I thought I had accidentally landed on one of the ever-increasing number of hook and bullet channels when I came across an ad for The Wild Within, hosted by Steven Rinella; not the Travel Channel. With the way Travel Channel programming has followed the New Yorker nepotism of the New York publishing world, it seemed as though you had to be either a New York whinning, potty-mouthed ex-junkie chef-turned writer, carrying a child-like fascination with Apocalypse Now; or a New York glutton with a penchant for traveling the country in search of restaurant-promoting food competitions, to get your own series. To see a Michigan-born-and-raised hunter and trapper hosting a show on that channel floored me.        

With great anticipation I waited for the first airing: finally a hunting show that went further than an inundation of boring kill-a-minute, 30-minute sponsor advertisements, pushed on the new overabundance of outdoor channels—how I miss the educational hunting shows broadcast during the 1980s and early 1990s. More importantly, here was a show that would, hopefully at least, reveal to its viewers how to dismantle a deer.        

Can you believe that the major outdoor channels actually don’t want any close ups of the processing of game? Many would think it’s because of the advertisers, but not the programming directors who pushed for this—because they’re afraid it’s too politically incorrect: Now you know why Cork’s Outdoors TV isn’t broadcast on satellite, though many requests from the different outdoor channels have come down the pike this year—they won’t allow me to show you how to even gut and skin a feral pig!        

Rinella learning to make fish arrows in Guyana

THE WILD WITHIN

The first episode of The Wild Within was set in a place I know well, and remains as my hunting and fishing heaven: Alaska! There are very few states left where you can truly live off the land as a hunter/gatherer, and Alaska is at the top the list. On Prince of Wales (POW) Island, where Rinella and his brother own a hunting cabin, there’s a plethora of sustenance.        

I must admit that I was hoping Rinella would’ve hunted near his home, in New York or New Jersey, for the first episode. Everyone flies to Alaska for an outdoors show, and yet there are so many poorly-represented, great hunting places right next to such a major center of anti-hunting: Ingrid Newkirk and Wayne Pacelles’ cash cows, PETA and Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) campaign from NYC. But, you can’t go wrong with Alaska, especially Southeast Alaska: bush planes, remote cabins, full crab and shrimp pots, and Sitka blacktails in good number…having lived and worked around the world, there’s a reason Alaska is the only place I ever truly get homesick for…        

From Alaska, The Wild Within continued to Montana the next week, and that’s where I think the shake-down cruise for the show hadn’t yet found its legs. As Rinella mentioned to me over the phone, this is their first season, and they were just getting their steam and there was a question as to what to focus on: historical, environment and conservation, or the adventure of hunting, fishing and gathering.        

This happens with all types of programming, whether scriptwriters on shows like Hawaii 5-0, or producers on TopShot. For most, it’s the first time the production team has met and are just learning each other’s quirks, along with not only clearly filling out the premise through field experience, but also editing and trying to coordinate programming with the broadcast company.        

It especially gets interesting when parts, or all of the production team have never even participated in the main activity of the show…As is often the case, producers take the job no matter their own lack of knowledge or experience—perhaps you’ve heard of actors in Hollywood getting hired for a film, saying they’ve been riding horses since they were knee-high to a grasshopper, or that they hearken from a long line of motorcycle riders, yet the most they’ve straddled was a bar or diner stool while searching the jobs section of a newspaper? Same thing.        

If you noticed that some episodes seemed to be off, like San Francisco (as one based in the City by the Bay, I know well the amazing opportunities for hunting, fishing, and gathering—I was aghast to see Rinella collect roadkill, totally illegal in California) which slapped me in the head with a big “Huh?”, or the Montana episode, that made me wonder whether this was a show best suited for the History Channel. When Rinella told me that The Wild Within was originally formulated for sale to the History Channel, it all made sense: the Molokai and Scotland definitely fit within the parameters of Travel Channel, while the Montana show appeared shot for either the History or Travel Channel.        

So, like any crew on a new boat, a new production has a variety of learning curves related to the first shake-down cruise, of which this new season definitely has its highs and lows. Part of the problem can be that programming doesn’t actually coordinate to shooting and editing. What may have been shot first, ends up as an episode broadcast much later in sequnce. I can’t tell you how annoyed I was with the POW Island episode, when I heard Rinella repeat that oft repeated saying given non-hunters: You’d be paying $30 or $50 a plate for this in a restaurant!        

Again, YOU CAN’T LEGALLY BUY TRUE WILD GAME IN THE US!        

Not until the Scotland episode did Rinella clarify that in Europe, where the laird of the land owns the land, game, livestock and those who work it (one of the main reasons my ancestor, David Graham, said to hell with Scottish and Irish landlords, and took his family of Calvinists to South Carolina in 1772—hitting home the final point to King George with a round ball at the Battle of Kings Mountain), true wild game is shipped to market in Paris and London, and sold much fresher in the butcher shops of little villages that neighbor these hunting estates.        

I was impressed that the introduction scene of the Scotland episode had Steven Gow, the Scots ghillie (hunting guide), working on meat that was to be shipped out that week. They really captured the hunting in Europe, and how much of a commodity it is. It also made me cringe, remembering how in the US we’re quickly following in their footsteps: $800 to $1,500 to shoot a wild boar in California?        

We already have enough problems with a majority of the population growing up in urban areas, having lost their hunting, fishing and gathering traditions by generations—traditions that would have helped keep a clear public eye on such fabricated science pushed by PETA and HSUS. Charging horrendous fees on game that legally belongs the citizens of a state, does nothing but create an elitist attitude about something that was so free and drew many from their nations of origin.        

In the Scotland episode, the hunter, angler, gatherer, theme of the show really came across, from field to table. And, this last weekend, the Guyana show carried it well again. This theme of field to table, and local bonds built, is the strength of the show, and even its honesty works, though it did make me recoil a few times, starting with the crippled blacktail that they finished off in the first episode in Alaska, and then a wounding arrow shot on a tapir.        

During the Central America War, tapir found a fond spot in my heart. I was at a secret Contra base along the Honduran border, and because of the ridiculously low rations afforded our Cold War allies by US Congress budget cuts, we had to augment beans and rice with whatever animal protein got from the jungle.        

Contra with three Sandinista rounds in his gut, leaving on my medevac in.

For the same reasons of the bigger bang for the buck Rinella mentioned on Sunday’s Guyana episode, the Miskito tribal members fighting in the Nicaraguan Defense Force (FDN) guerrilla unit I accompanied, targeted the tapir with dogs—much more meat than a hapless cuzuco (armadillo) or iguana. Imagine mountains, sides steep as cliffs, and during the rainy season, knee-deep mud, and thick brush and tall canopy—a shiver runs up my spine remembering firefights conducted under those conditions. We carried AK-47s to make the shot on the hungrily sought tapir table fare, but also to defend against surprise attacks by Cuban and Russian Spetsnaz-trained Sandinista Special Forces units.        

Those harried days of the 1980s came rushing back as Rinella narrated on the tapir, and Jim Jones (I worked the Loma Prieta Earthquake in San Francisco for NBC, along with longtime NBC cameraman and Jonestown survivor, Steve Sung—see enough bullet and fragment wounds and you recognize them easily, especially along the arms), but also the creepy crawlies and slithers that leave you not only very uncomfortable with a bite or sting, but even perhaps in the end, dead.        

