http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/life/food/just-ducky-105328048.html
Just ducky
Delta Marsh hunting expedition enlightening and exhilarating, not to mention delicious
By: Wendy Burke
If you are going to be a really serious locavore, and want to get way, way beyond the borders of a backyard garden, one way to do it is to take to the woods, lakes and marshes, and seek out and hunt for your food. Just a week ago, I joined a group of rookies and veterans and headed to Delta Marsh at the southern tip of Lake Manitoba for a heritage duck hunt, followed by a fowl breakfast.
We were guests of Delta Waterfowl (www.deltawaterfowl.org), a cross-border not-for-profit conservation group using science-based methods to study, maintain and increase waterfowl numbers, health and habitat. In addition to providing educational and learn-to-hunt programs, they are passionate about strengthening and passing on the values, esthetics and traditions of the "hunt for food" waterfowling culture. It is another, albeit old, old piece of the "eat local" puzzle. DW President Rob Olson, along with his colleagues Jim Fisher and Nigel Simms, took us into the marsh.
On Wednesday night, we turned from the highway onto the road leading to historic Kirchhoffer Lodge, built by then-senator John Kirchhoffer in 1914 in anticipation of a return visit by King George V (who didn't make it). It is everything a hunting lodge should be.
The vaulted ceiling of the lodge's main room shelters the incredible hunting trophies along the main wall: a large moose, a deer, an elk, another huge moose; on the next wall a bighorn sheep, then a pronghorn, a wolf... and finally a coffee table, converted from a one-metre-tall wall case which features a large owl staring furiously upward through the glass. We chatted on the big couches for a while, but soon it was time to head to my wood-paneled room, its comfortable single bed covered with fresh white sheets and a green woolen blanket. We needed to be out the door by 5:45 a.m.
When morning came everyone ate lightly, mostly toast and some fruit -- we were anticipating a much better breakfast of fresh duck later on.
Camouflage gear is de rigueur in the marsh, I put it on and then I climbed, quite literally, into stiff new chest waders (holding them up they looked more like nose waders to me). We got into the trucks and were greeted by Rob Olson's 11-year-old Springer spaniel, Brambles. She's a pink-eyed blond, fairer than most spaniels with just a few orangey-brown patches on her fur.
A short drive in the dark took us up and down, and then steeply up to the sliver of a road that runs along the top of the marsh. The trucks were parked, and by some anticipatory magic, the boats were already down below waiting for us. Looking up, the stars were scattered like shining confetti across the sky ---- a streamer of raspberry and peach light was just visible at the horizon in to the east.
Brambles was outfitted in a neoprene camouflage vest with built in floats, designed to keep her warm and make it easier for the senior dog to swim. Olson said even when he too busy to hunt sometimes, he is motivated by her instinctive need to work the water or the uplands. Sometimes for a hunter, it's all about the dog, the constant, adoring companion who will follow or lead as required no matter how difficult the terrain.
We pulled away from the shore and rowed for a good half hour through the rich, brown water. There are patches of sago pondweed, the food source that draws the ducks. Some eat the seeds at the top, some eat the root, and some eat the myriad aquatic life teeming near the roots. The water should be clear so the plants can photosynthesize, but turbidity (cloudiness) caused by artificially high water levels maintained up north for hydro-electric power and the invasive carp species that stir up the water and tear up the weeds are threatening the food source and killing the marsh. There is an initiative to put two carp exclusion gates at the two channels that feed into the marsh in the near future.
We stopped a couple of times while Olson and Fisher discussed the best place to pull in. Soon we deployed 20 or so decoys, and the boats pulled into the swaying 21/2-metre-high cattails. We climbed into the water. The chest waders were tight against my legs and they felt cool, but not cold. Not yet, anyway. In a couple of more hours I would be visibly shivering, but determined to stick it out.
The ducks were flying in good numbers. There are gadwalls, mallards, buffleheads and canvass backs. Olson and Fisher had their 12-gauge pump shotguns at the ready, and they employed their duck calls. There are different calls to be sure, but it sounded a lot like Burgess Meredith as the Penguin arguing with himself. How they could sort out the different breeds, let alone which were male and female, in mid-flight is beyond me. But they aim for the drakes so the females can be left to lay eggs.
Before long, Olson brings down "the king of the canvass backs!" Brambles leaps into the water and paddles out to the bird, gathers it into her soft mouth and heads back to the boat. She is scooped out of the water onto the seat and where she deposits the duck. This duck, like the others (two canvass backs, two bluebills, and one gadwall) will be enthusiastically admired and talked about.
Soon we have enough for everyone to eat. Guns have been safely stowed, and a folding table top and a Coleman stove are set up on the seat of the boat.
Jim Fisher cleans the first bird, turning it breast up, and starting from the top of the breast, he carefully pulls the skin apart in a straight line down the front. The feathered skin is pulled and tucked away from the deep wine-coloured breast meat, which is then filleted off the bone. The breast meat is then rinsed in fresh water. Olson takes the meat and prepares our breakfast.
