It wasn’t until I was around thirteen that my father told me that all the “beef” we had been eating at home was actually whitetail deer. There were plenty of times that he told us we were eating deer and my two brothers and our mother all enjoyed it like wealthy diners in love with french cuisine inhale unhealthy amounts of foie gras. I loved eating venison and couldn’t wait for my turn to provide the incredibly rich meat to my family as my father and brothers had. For some reason though he would tell us that our lasagna was made with beef and our burgers were ground chuck and the chili meat came from the store. Perhaps it was because our mother was always a little timid with venison in my early memories so he wanted her to just enjoy the meal in a relaxed state. What I do know is, the old man ruined beef for me for the rest of my life.
I don’t care much for cows. I’ve had everything from discount grain fed chuck steaks to A5 wagyu short ribs and although they’ve all varied in texture they mostly all tasted like a docile single food group fed animal with no real flavor profile to mention. The texture is really what people like in my opinion, the same way that avocados don’t really taste incredible but their texture is incredibly pleasing to the palate. The texture was never enough to hook me however, the flavor of a wild deer fattened by acorns would always be my standard for any red meat I’ve tasted. Even farm raised deer don’t taste the same or even look the same on the butcher block, you can’t manufacture the artistry of untamed nature.
Unfortunately for me, I have been ruined by wild game and fish. It hasn’t mattered whether I was in a three michelin starred restaurant or a Nonna’s kitchen on the hillside, as delicious as it’s all been, it just never reached the complexity and purity of wild food. I’ve worked for chefs from three stars to one star and I have the upmost respect for them and their incredible work and by no means am I putting their food down as they are most likely better at their craft than I’ll ever be but damn it a fried smallmouth bass filet is better than poached farm raised salmon no matter what kind of sauce you use to elevate it. After years of working in kitchens cooking cows, lambs, chickens, and a plethora of saltwater fish I began to ask myself why no one was making a case for real wild game and fish (and I don’t mean farm raised bison burgers).
From that single question on I’ve been taking a new outlook on how we treat wild game from butchering and storing to cooking and presenting. I started this blog to document that journey for myself and to share these ideas with other outdoorsman and chefs. I find that sourcing ingredients is just as important as knowing what to do with them so I intend to share hunting and fishing stories as well, not so much for the sake of telling them but to possibly help another outdoorsman or chef in their pursuit of fish and game. The unfortunate reality is that outdoorsman are under unnecessary scrutiny from a population so detached from their food and the realities of life and death that they think leveling thousands of acres of wild land to plant single crops is a more enlightened path than that of the ethical outdoorsman, who’s lively hood not only relies on taking life, but on protecting it for multiple generations to come. It is my opinion that if you want people to understand the tangible reasons for being an outdoorsman, you must show them that it is food and not only that is far richer in nutrients, but that it is delicious too. This is my documentation of showing people that it is delicious.