The Guyana episode also struck home the difference between sport and subsistence. In Alaska, those of us who actually survived on our caught or shot food, had no problem shooting a caribou in the water—in contrast, those who flew in from out of state for a hunt, or lived in Anchorage, would never think of doing so for the flak they’d get from their hunting party.        

 And this is where I’ve started enjoying the show, when in the beginning I had my misgivings with its clarity of purpose. The Wild Within really gets its legs when it focuses not on the historical qualities of hunting, or an area, something that can easily be touched on at the beginning, in short review, as with reference to Reverend Jim Jones in Guyana; but instead focuses on the present-day locals, the conditions, and work a subsistence lifestyle requires: shooting, trapping, catching and gathering everything you need from the environment, doing it day in and day out, no chance of calling in a sick day, especially when you have to provide for your family.        

That’s Entertainment!

As Rinella mentions on the adjoining Cork’s Outdoors Radio episode, TV is definitely focused on entertainment (whether a travel show, or sadly of late, the news) first, and secondly, if you’re lucky, you educate as much as you can between those emotion-stirring moments, in the hopes that the viewer will pick up a book and go further in-depth. That’s where I laud the Travel Channel in even airing such a program—showing hunting and gathering for what it is: not necessarily pretty, sometimes amazingly gorgeous.  The upcoming Texas episode promises to be quite the saddle-burning ride…        

The Wild Within comes into its own as it remembers that premise by focusing on the local peoples, and their quest to keep sustained on what the wilds offer them. Most importantly, not as one of the other proliferations of survive in the wilds and get out alive shows, but instead looking forward to the trip outdoors, the resulting fine meals of game and fish, to that reconnection with oft-lost skills that kept us alive where we all originally came from—the wilds!        

Related Links:        

• Steven Rinella’s Website
• The Wild Within’s Page at Travel Channel
• Cork in Nicaragua

For your daily commute on your MP3 player – Download and Enjoy the interview of The Wild Within’s Steven Rinella on Cork’s Outdoors Radio:

TOPICS: Steven Rinella, author and host of THE WILD WITHIN, speaks about his writing and adventures for the Travel Channel.

If you remember the British cooking series, Two Fat Ladies, of PBS and BBC fame, you’ll immediately recognize Clarissa Dickson Wright as the taller of the two, not the proud chainsmoker who passed away from lung cancer in 1999.  Dickson Wright is the co-author of The Game Cookbook with Scottish farmer and outdoorsman, Johnny Scott.    

A gorgeously illustrated review copy sent to us by the publisher, The Game Cookbook takes standard table game and puts a variation on it that brings out the best qualities through innovative experimentation, with classic recipes and those that seem to have been magically created by neighbors on the other side of the authors’ hedge.    

Included are recipes that are very traditional in the UK and Europe. Others reach to the Middle East and South Asia, modified from recipes based in preparing more traditional farm-raised meats. Well-read and always willing to tell a story, Dickson Wright colors the recipes with asides of family histories and remembrances of foreign travel and meals had with friends.    

You’ll find that it’s very much a UK book with such references as “wapiti”, which those of us in the US and Canada recognize as elk: what they call elk in Europe and the UK, we call moose in North America.    

The artwork gracing the pages is a mix of old paintings, of hunting and fishing in North America and Europe, even movie stills (James Mason looks quite dashing with a side-by-side), and then photos of completed dishes just as beautiful as the sketches and historical art. Together they bring to the reader the old and new of game and fish cuisine, along with anecdotes that can prepare the neophyte hunter or angler for their first hunting or fishing experience.    

At the end of the book is a listing of hunting and fishing organizations in the UK and US, along with a collection of wildlife agencies in the United States. For those who might not be personally able to collect their own main component of a game or fish dish, a listing of game suppliers offering meat farm-raised animals (unlike in Europe, where wild game and fish are sold in many shops, the selling of true wild game in the US has been illegal for years) provides an option.    

One of the topics that I keyed in on, because it puts so much fear in the new game chef, is aging. In the US of late, as the tradition of hunting has skipped one, two or even three generations, the result of more Americans moving into urban areas in pursuit of employment, the art of aging has been forgotten. If you read some of the forums on the Internet, there’s such an intimidation toward aging and meat contamination that it can sometimes be humorous, sometimes sad…. What would people do if suddenly our refrigerators no longer worked and we were suddenly dumped into a kitchen life experience most families had up until the end of the early part of the last century?    

Aging was a heavily practiced technique for stretching the day’s take, improving flavor and tenderizing a tough old bird, or side of venison. It all has to do with air temperature and humidity: cool and moist tops the list, and extends the aging time. The author goes through the aging process for just about every meat type taken, from grouse, to pheasant to venison.    

There are also recipes for those that might not be specifically sought in the US and Canada, but are looked forward to in Europe and the UK, such as carp. There are recipes for grouse, pheasant, elk, moose, antelope, caribou, wild boar, partridge (chukar), quail, dove, American woodcock, snipe, hare (jackrabbit), cottontail, salmon trout, sea trout, zander (yellow perch), pike and of course goose.    

At the back just before the meat supplier’s list, is a collection of recipes for compotes, sauces and stocks bringing out the best flavors of the dish.    

When it came to testing a recipe, I decided it was time to use one of the many pheasants that Ziggy had pointed out for me last year—the dish quick to prepare and a rich, creamy mix of flavors!    

PHEASANT WITH NOODLES AND HORSERADISH CREAM

A bit sweet. A bit tangy. All delicious!

Ingredients:    

• 1/3 cup (3/4 stick) butter
• 4 pheasant breasts
• 4 shallots, chopped (if unavailable, use 4 tablespoons of chopped mild onions)
• 1 clove garlic
• 2 tbsp bottled horseradish, or 1 tbsp strong fresh horseradish, grated.
• Juice of ½ lemon
• 2/3 cup heavy cream
• 1 packet black or green Italian noodles or make your own chestnut noodles (enough for 4 people)
• small bunch of parsley, chopped
• salt and pepper to taste

Steps:    

1. Heat the butter in a heavy frying pan for which you have lid
2. Sauté the pheasant breasts until they are sealed
3. Remove them and sauté the shallots and the garlic until the shallots are pale gold
4. Remove and discard the garlic clove
5. Stir the horseradish into the shallots
6. Add a tbsp, or so, of water and the lemon juice
7. Return the breasts to the pan, add the cream, and cover
8. Cook gently for 15-20 minutes, until the breasts are cooked
9. If the sauce is too wet, remove the breasts and zap up the heat to reduce
10. If it’s too dry, add a little more cream or some dry white white wine
11. Cook the noodles according the package instructions and drain
12. Serve the noodles with the pheasant
13. Sprinkle the chopped parsley on top.

RELATED LINKS:    

• Hank Shaw’s Retro-Fabulous Pheasant
• Hank’s Roast Pheasant with Prickly Pear Glaze
• Ultimate Pheasant Hunting’s List of Pheasant Recipes

When I head out of a metropolitan area for a long trip, I like to leave early in the morning, an hour or so before sun up. This is when you get to see a part of the city that most people, except for police, garbage collectors and EMTs, don’t.   

It’s quiet, the streets are empty, and the sun is just hinting on the horizon. Most important, for a city like San Francisco, where all the best trout fishing is on the other side of a large bridge, stop and go traffic that quickly sets in after 6 a.m. is void. At this hour, the freeway is truly a freeway.   

