How Efficent Are You With A Grouse?

Mumbles Marble Mouth said:
If you ever get a change to get one again, try brining it in a salt and sugar water mixture for 24hrs. Don't skimp on the salt and sugar. The water needs to taste strong of salt and sugar. You will need to boil the water or otherwise the salt and sugar will rest on the bottom instead of mixing with the water. Once its cooled down, put the grouse in it. It will kill that strong sage taste you speak off.
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I do this with duck and goose breasts before they go in the smoker. Really gets rid of the strong taste snow geese can have.
 
Mumbles, those all look delicious! I haven't gotten that fancy yet; i'm more of a comfort food kinda guy. The last bird I got ended up bbq'ed and sliced up into a grouse grilled cheese.

I find with the breast, it's best to put them in a ziploc bag in the fridge for a day or two before you cook them to keep them tender/moist; my last one was oozing juices out when I cooked it.
 
ooh, grouse, I use as much meat I can retrieve of them.
except for one time when the only gun I had handy was the 30-06 and ... I could still retrieve half a grouse or so.

always warn your dinner party about potential shot pellets in the meat.

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legi0n said:
ooh, grouse, I use as much meat I can retrieve of them.
except for one time when the only gun I had handy was the 30-06 and ... I could still retrieve half a grouse or so.

always warn your dinner party about potential shot pellets in the meat.
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Pellets are a bit hard on the teeth
 
Mumbles Marble Mouth said:
If you ever get a change to get one again, try brining it in a salt and sugar water mixture for 24hrs. Don't skimp on the salt and sugar. The water needs to taste strong of salt and sugar. You will need to boil the water or otherwise the salt and sugar will rest on the bottom instead of mixing with the water. Once its cooled down, put the grouse in it. It will kill that strong sage taste you speak off.
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Cool, thanks for the advice I will give the sharpies another shot...no pun intended lol. Great looking dishes and firearms!!

Cheers!!
 
legi0n said:
ooh, grouse, I use as much meat I can retrieve of them.
except for one time when the only gun I had handy was the 30-06 and ... I could still retrieve half a grouse or so.

always warn your dinner party about potential shot pellets in the meat.

njRvNvV.jpg
Click to expand...

I see you must be doing something wrong too because none of your birds are blow to bits too. Everyone tells me a 12 gauge will blow them to bits.
 
Thanks for posting this! I try to use the legs and giblets from all my birds. Throwing them away seems disrespectful, and they are god food too, you just have to learn to cook.
 
Mumbles Marble Mouth said:
I see you must be doing something wrong too because none of your birds are blow to bits too. Everyone tells me a 12 gauge will blow them to bits.
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Haha, a 12g is all I use on grouse. Mod choke and I know my distances with regards to patterns, 9 times out of 10 it's all head shots and if there's pellets in the meat it's only a couple. I use #6 or 7.5 shot, knocks em down quick.

I breast them out, keep the legs mainly. Sometimes I keep the heart and livers for one the dogs, she goes nuts for them as well as any meat under the arms or breast bone meat after I filet the breast off. We make stock from any leftover bones, grouse fajitas are one of my favourite ways to eat them but I will have to try that bacon wrapped and seared recipie. Nice to see other people's ways of cooking them. Guy I know used to walk around with a bag of marinade while hunting grouse, he'd shoot em, clean em and put them in the bag. Cook and eat them as soon as he got home lol, love grouse hunting!
 
We use 7 1/2 target loads in 12 and 410 for grouse and ptarmigan. Not a single bird this year lost.

Skin the whole bird just using fingers, then remove entrails. Fillet the breasts away from the bone for individual meal servings, fry the legs for snacks, and everything else goes into soup, including giblets.

Ted
 
scott_r said:
Your dish looks very tasty but Ive found grouse to be one the most unpleasant bird to eat...the ones around here are very strong sage taste. I do quite enjoy pretty much every other upland and waterfowl species.
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did you try to remove the guts just after the kill and remove the feather just after also?
 
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Never blew a bird to bits with a 12 gauge. And my 20 gauge loads were a 3" 1 1/8oz copper coated lead. A 12 gauge load stuffed into a 20 gauge shell. Although this one lost its head.

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I use to be an over/under guy until I traded one of my over/unders for this Brno side by side.
 
I shoot 7 1/2 target load when using a Mossberg 500 with an 18.5" barrel if there are multiple grouse, 10/22 Takedown with 40grain CCI Copper Round Nose for single birds.

Hit 3 of these birds with 1 shell and the 4th just had its wing grazed by the same shot but was down with the follow up shot moments later.

NtW5OU7.jpg
 
We breast them, then pull out the heart and gizzard for breakfast hash... occasionally keep the legs, but on 100 bird weeks they are usually left for the foxes and martins.
 
Grove said:
I shoot 7 1/2 target load when using a Mossberg 500 with an 18.5" barrel if there are multiple grouse, 10/22 Takedown with 40grain CCI Copper Round Nose for single birds.

Hit 3 of these birds with 1 shell and the 4th just had its wing grazed by the same shot but was down with the follow up shot moments later.

NtW5OU7.jpg
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Wow. Here in the hunting region I hunt in all the time you would of been one bird short of bagging out your daily limit in just two shots. Nice spruce grouse. I find they taste the best.
 
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