In 1943, while working for the OSS in London, Julia McWilliams was introduced, by her boss “Wild Bill” Donovan, to James Corbett, a spitfire pilot in the RCAF. It would become a longtime friendship lasting until her death in 2004. When they went out to dinner, Corbett frequently regaled her with tales of his home near Calgary, and the big elk, moose and deer that were in the woods near his home. Most of all, he recommended she come out and enjoy the wilds of Canada.      

Eighteen years had passed and McWilliams finally accepted Corbett’s invitation. By this time they had both married, and McWilliams was now arriving at Calgary Airport with her husband Paul Child. For dinner that night, Corbett’s wife Michelle, a French-Canadian native of Quebec prepared a spin on her family’s favorite dish, using the black bear James Corbett had taken only a few days before. It reminded Julia Child of Boeuf Bourguignon she had just perfected while finishing the compilation of her soon to be released Mastering the Art of French Cooking.      

…Ah, if only it happened like this!      

Quite an adventurous lady—Julia was actually hoping to jump into WWII France with OSS agents, but instead was made a top researcher directly under “The Father of Central Intelligence” General Donovan—I’m sure Child would have much enjoyed this spin on what would become her boeuf bourguignon. There was a Colonel James “Jim” Corbett, but he was more famous for wildlife conservation and hunting man-eating tigers for the Raj and the British Colonial Government in India (his first tiger had 436 confirmed kills through his belly before Corbett got him): he also was neither a pilot, nor a Canadian, and though quite a writer in his own right (check out Man-Eaters of Kumaon) I don’t think he ever met Julia, and died just six years before the release of the book that would open a whole new career to her.      

These were the just mental machinations of a writer working on his first novel, delirious under the flu (though not as badly as when I’ve had malaria and the relapses…but that’s another story), and a heartily enjoyed bowl of Ours Bourguignon. I think it blows away any bourguignon made with common beef.      

This dish was instigated by my running across our family’s 1970 copy of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, that Child co-authored with Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck, and my French-Basque hunting buddy Arnaud Bidondo giving me a pound of stew meat from a nice brown-phase, 6-foot black bear he got last year.      

When I went through Child’s boeuf bourguignon recipe, though, I noticed she really only mentions thyme and a bay leaf as spice other than black pepper. Also, there’s only salt bacon. I wondered what would happen if you used Herbs de Provence. Standardized in the 1970s as a dried herb mixture from Provence (savory, thyme, basil, fennel) it also incorporated for American tastes, lavender. As my foodwriting buddy, Hank Shaw says, brandy goes well with lavender, and after having tried it with so many other recipes, I can honestly say that just about everything goes well with lavender, especially sweet meats, of which bear can be, and especially so in California, where many bear taken by hunters without hounds are during the early part of the season, when the black bears have been fattening up on blackberries and mazanita berries.      

As my friend Bidondo says, “many like to grill the bear meat, which is okay with the smaller bear, but when they are this big, much better in a stew!”      

I wanted something that didn’t take as long to make as the original recipe, and would be simply amazing…So here’s my rendition of Julia Child’s Boeuf Á La Bourguignon, with ours replacing boeuf—Bon Apetit!      

NOTE: Unlike venison, remember to cook all bear meat through, like pork, because of the possibility of trichinosis.      

Nothing wilder than, and as robust as black bear meat!

Ours Bourguignon/Ours Á La Bourguignon

Ingredients :

1-2 lbs of bear stew meat      

1 tbsp olive oil      

1 chopped carrot      

1 chopped onion      

1 tbsp flour      

1 tsp salt      

1 tsp Herbs de Provence      

1 bay leaf      

3 cups of red wine ( Don’t cook with wine you wouldn’t drink: I used Francis Ford Coppola’s 2005 Claret [Cabernet Sauvignon])      

1 can of Campbell’s beef consommé      

1 tbsp of tomato paste      

¼ lb of applewood smoked sliced bacon      

18-24 small white onions      

1 lb of fresh mushrooms sautéed in butter      

1 tbsp chopped parsley    

¼ cup of butter.      