In tribute to my birthday brother I’d be meeting in couple hours, I hit the play button on my mp3 player. The Edgar Winter Group’s “Freeride” filled the speakers of my Dodge Ram, and my two-year-old fishing and hunting buddy, Ziggy, perked his ears up and looked around as Ronnie Montrose gave his best with that magic guitar open and roll that has been part of video game and movie soundtracks for years, not the least of which, for an addict of anything that flies: Air America.  Dan Hartman wrote it, but that’s all Brother Montrose on the guitar…it’s also one of my favorite songs from the ’70s, because it became a hit the year my family left Vietnam War, 1972.   

 Ziggy and I arrived at our secret trout stream and Montrose and his wife, Leighsa, a phenomenal florist, whose work has graced the grand events of many celebrities and influential people, were waiting for what would be a definite good day.   

I went through my plan of what I thought was best. This was Leighsa’s first time, but Ronnie, a definite San Francisco-born and Colorado-raised Colorado boy, was well-versed when the topic comes to trout: rainbow, browns, cutthroats, you name it, he’s caught it.   

As I’ve become more and more drawn into the music world, I find that many musicians love the outdoors (like for writers, it’s pretty much the only place you can truly get away)…and these rockers don’t just do it like sterile surgeons.   

No, these folks really get in there and get intimate with Nature—there’s my buddy who introduced me to Ronnie, 80’s rocker and pig hunting maniac T. Michael Riddle, whose new album is being produced by Montrose. And there’s Dokken drummer Jeff Martin, who I hunted with during a celebrity hunt at the Riddle’s Native Hunt dove opener…and you’d be surprised how many music and film celebrities not only love flyfishing but also pick up a gun and put organic meat on the table—It’s refreshing…and more importantly, it’s honest!   

All squared away with how we’d be using light 2-4lb line, a split shot and a small, size-10 to 12 (not too small or the barb it won’t have time to hook into the trout’s jaw in the fast water) salmon egg hook, on a light spinning rig, we made our way through the thorn-laced blackberry bushes that line most of the great trout streams in the Sierras from Kings Canyon on north—I made a note to myself to pick some when we were done.   

Pautzke's can often save the day!

 

When we got to the stream edge, I saw a rainbow trout, belly up on the bottom. It had been a warm week. It’s one of the reasons when I’m fishing hatchery raised trout, I just fish my limit, and keep my limit. When I’m done, I leave—I don’t catch-and-release another 50-100 as many are proud to tell me they’ve done.   

Would they be so proud to know how many of those ended up dying, out of sight, recorded only by biologists next down the waterway, collecting the actual number of fish that die as the result of catch-and-release practices? If asked most catch-n-release anglers couldn’t tell you how to properly release a fish if their lives depended on it: each fish type has different requirements. A simple search on Google will give you a hefty number of how many fish die as the result of catch-and-release.   

Leighsa Montrose gingerly, buries that small egg hook without crushing the salmon egg.

 

I prefer to make sure that the fish I kill go into my cooler and into my frying pan, and not floating down the river belly up…and then I’m sure that the kill on those hatchery fish is appropriate to what the department of fish and game assesses as not detrimental to the ecosystem and a wild trout population.   

Isn’t it so much nicer to just catch just enough for your meal, reel in your lines and settle down by the stream for a lunch of salami and French bread, perhaps a bottle of wine, as Hemingway might have done on the Big Wood River in Idaho, or on Spain’s Irati, during a break from the bulls of Pamplona?   

Then, when you’ve had a nice nap, collected your equipment back to your vehicle, you can drive home and remember the peace and beauty you had enjoyed the week earlier, with a perfectly prepared trout at home. Yes, I actually talk about, and do, these things when I’m out on the stream with friends—I often pine for a peaceful time, even if that time was just before WWII in Spain…not a peaceful time at all…   

It peppered my conversation as Ronnie took a break from fishing the other side of an inlet and Leighsa came over to my side for a quick lesson in trout fishing. A quick study, she learned how to slip a hook into a single Pautzke’s salmon egg (bright red is my favorite) without crushing it. Then, we went through the cast and lead, something that fly anglers will recognize as a bait angler’s adaption of the “high sticking” method.   

As this stream was so small, there wasn’t really any casting, per se. The cast was more of a swing out and drop into the head of the current, with a static length of line. Skipping along the bottom the single splitshot led the way for the salmon egg, about six inches to a foot above the bottom, prime  feeding zone of the trout in a stream, especially as they try to keep out of the sun and heat, and under the cool and oxygen-rich froth.   

It’s important to keep the tip of your rod high, and slightly downriver of the splitshot and bait, so that you can feel the hit when it comes. Doing so, also keeps the splitshot going at the proper speed down the stream and free from snagging.   

In one cast, Leighsa had a nice 11-inch rainbow in the net. Then, she got a lesson in how to quickly dispatch a trout for better eating. If your fish aren’t as tasty as you thought they’d be, it’s probably because you kept it struggling for air, with a piece of plastic or metal running up through its gills and out its mouth.   

Better to just pick it up while it’s still in the net and bring the top of its head down hard on a large rock or boulder by the water. You’ll save the fish from a bunch of needless distress and have the best tasting trout you can find!   

When you’re done putting the trout out of its misery, place it on the stringer to keep it fresh in the cool running water. Remove the innards by sticking your index finger through both gills, ripping through the chin, freeing gills from the jaw.   

Then, sticking your index finger down into the gullet and holding onto the gills and pectoral fins, pulling down and out removes all the gills and most of the entrails. A quick run up the body from the vent to the head with a pocket knife lets you draw the back of your thumbnail along the inside of the spine to remove that blood line that also leads to poor taste if left in…   

This day, we were averaging a fish on every first or second cast, but it’s the first one that’s the most exciting, shown on the Leighsa’s face and the pride in Ronnie watching his wife catch her first high-stick caught trout—what I consider the most effective form of trout fishing in a stream, next to a spear: but unlike spearing and gigging, high-sticking is legal.   

By 10:30 a.m. we were done catching our trout limits, and Ronnie and Leighsa had to return to their hotel to prepare for the gig to be performed at a cancer charity concert in Oakdale. Ziggy and I went off to fill up on two pounds of fresh blackberries…   

Ronnie, Leighsa, and Ziggy can attest: Trout fishing's supposed to be FUN!

 

   

To Get Started Salmon Egg High Sticking

You’ll need a sensitive tip spinning rod of between six and seven feet long, and a light fishing line. I prefer to load my trout stream spinning reels with between two and six-pound monofilament.   

Then, snell a laser-sharp salmon egg hook with two-foot leader of four to six-pound fluorocarbon leader material, using a surgeon’s not to attached it to the end of the rod’s line.   

Depending on the speed of the current, and clarity of the water, I clamp a piece of splitshot on the leader a foot to a foot-and-a-half from the hook. With the hook buried in a single salmon egg, you’re ready to go.   

The key about this type of fishing, like any type of fishing, especially with stream or river fishing, is that you need to go where the fish are. It’s probably why I like this style of trout fishing most. You never get bored, like perhaps in lake fishing, where you cast out your bait and just wait.   