The soft yolk of the egg is a sauce that runs all over the duck breast. My first impression was that it reminded me of a very tender, thin-sliced steak sandwich -- it didn't make me think of bird at all. I thought I was tasting basil, but when I asked Olson about it later, he said there was none. What I tasted was the good, clean feed the duck had been living on, sago pondweed. The perfect sandwich. We had fulfilled our immediate purpose: We sought and found game for food. It's the point of hunting. Olson said he'd be back the next day. He had a freezer to fill.
Everyone, including Brambles who had been politely waiting in the other boat, ate their fill of duck and it was time to pack up and head back to the lodge. The field kitchen was stowed, gear shifted and I, with some assistance, managed a kind of Fosbury Flop sideways back into the boat. I was fuller, happier, and once out of the water, instantly warmer. I stopped shaking and my teeth stopped chattering. The decoys were collected and Olson and the others began the long pull for shore against the wind.
It had been what Olson called "an epic hunt," with the opportunity to see good numbers of birds in ideal autumn weather. The sun disappeared behind the gathering clouds, changing the sky from blue to grey. The wind was cool but soft down in the marsh and, in the occasional brief pauses in our enthusiastic conversation, you could hear the wind combing through the tall cat tails and the phrag grass (phragmites), rattling the uncountable millions of tiny seeds at the tops of the stalks. The marsh sounded like a giant rain stick.
We arrived at the shore. I got out of the boat and scrambled stiffly back up to the top of the steep embankment where the wind was sharp. I started to shiver again but I knew there was yet another exquisite meal waiting for us at the lodge. Later there would be warmth, camaraderie, deeply important conversation and good spirits, both liquid and ephemeral. We were now a small fellowship and the day belonged to us. It was ours and ours alone.
It was sublime. It was beautiful... and it was complete.
Rob Olson sautés duck breast to feed an early morning hunting party. (BORIS.MINKEVICH@FREEPRESS.MB.CA)
Duck in the Field
Go to: www.deltawaterfowl.org/hunting/recipes for more recipes.
Two frying pans are needed.
For each diner:
1 duck breast
extra-virgin olive oil
salt and pepper
1 egg
thin slice of sharp cheddar (Olson uses Bothwell) or provolone
fresh bun, split
Slice the breast meat thinly against the grain. Heat the pans and add olive oil to both. Lightly salt and pepper the breast meat and add it to the first pan, sautéing until the centre of the slice is just pink. Before the duck is fully cooked, fry an egg in the other pan. When duck and egg are ready, assemble burger-style in a bun with slice of cheese.
Just ducky
Delta Marsh hunting expedition enlightening and exhilarating, not to mention delicious
By: Wendy Burke
If you are going to be a really serious locavore, and want to get way, way beyond the borders of a backyard garden, one way to do it is to take to the woods, lakes and marshes, and seek out and hunt for your food. Just a week ago, I joined a group of rookies and veterans and headed to Delta Marsh at the southern tip of Lake Manitoba for a heritage duck hunt, followed by a fowl breakfast.
We were guests of Delta Waterfowl (www.deltawaterfowl.org), a cross-border not-for-profit conservation group using science-based methods to study, maintain and increase waterfowl numbers, health and habitat. In addition to providing educational and learn-to-hunt programs, they are passionate about strengthening and passing on the values, esthetics and traditions of the "hunt for food" waterfowling culture. It is another, albeit old, old piece of the "eat local" puzzle. DW President Rob Olson, along with his colleagues Jim Fisher and Nigel Simms, took us into the marsh.
On Wednesday night, we turned from the highway onto the road leading to historic Kirchhoffer Lodge, built by then-senator John Kirchhoffer in 1914 in anticipation of a return visit by King George V (who didn't make it). It is everything a hunting lodge should be.
The vaulted ceiling of the lodge's main room shelters the incredible hunting trophies along the main wall: a large moose, a deer, an elk, another huge moose; on the next wall a bighorn sheep, then a pronghorn, a wolf... and finally a coffee table, converted from a one-metre-tall wall case which features a large owl staring furiously upward through the glass. We chatted on the big couches for a while, but soon it was time to head to my wood-paneled room, its comfortable single bed covered with fresh white sheets and a green woolen blanket. We needed to be out the door by 5:45 a.m.
When morning came everyone ate lightly, mostly toast and some fruit -- we were anticipating a much better breakfast of fresh duck later on.
Camouflage gear is de rigueur in the marsh, I put it on and then I climbed, quite literally, into stiff new chest waders (holding them up they looked more like nose waders to me). We got into the trucks and were greeted by Rob Olson's 11-year-old Springer spaniel, Brambles. She's a pink-eyed blond, fairer than most spaniels with just a few orangey-brown patches on her fur.
A short drive in the dark took us up and down, and then steeply up to the sliver of a road that runs along the top of the marsh. The trucks were parked, and by some anticipatory magic, the boats were already down below waiting for us. Looking up, the stars were scattered like shining confetti across the sky ---- a streamer of raspberry and peach light was just visible at the horizon in to the east.