Render that bacon fat

Steps :

1. Take a cassoulet or clay pot ( I prefer to use a large Vietnamese/Chinese clay pot that go for only $9 in San Francisco’s Chinatown—just before using make sure you soak it in cold water for at least 45 minutes, else it’ll crack, especially if using it for the first time).
2. Cut the bacon strips into tiny squares, and fry them in the olive oil clay pot.
3. Render out all the bacon fat, setting aside the brown bacon bits.
4. Brown the bear stew meat, frying only a few pieces at a time to make sure they brown instead of cook, setting browned bear meat with the brown bacon bits.
5. With all the bear meat browned, sprinkle the flour, salt and black pepper on top and toss the meat and bacon to make sure they’re all lightly coated.
6. Toss the chopped onions and carrots into the claypot and sweat them until the onions are almost translucent.
7. Pour in the 3 cups of red wine and scrape off as much of the brown goodness that has stuck the bottom of the clay pot.
8. Add the can of beef consommé and dissolve the tbsp of tomato paste in the pot; then add the browned bear meat, bacon bits, and the spices and give a good stir.
9. Here’s where you a lot of leeway with a claypot. You can either put it in the oven at 325-degrees Fahrenheit. NOTE: DO NOT preheat an oven for a clay pot—you’ll crack the pot! Just insert the clay pot and turn the heat on the desired degree.
10. Or, do as I did. Put it on the stove on high heat and get the bourguignon boiling, then back off to medium heat and cover to simmer for the next 3-4 hours: until the bear meat is fork-tender.
11. In the last 45 minutes, pour in the small white onions.
12. During the last 15 minutes add the butter-fried mushrooms, giving a slow stir.

Clay pots are a chef's Swiss Army knife

Serving suggestions:

Bear Bourguignon is really that good!

Display the clay pot at the center of the table, on a wood or cloth pot holder (never a cold stone, else the immediate temperature shift will crack the clay pot). Remove the bay leaf and throw it away.      

Serve over mash potatoes,  wide, flat egg noodles, or with a side of small peeled potatoes. If you do serve with noodles, use only butter on the noodles. I tried coating the egg noodles with olive oil and it really overpowered the delicious flavor of the ours bourguignon.      

Sprinkle chopped parsley lightly on the side and ours bourguignon.    

Note for the Conservation Minded:

With how many more black bears there are in California than legal bucks (largely due to an overpopulation of major predators like bears and mountain lions, but more because of the counterproductive moratorium on hunting the heavily overpopulated California puma), it behooves every hunter to get a black bear tag to hunt in open areas. This is  especially so with how much opportunity there is these days, with new open areas in the Southern/Santa Barbara County section of Los Padres National Forest. Guess the millionaire residents in Santa Barbara have finally gotten fed up with black bears jumping in their mansion pools and munching on their fruit trees.      

And because those bears have been getting enormous on avocados, you’ll get that much more meat for the freezer! Hopefully with this recipe you’ll learn that even a big old black bear can be just as tasty and tender as a smaller one: You just have to cook it right…

Tim Abell on assignment for GRATEFUL NATION in Namibia

With such a thick anti-hunting attitude delivered in so many films these days, except those written by hunters themselves, such as playwright and screenwriter David Mamet, it’s hard to think that Hollywood was once a hotbed of hunting, fishing and other forms of wildlife management. This was when Clark Gable took David Niven up to Grants Pass for steelhead and then later studio public relations photos of Carole Lombard and Clark Gable often captured them with a string of mallards and snow geese proudly held up to the photographer. In a black and white studio promotional photo, Ginger Rogers lay seductively, with a cane pole and in cutoffs and flannel shirt, like a tomboy on a lush lawn, a full stringer of rainbow trout by her side—probably taken at her 1,000-acre Rogers’s Rogue River Ranch purchased in 1940, that I had the opportunity to see last week on a trip for steelhead and salmon with my friends Paul Winterbottom and Jeff Manuel, in a drift boat loaned by mutual friend, Dave Dedrick. Even interviews of Fred Astaire, included a reporter being told that he was going up to his duck club east of Los Angeles to take care of a coyote problem.