It’s like elk or pig hunting. You need to keep moving until you get into the fish. And when you do, you can expect to catch a few more, especially with hatchery trout that act more like lake trout, or sea-run steelhead and salmon, that have been in a school most of their lives, much unlike wild stream trout.   

Remember also, that the reason you caught trout in a specific area was that it was a comfort zone—cover/safety, fresh oxygen (especially with rainbows) and food. In the cool of the evening and morning, the trout spread out into the pools and slow runs. As the sun rises high, the water warms and loses more its oxygen, so that the best place to fish for trout is right there in the cold, oxygen-saturated water.   

NOTE: I’ve used this same single-egg hook rig to catch steelhead to 13 pounds in the fall and spring!   

Catch Ronnie Montrose Tonight in Livermore!

Ronnie Montrose will be on stage with his band tonight at 8 p.m. in the Bankhead Theater of Livermore, CA. If you’ve enjoyed those great songs by Montrose and Sammy Haggar (Rock Candy, Bad Motor Scooter, Rock the Nation, and Space Station #5), they’ll be available for listening—LIVE, tonight! See ya there!  

Blackberries and trout--the perfect bounty in California during August and September!

 

Few books really get me emotionally anymore, especially non-fiction. But, when I began reading Lierre Keith’s personal account of a strict vegan diet on her body over 20 years I was floored with one question: how in the world?

How in the world could people put themselves through such a lifestyle? How could we have arrived at such a point in our lives that those who profess a close relationship to the Earth, the morally anti-hunting/anti-animal protein driven vegan, are a great part of it’s destruction? How in the world as Western humanity gotten so far away its understanding of how the world works, how life and death are in separable?

Pain

Both Keith and I were born in the same year. That means when we were 16, she started on the vegan diet…and I was beginning to wonder why no matter the amount of high school PE and football and soccer, I couldn’t seem to get into excellent shape, even though both sides of my parental lines were in great shape from their childhood until their mid-30s. And no matter how much cereal I had for breakfast, I was hungry long before lunch, and I could never stay awake in class. The only difference between my parents and me was that my parents had an animal protein-based breakfast.

What Lierre Keith’s diet left her with after 20 years on the diet, was a degenerative bone disease, weak musculature, and nervous system of pain, that presently it can’t even support her for more than 15 minutes of standing. Not to mention all the other effects on a malnutritioned body during its most important growth years. And it was even worse ten years ago, BEFORE she began to see some slight improvements from finally getting the nutrients animal proteins provide all omnivores and carnivores.

The Book

The Vegetarian Myth is divided into three sections and in a very appropriate way. First is the moral philosophy of the vegetarian, then the political and finally the nutritional reasons spouted by the anti-hunting and anti-meat religion…and yes, I call it a religion: it what’s so dastard in how something that was a way of life has become a movement and personal identity…you should have seen the reaction I got from a guest to a party, who considered her book an insult to him personally—as if by her describing the effects of the vegetarian movement and diet actually doing what those who go on the diet are trying to stop: the destruction of the environment….I thought he was going to come at me swinging: and all I did was ask him if he had read her book!

It’s also one of the reasons that so many “dyed in the wool”, and even militant (more on that later) vegetarians will say how much Keith’s book is a fabrication twisting of lies. And how many of these same people say they’ve actually read the book when pushed: almost none!

Vegetarian Hunger Destroying Topsoil

In her thesis, Keith does bring up the fact of loss of topsoil. If you’ve studied the history of Iraq (old Mesopotamia), or other ancient nations bordering the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf, you’ll be keen to know why what were lush, tree-covered lands came to be the lands that we see on the news everyday—barren, rocky islands and sand. Their agricultural societies basically tilled the topsoil into the ocean.

Now, this is where it really gets depressing. We’ve been an agricultural society for easily 12,000 years. Our major cultural makeup and politics revolves around agriculture. Most especially, our money and way of doing business revolves around agriculture. The worst examples of it are mega-corporation animal factories with chickens and pigs sitting in cages unable to move, drugged up on antibiotics, cranking out eggs and piglets for market.

If anyone doesn’t think that effects you personally as a consumer, then you’ve never eaten meat from animals that have been properly raised, in a chicken yard, or large pig pen, even left out to graze on other food types other than grain. Previously, I thought grain-feeding livestock was the way to go: more bang for the buck. Yes, more cost effective cash wise, but health wise, I’m not sure. One of the examples I know of is eating meat raised in the US on these factory farms, contrasted to eating steak in places like Vietnam, Thailand and South Korea, where they refuse to raise livestock the way we do in the US, not specifically for the animal’s interest, but more for taste and sustenance—meat is a very precious commodity in those places.

On the bright side, if you’ve tasted free-range beef and chicken here in the US, you know what I’m talking about. If you hunt and tasted the power of venison, elk and bison, you definitely know what I’m talking about. Chickens are omnivores, needing that freedom to throw in a bug, worm, or lizard in with the occasional weekly toss of grain and grazing of wild seeds. Beef, sheep, and pigs are fortified by the calm relaxation of feeding beyond grain, filling up on grasses and whatever attracts their tastes in a pasture. If you don’t think pigs need free-roam, too, then you don’t know how the Spanish make the best prosciutto, called Serrano ham: they let their pigs free to graze on fresh-fallen acorns in September, just before the butchering season.

Keith’s answer to the loss of topsoil could be considered very extreme, basically removing ourselves from an agriculturally based society, and returning to hunter-gatherers. As one who lived in Alaska for a year as hunting-gathering subsistence hunter and angler, let me tell you it’s not easy work. It was a great way to get myself back on track with regards to understanding money, and culture and healthy ways of living. But, practically, if every human being on the planet suddenly became a hunter-gatherer, because the human population is SO massive now, every wild living thing with fins, wings and legs would be decimated within a year, two at the most. Our population has turned us into a major predator; our technology has turned us into THE mega-predator.

The question Keith brings up is whether the present agricultural economy is sustainable. At the present rate of growth of the human population across the planet, especially in places where there’s already a population supported only by imports, like India, Africa and China, it’s not—the wildlife in those places are barely hanging on! The question is whether our agricultural society suddenly implodes within 20 years, somehow struggles for another hundred at its same rate of production and the dramatic effects on the topsoil: and collapses…I’ll leave that part of the thesis to your own mental machinations.

Countering Past Inaccuracies

What I’m most keen about in the solid information provided in The Vegetarian Myth, is that Keith, unlike so many new and old vegetarians, did her homework. She even went past what we’ve been spoon-fed by the government for the last 60 years about food triangle (when you read the history of those studies and how lies can have such longevity, you’ll probably say the same I did—what in the world?): wide and heavy on bread and grains, thin on meats, cheese and fish…even that demonized, but so important cholesterol. Actually there’s a metaphor if you’ve got a weight problem or dealing with hypoglycemia. I know personally from my own prior experiences, as a past believer that nutrition pyramid, when I should have flipped it: more meat and fish, much less bread and grain…but I’ve jumped ahead to the last section of the book.

The Hypoglycemic and Diabetic's Food Pyramid

The first section on the moral attitudes of the vegetarian is priceless. For those who have studied any type of ancient religions, everything has life and life survives because of the death another living being. Somehow strict vegetarians believe that if it doesn’t have a face or mother it’s somehow not killing: remind of those who fish, but hate hunters? Oh, but fish and lobster have different nervous systems…they don’t feel pain—how in the world do you know?! I stopped flyfishing for entertainment, now when I fish it’s to catch one or two and put them in frying pan, leaving the rest to stay unmolested and healthy, get big, and possibly end up as an enjoyed meal for a bigger fish, after a good life of swimming and eating.

