellable. The breeder made the offer that the puppy was free to anyone who would take him and try to fix him.  I didnt want a brown dog, and I didnt want a male...but this dog was special.  After getting permission from my wife, I made my offer to the breeder, who gladly accepted it, especially from another duck hunter.  Thankfully, the surgery, performed by another of my colleagues, was a complete success, and that Brown Dog, now named Roux, became my newest hunting partner.

Signing pawtographs at Willow Break!

As expected, I took a considerable amount of grief from the "Black and Yellow" crowd when the news spread about my Brown Dog.  However, Roux soon made believers out of them with his calm but goofball demeanor in the blind, truck or home and his absolute desire to retrieve in the field.  Soon, many really started to "get" the Brown Dog thing.  The real kicker came in October of 2011 when good friend Mike Peronek snapped a photo of Roux as we bobbed up and down on Ontario's Lake St Clair.  He forwarded me the photo, and I entered it in Ducks Unlimited's 2013 Calendar Contest.  Before we knew it, Roux was now known as "Mr February".  As a reminder to all his skeptics, Roux signs all his "pawtograph" requests "Brown is Beautiful"...in my eyes, it sure is!

Many thanks to good friend Ramsey Russell for encouraging me to publish this blog.  I look forward to keeping all posted on our exploits throughout the off-season, and September 1 will be here before you know it.  Neither of us can wait!