As a writer, I’ve had the opportunity to meet and become friends with those contemporary actors and stars who still shine not only as actors but also as hunters. Some I’ve had a long hunting and fishing relationship with, like my wild boar hunting buddy Patrick Kilpatrick. Some I’ve even had the help and endorsement of, like the dear departed Charlton Heston, who was kind enough to write a plug for the inside cover of my memoir that went to #2 for three weeks in 2004 on Amazon.com. Over the last couple years, I’ve come to know and admire an actor by the name of Tim Abell, who so reminds me of that dashing adventurous actor reminiscent of a time when Hollywood’s elite lived such amazing lives off the set themselves (Errol Flynn, David Niven, Gary Cooper, Jimmy Stewart, Lee Marvin, Audie Murphy, Clark Gable and directors John Ford and William A. Wellman quickly come to mind) that sometimes their film roles seemed to not even come close.

To say that someone like Tim Abell is a military veteran, hunter and member of the Screen Actors Guild is very refreshing. Haven’t you also gotten fed up with actors who are terrified of guns, or prominently tout their anti-gun or anti-hunting status, but hire well-armed bodyguards, eat meat killed by someone else, and make their millions off movies in which they kill people by the truckloads on screen? An ex-Army Ranger, Abell, knows exactly what those real bullets do in real-life. A hunter and solid conservationist, he understands clearly where his sustenance comes from.

Cork Graham's Cold War memories: Salvadoran Navy SEALs -- Las Arañas, El Salvador; 1986

Born and raised on the East Coast, near Quantico, VA, Tim Abell learned to hunt with his Marine uncle and even took his first deer on the Marine Corps base. And after reading the book that has inspired so many young American men since the Vietnam War, Robin Moore’s Green Berets (made into a film by John Wayne in 1968), Abell enlisted in the US Army and became a Ranger. While in university, seeking a degree that would offer him the opportunity to try for a full commission, Abell found a love for the arts, specifically theater. And the rest is history as many are oft to say of those who make it in Hollywood.

While putting in his dues, and not finding many willing to speak openly about their affinity for hunting or firearms, Abell’s hunting went by the wayside as he went through the required networking parties and dinners, keeping mum about hunting and shooting. But when called out on the floor about beliefs that don’t fit perfectly with the rest of the Hollywood-types programmed by the anti-hunting industry (PETA/HSUS), or more accurately unwilling to speak up for fear of ramifications to their own employment (doesn’t this remind you of the fear during the McCarthy years?), Abell speaks his mind when asked…even when it might not get him invited again to the same house…

It takes guts to speak up in Hollywood these days, the pendulum swing of the McCarthy Red Communist hunts of the 1950s gone completely to the other extreme: it’s not those who supported the Soviet Union during the Cold War who are blacklisted now; but instead, those who support the 2nd Amendment of The Constitution, hunting as a solid component of wildlife conservation,  the United States’s right (like every nation) to defend itself, and those men and women serving in that military action…Is it truly being patriotic, or military-friendly, when it’s convenient, as so blatantly with the change in attitudes in Hollywood after the recent sweeping win at the Academy Awards of a military movie: Hunt Locker?…It’s easy to be patriotic when the masses are with you; it’s courageous when they aren’t.

…As one who enjoys studying cycles of history, I’m very intrigued by how long it’ll be before that pendulum swings once again away from that anti-hunting, anti-military mass thought, it had swung to in an unnatural extreme during the 1970s and 1980s and back to the pro-hunting, efficient wildlife conservation practices it espoused during the 1920s to 1960s.