Scientific research has found that plant life also has societies and even reacts to attacks—do you know that the largest living organism on dry land is an aspen grove in Utah? My years apprenticing and training in the Native American healing communities taught me that it’s not whether we kill, we kill by simply stepping blade of grass. It’s whether we do that killing with respect for that which dies. The joke often shared in the community, especially when “the light eye” hippies, and “Wannabe Indians”, searching for meaning to their lives were appalled that the “shaman” actually the proper term “healer” (“shaman” is a Siberian native term), wasn’t a vegetarian—lesson one to the truth seeker: you live because something dies—respect that animal or plant’s death and enjoy your food…say a prayer of thanks, if you’d like!

Vegan Politics

In the second section the author takes on the political component of vegetarianism. This is where she describes how wars and battles for possession of land, and wealth are the results of an agricultural society. Yes, wars have always been fought for religion, food, money and land. She does acquiesce to the fact that hunter-gatherers did fight, also, and definitely for the same reasons of land, except for hunting grounds that provided food, as compared to land for planting that offered food. And there is definitely a much too idealistic view, even naïve attitude that comes across in her writing, and much evidenced in her surprise that militant vegetarians would throw pies at her during an anarchist book fair.

First, she was at an anarchist’s book fair when it happened after all. Secondly, every strict vegetarian, especially one whose personal identity is labeled “Vegetarian” has always had an angry quality about them: either aggressively so, as those who attacked and continue to attack her, and those passive aggressive who get in their little circles, complaining about how horrible the world is how the US Government is the leader in atrocities against the world. It’s all about how the world isn’t how they personally want it to be. Often, they’re also the same kinds of people who spike trees that will send a chainsaw’s broken chain into a logger’s head, a logger who’s just trying to keep his family fed and by doing so also open land for regrowth that enables, young saplings a chance, and an abundance food for deer and other ungulates…These are the same militant vegetarians who come yelling and screaming into hunting areas during hunting season, thinking they’re helping animals.

Did they purchase the hunting licenses and tags that fund all the wildlife areas for not only game species, but also non-game species?

Have they put any money and actual effort toward saving animals, instead of making it look like they’re helping animals?

Remember that the next time you hear the name Wayne Pacelle who also says he has been on a strict vegetarian diet for 20 years—considering all the other lies he spreads, do you think he’s really a strict vegan? When I think of strict vegetarians, I think of flim-flam artists like Pacelle, and most definitely Wiley Brooks (rhymes with Wiley Coyote) and his Breatharian Institute (as he used to say on his website before Keith’s book, about his $1,000,000 his “Immortality Workshop”, “no, that’s not a misprint”) Now he incorporates a diet Coke and McDonald’s quarter-pounder into his scheister sales letter after he was caught publicly enjoying them…there are people out there who actually believe this! No, I wasn’t surprised about the attacks on Lierre Keith by the political vegetarians, and most definitely those at the anarchist book fair.

Her writings on the way the US government, at the behest of major agricultural corporations, is well researched and developed in describing how third world nations are basically enslaved into a diet support almost completely by imports from the United States. And this is where I was lost, even though the research and collection of history is spot on!

The world works in treaties and negotiations, and all of them are based on business. Unlike in the days of old, these days that means corporate negotiations. If we’re lucky, the local populace benefits through democracy and lack of unrest. If we’re not, it means dictatorship and totalitarian rule, and the potential for a mega civil war: something we should recall well from stupid government actions by Nicaragua’s Somoza ruling line and El Salvador’s Juntas.

…It’s Keiths’ proposal that I found so impractical: there is no way humans, unless there’s a major catastrophe that basically takes out 80 percent of the human population, are going to say good bye to the plough and pick up the spear and bow and arrow—you wont have the commerce to support gunpowder production and the bullets.

Personally, I’d love to see every east-west highway raised ten feet above the ground, and every length of fencing in the Midwest be used to not keep in cattle and livestock, but used to surround homes and cities, keeping the wild animals out. In doing so, we’d create a causeway that would redistribute and open up the land so that bison, deer, and elk populations would have their traditional migration routes. I bet you, within 10 years, the herds would be so large you would have to wait a week for each one to pass, as Lewis and Clark observed when the made their way west. A dream. A fantasy. Can you imagine how much healthy, red meat there’d be for everyone? And all the topsoil that has been lost to the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico would instead stay and get thicker, rejuvenated by the stomping of the bison’s hooves…never again would the US run the risk of something like the 1930s Great Dustbowl.

Enjoy That Steak

The section of the book that I most enjoyed was the one on nutritional reasons espoused by vegetarians. Not to mention her descriptions of how a strict vegan diet really effects the brain and brain chemistry in a horrifying manner…there’s a reason vegans lose it when they’re on such an unnatural diet (when humans get a number of extra stomachs and eat our food with side-to-side grinding jaw motions of cows and sheep, instead of the present stomachs and teeth closest to the very carnivorous dog we’ve had since the origins of mankind, I’ll become a vegan)—not the least of the reasons is the hypoglycemic reactions to the diet that turns most vegans into cookies and cakes addicts, to get that immediate, yet never sated, mental stimulation of a sugar rush.

After reading that section, I’m never drinking soymilk again…and even though I have a taste for tofu from being raised in Asia, I’ll definitely cut back on the tofu orders at dim-sum. Tofu increases memory loss. If you’ve ever seen how tofu is made you’ll understand partly why…and the part about soy’s phytoestrogens, that has historically made it attractive to sex abstinent, vegetarian monks, was the last straw!

Now, I could go on and on about what’s in the book, but unless I wrote a length of text that would fit into a book as long as The Vegetarian Myth, it wouldn’t do the subject justice. As Keith says there are no meat eating slogans like the vegetarian’s quaint but hollow, “Meat is Murder”. There’re only facts and research, and that time and pages to read, 276 to be exact.

If you know someone even thinking of going on a vegetarian diet, or especially if you know a mother who wants replace her child’s mother’s milk with soy milk, please save them from a lot of grief by getting them a copy of this book!

For your daily commute on your MP3 player – Download and Enjoy Lierre Keith’s interview on Cork’s Outdoors Radio:

 

Never a dull moment with my buddy, Dan Caughey. Last time we went on a canyon jaunt was two years ago, during the heat of the California A zone deer season. I almost died from heat exhaustion and dehydration—and the Columbian blacktail buck we thought from a long distance was a legal forked-horn, ended up just being a non-legal spike as we drew close.       

When we found a spring at the bottom on that death march, I sucked up all the cold fresh water I could, straining through the dead branches and leaves, thanking my stars later than that I didn’t get anything into my system, like giardia.       

Dan Caughey flipping over a rock to see a crawdad

This time we were after monster crawdads, which meant we’d be walking the creek 90 percent of the time. Still, I filled my Blackhawk Camel Bak and carried it comfortably on my back, as we made the first initial leap off canyon road to the stream below. It’s very comforting and relaxing to be sucking refreshing water as the day heats up.       