Brambles was outfitted in a neoprene camouflage vest with built in floats, designed to keep her warm and make it easier for the senior dog to swim. Olson said even when he too busy to hunt sometimes, he is motivated by her instinctive need to work the water or the uplands. Sometimes for a hunter, it's all about the dog, the constant, adoring companion who will follow or lead as required no matter how difficult the terrain.
We pulled away from the shore and rowed for a good half hour through the rich, brown water. There are patches of sago pondweed, the food source that draws the ducks. Some eat the seeds at the top, some eat the root, and some eat the myriad aquatic life teeming near the roots. The water should be clear so the plants can photosynthesize, but turbidity (cloudiness) caused by artificially high water levels maintained up north for hydro-electric power and the invasive carp species that stir up the water and tear up the weeds are threatening the food source and killing the marsh. There is an initiative to put two carp exclusion gates at the two channels that feed into the marsh in the near future.
We stopped a couple of times while Olson and Fisher discussed the best place to pull in. Soon we deployed 20 or so decoys, and the boats pulled into the swaying 21/2-metre-high cattails. We climbed into the water. The chest waders were tight against my legs and they felt cool, but not cold. Not yet, anyway. In a couple of more hours I would be visibly shivering, but determined to stick it out.
The ducks were flying in good numbers. There are gadwalls, mallards, buffleheads and canvass backs. Olson and Fisher had their 12-gauge pump shotguns at the ready, and they employed their duck calls. There are different calls to be sure, but it sounded a lot like Burgess Meredith as the Penguin arguing with himself. How they could sort out the different breeds, let alone which were male and female, in mid-flight is beyond me. But they aim for the drakes so the females can be left to lay eggs.
Before long, Olson brings down "the king of the canvass backs!" Brambles leaps into the water and paddles out to the bird, gathers it into her soft mouth and heads back to the boat. She is scooped out of the water onto the seat and where she deposits the duck. This duck, like the others (two canvass backs, two bluebills, and one gadwall) will be enthusiastically admired and talked about.
Soon we have enough for everyone to eat. Guns have been safely stowed, and a folding table top and a Coleman stove are set up on the seat of the boat.
Jim Fisher cleans the first bird, turning it breast up, and starting from the top of the breast, he carefully pulls the skin apart in a straight line down the front. The feathered skin is pulled and tucked away from the deep wine-coloured breast meat, which is then filleted off the bone. The breast meat is then rinsed in fresh water. Olson takes the meat and prepares our breakfast.
The soft yolk of the egg is a sauce that runs all over the duck breast. My first impression was that it reminded me of a very tender, thin-sliced steak sandwich -- it didn't make me think of bird at all. I thought I was tasting basil, but when I asked Olson about it later, he said there was none. What I tasted was the good, clean feed the duck had been living on, sago pondweed. The perfect sandwich. We had fulfilled our immediate purpose: We sought and found game for food. It's the point of hunting. Olson said he'd be back the next day. He had a freezer to fill.
Everyone, including Brambles who had been politely waiting in the other boat, ate their fill of duck and it was time to pack up and head back to the lodge. The field kitchen was stowed, gear shifted and I, with some assistance, managed a kind of Fosbury Flop sideways back into the boat. I was fuller, happier, and once out of the water, instantly warmer. I stopped shaking and my teeth stopped chattering. The decoys were collected and Olson and the others began the long pull for shore against the wind.
It had been what Olson called "an epic hunt," with the opportunity to see good numbers of birds in ideal autumn weather. The sun disappeared behind the gathering clouds, changing the sky from blue to grey. The wind was cool but soft down in the marsh and, in the occasional brief pauses in our enthusiastic conversation, you could hear the wind combing through the tall cat tails and the phrag grass (phragmites), rattling the uncountable millions of tiny seeds at the tops of the stalks. The marsh sounded like a giant rain stick.
We arrived at the shore. I got out of the boat and scrambled stiffly back up to the top of the steep embankment where the wind was sharp. I started to shiver again but I knew there was yet another exquisite meal waiting for us at the lodge. Later there would be warmth, camaraderie, deeply important conversation and good spirits, both liquid and ephemeral. We were now a small fellowship and the day belonged to us. It was ours and ours alone.
It was sublime. It was beautiful... and it was complete.
Rob Olson sautés duck breast to feed an early morning hunting party. (BORIS.MINKEVICH@FREEPRESS.MB.CA)
Duck in the Field
Go to: www.deltawaterfowl.org/hunting/recipes for more recipes.
Two frying pans are needed.
For each diner:
1 duck breast
extra-virgin olive oil
salt and pepper
1 egg
thin slice of sharp cheddar (Olson uses Bothwell) or provolone
fresh bun, split
Slice the breast meat thinly against the grain. Heat the pans and add olive oil to both. Lightly salt and pepper the breast meat and add it to the first pan, sautéing until the centre of the slice is just pink. Before the duck is fully cooked, fry an egg in the other pan. When duck and egg are ready, assemble burger-style in a bun with slice of cheese.