Surprisingly, Abell found his way back to hunting while working on his first break as a ex-Marine sniper Benny Ray Riddle on Bruckheimer Productions’s Soldier of Fortune for NBC. As they were filming in Canada, co-star Brad Johnson invited Abell on a hunt into Northern Canada for caribou and black bear. For Abell, the adventure was like breathing fresh air after too long a time submerged. From then on he was part of the small, but proud to be publicly recognized as those in the film business who also hunt and believe in the 2nd Amendment of the United States Constitution: Tom Selleck, Charlton Heston, Patrick Kilpatrick, John Milius, Steve Kanaly, Gary Sinise, Adam Baldwin, DB Sweeney, to name a few.

To say Tim Abell became a hunting enthusiast is an understatement, as I’m sure anyone can relate to, who is passionate about hunting, been away from it then once again renewed that bond with such an important part of the human psyche as well, because of fund from taxed hunters, so supportive of all animals. To correct all that anti-hunting malarkey taken for fact, all of hunting taxes and fees go to the buying and supporting lands for ALL wildlife, while most, if not all, of the money collected by anti-hunting groups such as PETA and Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) goes to advertising…if these anti-hunting groups actually succeed in wiping out hunting in the world, it’ll be the wildlife that suffers the most!

GRATEFUL NATION

Tim Abell's succcess with a new .338 Federal on wild boar on GRATEFUL NATION

For many the idea of having combat veterans out in the field, hunting with a firearm, may seem out of place. As a combat veteran who attributes my own healing of four years in the Central America War, through the immediately following experience as a subsistence hunter, living with and learning from a Native community in Alaska, I am thrilled that people are beginning to get it…again.

Until the Vietnam War, hunting was an activity that a majority of combat veterans participated in upon their return home: it’s one of the reasons that the bolt-action and semi-auto rifles took over as the hunting rifles of choice in America after WWI, from the previously preferred lever-action-many of those returning young men were introduced to bolt-action rifles in the military (explains why presently so many black rifles have become hunting rifles with so many hunters introduced to firearms an assault rifle). The surge is what led to the megamillion dollar surge in business for hunting, fishing and camping products manufacturers from 1920 to 1970. As a combat veteran myself, I noticed how being in the woods with a rifle brought up memories of war that I was able to confront on my time as compared to a sudden sideswiping PTS (post-traumatic stress) flashback or nightmare.

Cork Graham healing war memories as a subsistence hunter in Alaska, circa 1990

Later, as a counselor specializing in helping veterans and other types of trauma survivors dealing with PTS and the symptoms of what I prefer to call the PTSR, I truly understood how going into the field, carrying that firearm, much as might have occurred only weeks and months before in battle, but now instead hunting game for the table, creates a new subconscious imprint, in the healing of the wilds, on an activity that if not dealt with, comes up weeks, month or even many years later in an uncontrollable event.

For some this uncontrollable event can be as benign as becoming completely overcome by a seemingly uncontrollable mega-wave of sadness and guilt, for others it can manifest as an uncontrollable rockslide of rage that ends in someone getting killed. For many though, especially those who’ve drunk the Kool-Aid disseminated by anti-hunting groups, the fact that hunting can actually help a trauma survivor confront and overcome the contemporary effects of conscious and subconscious memories and interpretations of the past trauma seems so contrary to what many think.

That Orion Multimedia, LLC. produced Federal Premium’s Grateful Nation was brave. That ESPN2 would broadcast a program that touches on the controversial subject of putting a firearm in the hands of a newly returned combat veteran (much less anything that brings the reality of a war nearing 10 years long into American public’s living room in addendum to daily news), and have them go through a form of healing and self-awareness spurred on by the host’s questions, on camera is amazing!

The premise of Grateful Nation is very simple and like we used to say when deep in a fierce fight: the quickest path to victory is a forward-moving straight line—keep it simple, stupid (KISS). Invited out on a hunt, the combat veteran is followed by the camera crew as Abell asks the right questions at the right time to open up a world that the majority of the viewing public have only learned of through the images and words, often distant from those combatants actually being reported on, to support a news producer’s theme.