It would be a hell-crawl on hands and knees through thick underbrush on our way out, but for now, it was almost an idyllic hike through tall redwoods. I already knew I had picked the wrong footwear to use on this trip—slip on sneakers.  I should have used some Hi-Tec-type sneaker boots or at least a pair of lace up sneakers with thick soles.   

Though my feet were feeling every small rock and pointy object as we walked, it was my knee that was giving me problems. Heavily traumatized during some very high-impact events in Central America during my early 20s, all injuries were now making themselves known. Twisting, and pounding as I jumped from a high embankment to creek, the knee felt it the most—the next day I wouldn’t even be able to bend, or walk on it, without extreme pain, but for now, the promise of crawdads as big as small lobsters drew me forward.    

Pacifastacus leniusculus, generally known as the Signal Crayfish, was our target. Signal crayfish aren’t indigenous to Northern California. A 1912 Department of Fish and Game experiment gone wrong (they just dumped the crayfish into the local San Lorenzo River of Santa Cruz County when they were done investigating the depredatory effects of crayfish on small trout), they’ve overtaken the coastal streams from Monterey to British Columbia, and made their way into all rivers feeding into the Sacramento Valley their home.       

With the drop in populations of the endangered steelhead, I consider it every steelheader and salmon anglers responsibility to take as many of these small fish and fish eggs eating freshwater crustaceans they can…and even if you’re extremely lucky, you might make a tiny dent. They’re just all over and they’ve pretty much taken out not only a number of small fish and the offspring of larger sea-run trout and salmon, but are endangering the much smaller indigenous crawdads in the waterways they’ve overtaken.       

Is it any wonder that there’s no limit on signal crayfish in California?       

With this in mind, I wanted to get as many as we could. Caughey’s record was 400 in a day’s haul. That’s what I call a feast on a great scale with what I endearingly call the “Po’ Boy’s Lobster”!       

Look at the size of those sweet meat claws!

Though a much larger haul can be got with crayfish traps, Caughey enjoys more the hunting and fishing-like activity using his normal bass and trout fishing rig, with a steak as bait; a dip net for actual capture: Remember to not have any fishing hooks in your possession, because the warden will cite you if you do so on rivers and streams closed to normal fishing—such as coastal steelhead streams during the summer.      

Finding a pool that was only about four feet deep, and crystal clear (many think it’s because of the voracious appetites of the overpopulated crayfish that eat frogs, fish and vegetation), Caughey stopped and said, “Let’s try this one.”      

From one of the two 5 gallon paint buckets were carried with us, he grabbed the cheapest, pot-roast I could find at the supermarket the night before, and sliced off a steak.       

“See what I’m doing?” he said, as he began slicing out from the center of the steak in a daisy-wheel pattern. “This gives them something to hold on so they don’t let go before we can get the net under them.”       

He tied it on with a few wraps of the fishing line lengthwise and then crosswise across the meat (going in between the cuts), ending with clipping the line with the swivel. With a short cast, the chunk of meat was in the water and it didn’t take long…       

A steak for a Po' Boy Freshwater Lobster...

Three minutes later it was covered in five crawdads and the pool seemed alive with crawdads crawling out of their holes and from under rocks, excited by the scent of fresh meat and blood in the water.       

“Ready?” Caughey asked.       

“Yep.” I pulled up on the rod as I had been told, working the meat straight off the bottom and toward us, making sure to keep constant drag, but not so fast as to make the steak pinwheel: pinwheeling sends the crawdads flying, and sudden stops and sinking back, cause the crayfish to let go immediately. The key is to keep them holding on.       

“Keep it coming,” Caughey said as he slipped the long-handled dip net under them. Bringing the crawdads and meat up in one lift, we had six big, fat signal crayfish—what a great start to the day!       

The next four hours was spent walking up the cold stream, sometimes deep enough for us to have to remove our wallets and keys from our shorts and carrying them above water. When we got to Dan’s girlfriend Vivian’s home, where she would prepare them in the style of her Norwegian heritage, we counted 286 of the feisty little buggers, many not little at all: the largest was 9 inches long from end of tail to tip of claw!   

 To  fill up on fresh crayfish and help native steelhead, trout and salmon…you’ll need the following:      

• Fishing license.
• Stiff fishing rod and with strong line, say 10-15lb strength line is good.
• Bait net with at least a 5 to 6-foot length handle.
• Pot roast.
• Swivel.
• Knife to cut the meat.
• Five-gallon bucket, with a few small 1/16 inch holes drilled into the side of the lower half of the bucket to let fresh water in and then as you work you way up the waterway.
• Burlap bag or material to moisten and lay on top of the crayfish to keep them moist, but not suffocating in still water.   

Vivian’s Traditional Norwegian Dill and Saltwater boil Recipe: 

 This is probably the easiest recipe you’ll find for crawdads out there, and it’s in its simplicity that it lets you really enjoy the sweet, lobster meat taste of the crawdads.       

Ingredients:

• 10 gallons of freshwater
• 1 pound of Kosher salt
• 3 full bundles of fresh dill   

Steps: 

1. Start the fire under the water pot and pour in the pound of salt
2. Unbundle the dill and throw them in whole
3. Once the dill and saltwater is at rolling boil, begin tossing in the crawdads
4. As they finish cooking, the’ll float up to the top bright red.      

Vivian likes to seal the crawdads in large Tupperware containers for later enjoyment. According to her, the length of time in the freezer, in the saltwater and dills really helps impart the flavor into the meat, and makes them that much more delicious.

Cork Graham, circa 1987: "How I wish we had resident privileges when I was serving overseas."

Holly Heyser over at  her blog NorCal Cazadora has come up with an idea that has been pushed many times in the past, but perhaps this time it might just get enough momentum going: Let all those who serve on active duty in the military be charged the same hunting or fishing fees as residents, no matter that they might not be presently residing within that state.

As an example, if you’re serving in the US military in Iraq and you want to hunt Alaska, you should be permitted to fly to Alaska on your R&R and walk into a sporting goods store, show your active duty card and pay the same fees to hunt as a resident Alaskan, even if your driver’s license says you reside in California or Texas, or wherever.

If  you’re prepared to spill your blood in defense of our homeland, it should be remembered that you’re spilling it for your country, not your state. The least each state can do is permit a woman or man in the service of their country pay a resident’s fees wherever they desire to participate in hunting or fishing. Some states permit this: all states should allow this!

Read more here at Holly’s blog: http://norcalcazadora.blogspot.com/2010/02/soldier-and-hunter-with-brilliant-idea.html

Go over to her site and comment, and here, too: we might just get a real wave of support going in a manner it hasn’t succeeded in the past…I think it’s time, don’t you?

Cork Graham on the upper American River with a fresh rainbow trout.

Before you think I’ve been playing with those funny mushrooms collected in a cow pasture under a full moon with that “delicious rainbow” title, let me tell about our show production last summer…

We were lucky in that we had shot the raw footage so quickly for the episode that would become the acclaimed, bowyer-edifying Baser Bow Traditions episode, so my cameraman and I decided we had time to fish the American River. Bill Lentz, who owns Cat Creek Outdoors, was all too happy to take us to a place where he was sure we’d get into some German browns if not some rainbows.

My setup was a Super 180SX that US Reel had just sent me to try out, mounted on my trusty 10’6″ Fenwick HMXS 105XL-2R steelhead and trout float noodle rod.

The hike down to the river from the highway bridge quick, and I was surprised that aside from construction workers on the road, only the three fishermen we were stood on the gravel bank of the American.

We tried spinners. We tried small marabou jig under a pencil float. Then, I moved away from the deep pools, upriver to the whitewater feeding the string of green emeralds, and tried on a never-say-die, single Pautzke’s red salmon egg on a light line-2 lb line in this case-that the worm turned.

Casting it up into a feeder flow, with a two small lead split-shot squeezed onto the line a foot-and-a-half above the single egg hook in a dropper, it tapped along the bottom with that morose code of communication that a steelheader searches the river for messages: either a solid take, or a silence of the tapping of lead along floor for tumbling waterway, hopefully…

In this case, it wasn’t a 10-pound steelhead that I might have hooked into later in November, below Folsom Dam, but a monster of a fish no less!

It pulled out so much line, with such veracity, that it felt like a salmon, not only in its immediately shooting downriver, but how it never jumped the whole 100 yards it took me over 20-foot boulders and rock outcroppings–I was thinking it was a big carp or river sucker.

–You can be sure I’ll be writing about the adventure in an upcoming column about how to fish effectively for trout in a freestone stream…

When it was all said and done (Lentz climbing 30 feet down to shore to lip the trout, while I kept tension on the line), I’d caught my largest landlocked, stream trout–I was finished for the day (I prefer to just take my catch for the table, instead of practicing catch-and-release with a multitude of fish, risking them to the statistical bracket of 63-percent unintentionally killed: this research by Texas Tech University was collected with the hardy largemouth bass and not the delicate trout) and wondering how to offer a trout, with such beautifully pink, almost sunrise-orange, flesh…culinary respect: this rainbow was to be smoked!

SMOKING TROUT

Freshly smoked American River rainbow, about to be enjoyed with a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon

Smoke then salt; these are the first solid signs of civilization. With this knowledge of food preparation, Man was able to move from one area to another in voyages of discovery. Migration led to mixing of cultures and building of societies.

With the advent of refrigeration, the need for salt curing and smoking lost its importance. Were it not for how much smoke and salt, and now sugar, not only preserve, but also improve the taste of game such as deer, game birds, and fish, these skills would have been lost to history. Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Scottish, German, French, all centers of culinary invention have retained the process of putting salt and smoke to meat in order to not only preserve, but make a meal better.

For many, the process can be a trial in “getting it just right.” To brine or to dry cure is often the call sent out.

DRY CURE

Having tried both, I really don’t have a preference, other than that dry curing enables me to use less room in the refrigerator.

My favorite salmon and trout cure is one inch of salt over a fillet and let it set for five hours. Then, wash off the fillet with cold water. After patting it dry with a paper towel, layer it over with brown sugar for 6 hours. You’ll notice a nice deep brown shift in color. Again, you’ll have to wash off the fillet.

This time, though, pat it off and let it sit for at least one hour to air dry. This will enable a skin to develop, called a pellicle. A good pellicle enables great adherence of smoke to the flesh, giving that deep smoky flavor for which we enjoy the results.

Two hours on a grill or rack with a fan set next to it does fine.

BRINING

Make a brine of: 

• 1 gallon of filtered water
• 1 cup of Kosher salt
• 1 cup of extra fine granulated white sugar

Put the brine and fish in a non-reactive container, i.e. metallic, (plastic Tupperware is perfect) and refrigerate overnight.

Wash off the fillet in water and then pat dry. Like the dry cured fish, put it on a rack in front of a fan for drying.

Now, you’re ready to smoke.

SMOKERS

You can start small or grand, that’s a Smokehouse Little Chief or Big Chief to start, or a large smokehouse in your backyard. While I like to smoke birds in my CookShack smoker, or now my Big Green Egg, I leave my fish to my Smokehouse smokers.

If you’re a smoked foods fanatic like me, you’ll have a smoker collection in no time. I started with just a Little Chief and one Big Chief.

In fact, I just got a French oak wine barrel from our friends Bruce and Ben at Papapietro-Perry Winery in the Russian River Valley, that I’m going to be turning into a smoker this month: I’ve just received an advance review copy of Forgotten Skills of Cooking, Darina Allen’s masterpiece (an understatement, I’m sure you’ll agree with once you get a copy yourself when it comes out in March), and will be preparing my favorite Scottish breakfast from scratch: fried eggs and kippers…what else with a very old Scottish name like Graham?

…Stay tuned for the magic of herring kippering like back in the “Ole Country” and the crafting of a smoker from a wine barrel (you can bet it’s going to do double and triple duty on smoked Teutonic and Slavic sausages this spring)!

BEST WOOD

 I prefer to smoke fish with those having less bite, such as apple. Alder is wood I learned about during my year’s cabin pilgrimage to Alaska in 1990, which makes it my go to wood for smoking all salmon, char and trout. It gives the fish a smooth sweet flavor.

If you’re getting it yourself from a riverbank, be sure to remove the bark, or you might get sick. That was a trick I learned from my BBQ buddy Rick Sanchis, of Anchorage, who owned one of two BBQ pits catering to tourists and those working the Spit down in Homer, AK. Those who were heading to the visiting Texan’s pit were always complaining of bad stomachaches, if not outright vomitting after a meal. Sanchis was the one who taught me about removing the bark, which is what the summer bird pitmaster from Texas didn’t do…

SMOKED TROUT PAIRINGS

Though many like to use smoked trout as an ingredient for something else, like stirred into cream cheese, or a garnish for a soup, I prefer to eat smoked trout in a manner that best brings out it’s smoky flavor and that’s with a Ritz cracker, perhaps a little sliced red onion. Perhaps even a light sprinkling of black pepper. That’s it!

The perfect wine I learned for anything smoked is a good solid Pinot Noir, as I enjoyed in a 2007 Papapietro-Perry, and 2006 12 Gauge Cabernet Sauvignon suggested by my friend John Putnam, a fellow game and fish enthusiast at Gauge Wines.

That’s the thing about some meats, unlike chicken and fish, that go better with a white, smoked and spiced meat marry best with the deep earthy red wines.

FINAL NOTE: In the open of the New Year, I had promised to keep this column running at two, at least one, column a week. The mega-monster flu of the year hit me this week that basically took me out of a number of hunting and fishing opportunities and nearly made me miss my objective…by hours.

My apologies. I hope by next week I’m much better for typing and hitting the field, like an Ever-Ready Energizer rabbit that I am, to bring more helpful, reliable Tuesday and Thursday rollouts as I used to do with my weekly newspaper column.

Actually, weekly column was only once a week, so this is much better!

And we have lots of things to do: I’m now the equipment review columnist for e4Outdoors, and will be attending the ISE Show at San Mateo, and conducting a number of interviews, not the least of which will be with my friend Michael Riddle of Native Hunt, who will be releasing a special and tasty food product related to wild game!

…And don’t surprised if there’s also a special, secret guest, a partner of Michael’s…Hint: Do you love the early 1970s song Free Ride? I do, especially every time I watch one of my favorite films: Air America.

…And final quick note, on how I’ve been seeking solace in reading while recovering with Langdon Cook’s Fat of the Land. Cook is a writer of such great skill, that he brings me back to the emotionally vested writing style of old that drew me to become a writer in the first place: Steinbeck’s East of Eden, Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea, and Remarques’ All Quiet on the Western Front. I look forward to next week and delivering to you my review on Langdon Cook’s great memoir of refusing to leave life experience to only reading about it, and venturing forth to enjoy personally what the Earth and Nature has to offer.

…Until next then, good hunting, good fishing and cooking–enjoy the Bounty of the Earth, and practice Sound Wildlife Conservation!

Got some great footage which’ll be released in an upcoming episode of Cork’s Outdoors  TV!

It all goes back to my understanding of conservation, and real conservation goes back to
the origins of stewardship of the land. Originally  just a king or landowner, or  a
farmer or rancher who the conservationists who worked or had someone work with the land and reaped
the rewards of that labor.

Nowadays, we pay agencies and corporations to do that work for us. For many of us now,
conservation really means preservation, practicing catch-release. For others like me, the
cycle of life, building water collection sites, clearing out pollutants and fencing it off
from cattle, planting feed plots for deer and then harvesting from those endeavors is
most rewarding: not only on a societal plane, but also environmentally for all other
game and non-game animals, birds and fish that benefit.

Don’t get me wrong. There is a very important place for catch-release programs,
especially in areas with no restocking programs that are close enough to urban
populations that non-stocking or catch-keep practices would wipe out an in a week. It’s just that we can’t forget how we got here and what works best, where, and when…

As for the cooking shows, I’m a firm believer in what I heard Master Chef, hunter, and
entrepreneur Marco Pierre White comment on cooking game. He was walking with
Anthony Bourdain on No Reservations and showed how to cook a rabbit with a filling
of grass taken from the land where the rabbit had been shot: match the game and fish to the land.

For us here in Northern California, that’s wine and grapes, and blackberries and hops and
madrone and alder. Take a steelhead from the river and cut a few of the many stands of
alder (be sure to remove the bark or you’ll get sick) from the waterway which you’d
taken the trout, add a sugar and salt brine and you’ve got the makings for an amazing
smoked steelhead.

Take a Chardonnay from the Napa, Sonoma or Russian River Valley, match it with garlic, and a
turkey taken from the same vineyards that produced those wine grapes and you’ve got the
makings for a heavenly “Turkey Scallopini”! Or, as we just did in our latest episode with a
Russian River Valley 2007 Chardonnay from Peters Vineyards and bottled by Papapietro
Perry Winery, a steelhead poached in wine and served with a phenomenal wine-butter
sauce!

The more that I can re-instill that pride of gathering and preparation that used to be so
prevalent all over the world, before children began thinking that their burgers, chicken
patties and fish sticks magically came from a machine that made food from cellophane
wrappings, I’ll do it!

Our friend and fellow outdoorsman John Putnam at Gauge Wines let us in on what’s
happening up in the Mendocino area. There’s an organic foods movement that has been
rising in strength, starting in Northern California, with such culinary luminaries and
Thomas Keller at The French Laundry and land shephards Don and Sally Schmitt at
The Filo Apple Farm: The Philo Apple Farm prides itself on not even making produce deliveries
further than a tank of gas away out of respect for local grown food freshness.

With more activity like that, our populations will eat more healthily and the land will benefit
through that enlightened husbandry—and what better way to make sure that our following
generations will have a great place to live than to bring back that understanding that all
our ancestors automatically received from day-to-day life on family farms and ranches!

Well, amazingly realistic photo-imaged, inflatable decoys from Cherokee Sports just came in and so we’re off to Lakeport at the north end of Clearlake to match them with the Decoy Sled for our next Remington Arms turkey production!

Ziggy's first half of hunt birds.

If I could only shoot and not have to deal with editing, creating episodes would be a complete slam-dunk: but it’s in the editing that shows are made or destroyed!

And sometimes it just fun going out for a hunting or fishing trip and enjoying it for what it is. Two weeks ago Ziggy and I went to Birds Landing Hunting Preserve to make sure the Zig-meister had a last chance at pheasants during their shoot-out. First time trying the place: great place to hunt, with nice folks…but make sure your pup has its Frontline–ticks galore!

For an 8 months old pup he pointed 8 birds, two of which were dead. As can happen, other hunters lose their birds, either because their vest is flimsy or the bird falls out as they’re bending over. Or, more often, a bird is crippled and never found–if you’ve ever wondered why a good bird-dog can cost so much this is why… If a bird is killed that day, I have no problems adding it to my bag.

If you feel the same, feel free to pick up those birds and add them to your limit [this was an end of season "Shoot-out", so there was no limit, hence 8 birds!] What I do is smell the bird to make sure it’s fresh, though.  And as a sign of age, if I see maggots already at work, I know for sure it’s been a day since the bird was killed and that’s where I don’t retain the dead bird. 

Funny part was that I’m now getting an idea of what he’s pointing. If Ziggy’s tail’s up, it’s a live bird holding. If his tail’s down, it’s a dead bird, time of death not yet determined. Needless to say we’ve got a lot of birds to work smoking and BBQ recipes with. Just did a couple birds in the 10 year old Model 8 Cookshack smoker: bulgogi marinated and applewood smoked–came back from my year working for the ROK Army to find it kaput, but a replacement of the heating element and that’s all it needed!

As for other show’s we’ve getting ready for release, we’ve been editing the wine-poached steelhead that we used a wonderful  Papapietro-Perry Chardonnay on. It came out very well as you’ll see in the coming how-to episode.

Hope your turkey opener was spectacular! I was the cameraman on the lastest episode we shot for our friends at Mathews last weekend. Started off with a perfect ground blind setup, but devolved into a call and run and shoot: wait ’til you see how Marv DeAngelis shoots at 15 yards, if that!

Marv DeAngelis with his trophy gobbler

For this weekend’s shoot, our friends at a Rvfshr Products and Kramer Tackle and Guide sent a collection of lures to try on steelhead. So, we’re dedicating a couple episodes to jigs and pink worms, and spoons and spinners. Can’t wait to try them! They look fishy and you’ll notice that many lures meant to catch fish, as compared to anglers ,can seem very muted when you use them, jigs and worms aside. More on that later in an actual feature article…

It’s kind of a bittersweet as we move into later parts of the season. The Russian is lowering and we’ve probably just got another two weeks left of steelheading there. The American is still on, and perhaps another two weeks after than and it too will be done. Then it’s trout and bass and halibut and spearfishing and so many great activities to do in the outdoors that put  you in the thick of it as a true conservationist–preservationists need not apply…

As for hunting, we’ve definitely got many opportunities for turkey, mainly Rio Grandes, but a few Easterns in the mix through cross-breeding. Briley and Kick’s Industries sent us their special turkey chokes to try on my trusty Remington SP-10. You may be surprised to know that I actually enjoy shooting the SP-10. It’s more enjoyable to shoot than many 26″ barrel 12 gauges. Yes, it’s heavy, but as you know from my comments about shooting heavy-kicking firearms, I’ll definitely take the weight any day. And what I love most is when that load from a 10 hits, it’s lights out: turkey or geese–perfect load/perfect pattern! It’s the magnum shooter’s 16 gauge…

More on program scheduling: my favorite, wild pigs, is still on the menu this spring, though with the rapid heating/non-winter and lack of water it’s a question of what it’ll carryon to be…

Well back to the Russian for steelies on jigs, pink worms, spoons and spinners!