Abell makes this much more personal, which actually might turn off many because of the graphic description. Personally, I’m very much for it. There has been a great avoidance in the world about dealing with the realities of the world, much of it starting with children led to believe their hamburgers and fish sticks come from a cellophane wrapping machine, instead of a steer getting a cattle prod to the brain, or a salmon a metal club to the top of its head and a quick evisceration.

There’s something very honest about knowing where your meat comes from, and knowing what your sons and daughters are getting themselves into when they go off to war. Do I think this stops war? No. Even with all the news stories, books, and broadcast over the last 50 years, there are more wars happening around the world now than there were during the Cold War. My hope is that the American public gains a better awareness of what a combat veteran has gone through and recognizes it, and lets them deal with it in a healthy and effective manner (and not only offer politically correct, and often, ineffective options) during their homecoming.

For those of us who remember vividly how unjustly military personnel, and especially Vietnam veterans (takes a lot of mass harassment for a veteran to not even be willing to mention military service on their job resume—the case for many returning Vietnam veterans, a historical fact forgotten by many), were treated in those 15 years after the fall of Saigon, Grateful Nation is a media and cultural waymark long overdue…something to ponder as we come upon Memorial Day, an annual event meant for remembrance of those we’ve lost in war, either those right next to us in combat, or far off in a distant land.

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

 Topics:

Track 1: Tim Abell talks about Grateful Nation and next production at Flying B Ranch.

Track 2: Tim Abell reminisces about first times hunting, enlistment in the US Army and achievement of Rangers, paying dues in Hollywood, and return to hunting.

Track 3: Tim Abell chats about pro-2nd Amendment/hunting Hollywood players, and upcoming film projects he’ll be participating in.

Reviewing Justin’s site, http://www.black-bear-hunting.com/, you can tell that his knowledge of hunting and woodcraft is solid. There’s no question in that, and I had looked forward to seeing that information transferred, and not only the words through which I had aleady read about such subjects as bear, elk, deer, moose hunting on his site.

But as with many I’ve met who have vast bush craft knowledge, but haven’t put in the time learning the technical video and editing skills that many who go into the profession of being a “camera operator” do, the images came out blurred, and jumpy…when I feel like I’m getting seasick, I’m reminded that the onslaught of mini-cams wasn’t so great of an idea: it’s wonderful nowadays not having to carry a full-sized Betacam, like I had to during the war in Central America, when I’d freelanced as a cameraman and soundman for CNN and others, but that weight sure helped getting pretty good images even when you’re huffing and puffing from a prior run.

It’s also one of the reasons I wasn’t so excited by the onslaught of ultra-light “mountain rifles” during the 1980s, and why many consider my long-range rifles heavy—they maybe heavy to carry in, but when the rifles supposed to do what’s it’s supposed to do, all that weight sure aids countering all the incidental movement.

Tip 1: If you want to shoot near professional quality video, shoot all your content off a tripod with a sandbag for stability. Or, if you need to run with it and can’t afford, or don’t want to put the thousands of dollars into a steadycam, simply fold up the tripod, swivel the head up so that the camera is now in line with the folded tripod. Carrying the legs cradled in your arm, like a bundle of wood, using the LCD view screen, you now have a very steady camera. Never shoot with just a handheld minicam by itself; your breathing and heartbeat have too much of an effect on the captured images.

Tip 2: When teaching through video, don’t rely on being the talking head. Whatever the talking head offers, is most often offered through just text in a  book. As in TV broadcasts, you want the talking head’s dialogue, but you should be looking at exactly what the host/commentator is talking about. Inserts cannot be underused. If I’m being told that bear are partial to berries and certain types of forbs, I want to see a close-up of that exact berry, and what type of environment it may be found, and the same for the other items being talked about, so that when I’m out in the field I can recall what it looked like in the video and identify it.

Tip 3: The best way to become a good videographer is to first become good still photographer. It’s like the axiom about it only taking one shot to do the job when comparing a bolt-action rifle to an M16 on full-auto. Shooting stills trains the eye to pick out what’s really important in a frame, through aiming and cropping through the use of the zoom lens. When you’ve got your skills of telling a story through still photos, you can easily transfer that to shooting subjects with a video or film camera. On this subject, reading a bio on Gordon Parks is a great idea.

Tip 4: Don’t chase the story—set the frame and let it happen. Very few can do a proper pan, and if there’s no need for a pan, don’t move the camera around trying to keep the subject in the middle, i.e. chasing. Action is captured effectively by setting the frame and letting the subjects move around within frame, even moving on and off screen. Two things happen, you don’t have a jumpy frame (the moving frame, “journalistic” style of jumpy frame so enjoyed by MTV is so overused and distracting from, and has no place, in a how-to), and the audience has the opportunity to process what the commentator is saying.

Tip 5: Never let panoramas go un-described. There are a multitude of them in the scouting and stalking sections of the DVD. It would have been nice to actually hear Justin tell me what I’m looking at, while having inserts to see up close what I’m hearing about. I’m not from Western Canada and outside of having lived and hunted in Alaska, Idaho, and California for bear, I’ve never hunted Canada. I would have liked to have heard what I should be looking for while I’m in a plane scouting out terrain, i.e. what’s likely to be around the lake that I saw; in the open meadows that are rimmed timber, what am I supposed to look for? More specifically what times should I most likely see bear in those large landscapes.

Though a DVD can’t really do what a 300-page book on the subject can, video can do many things that books can’t—they can offer a person the opportunity to have a one-on-one tutelage. Now capturing sound can be a real headache with the sound of an engine in a plane, that’s why audio tracks are laid over video with a microphone in the editing room, and the tutorial experience can be replicated in video. The experience should be just like being right next to teacher, looking exactly at what the teacher is pointing out and listening to the teacher’s specific explanations.Explanations of terrian were too sweeping in description when looking at terrain.

These items item aside, a hunter who has never hunted black bears, hunted black bear in Canada or used all types of legal forms of techniques for bear, will benefit from watching this video. You’ll also see what types of firearms and archery equipment Justin and his friends use to go after black bear in the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Saskatchewan. Pistols are illegal to use for hunting in Canadian, so this topic isn’t touched on. Here in all the western US, with and without dogs, depending on the state rules, we use everything from .357 magnum and .45 ACP, up to larger calibers used in Alaska and the Rocky Mountain States, such as the .500 Linebaugh, for possible accidental run ins with grizzlies.

Commenting on closeups again, there were some when looking at scat that would have been a great opportunity to go further into eating habits of bear, but they often seemed as an afterthought as they were shot dizzyingly fast. It would have been nice if the videographer had setup a tripod and shot for the required ten seconds, extreme minimum. Also, comment was made about the many other bear signs that can be found in the woods, such as scratchings made into the bark of trees that unmistakable, but the only view I had of trees much less a scratching was a way too quick wide pan through stands of timber. Maybe I missed it, but I couldn’t seen anything but wide pan through a stand of trees.

Considering there were such good close-ups of Justin’s Bowtech compound bow and especially Montec broadhead, I thought the same due diligence would have been given to subjects not so easily referenced through comment or written up on the screen to be checked on line at G5 and Bowtechs’ websites.

As this is only a first-time effort, it’s not so bad. And since Justin is evidently well-versed in hunting, I look forward to his next instructional DVD installment with the lessons learned from The Black Bear Hunting Encyclopedia.

You can order your copy, which includes a small booklet that works well as a notebook to carry on your hunt to remind you of all that has been mentioned in the DVD, for $47 US at http://www.black-bear-hunting.com

At the site, you’ll also be able to read the wealth of information that makes me say that Justin is a good outdoor journalist, who once his teams gets the technical kinks out of their productions will turn out phenomenal DVDs—can’t wait to see them!

And for the rest of you who’d like to improve your own videos, or shoot quality video for the market checkout Tom Ang’s book. It’s short and sweet, but covers everything from shooting to editing to production: