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Harvesting Nature

Harvesting Nature

Wild Fish & Game Podcast, Delicious Wild Game Recipes, Inspiring Outdoor Magazine, & Wild Food Classes & Camps for Hunters & Anglers

Author: Shawn West

Wild Recipes 

Black Bear Meatball Subs

Shawn West 1 Comment ,

As winter hits hard in Southern Ontario, I find myself increasingly in need of comfort food. Something warm, rich, and homey to chase away the winter blues. While searching my freezer I found one last tightly-sealed packet of ground black bear meat, which I decided would be perfect for meatballs.

These meatballs are super-simple to make, and could easily just be skewered on toothpicks and served, but a thick toasty meatball sub seemed the best use for them, especially since NFL playoffs were right around the corner. The marinara is also straightforward, and then it’s just a matter of putting it all on some fresh rolls with melted provolone.

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Wild Recipes 

Canada Goose Thai Red Curry

Shawn West 0 Comments

There is great debate around exactly “how much” of a goose people should be eating. There are purists who absolutely refuse to do anything other than pluck whole birds, but I only do that the plumpest late-season geese that have been feeding on corn and grain for weeks. “Breasting out” a goose is exactly that, and every bird we shoot gets at least that treatment, with the meat either going into a grind pile, or my personal preference, serving as a substitute in almost any dish that calls for beef. There are those that pluck the livers and hearts, and I thoroughly enjoy grilled goose hearts.

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Wild Recipes 

The International: Triple Cheese Canada Goose Pastrami Sandwich

Shawn West 0 Comments ,

I will be the first to admit that I’m not that sophisticated when it comes to cooking. I have cooked some long-simmering, refined meals that required a degree of culinary technique on occasion, and they were delicious and rewarding, but I’d just as soon slap meat on a grill and let the flame do the work, or even more commonly, turn wild game into burgers and sandwiches. So we’re making grilled cheese. Purists may turn their nose up at the very plebeian concept of a grilled cheese but I’m here to assert that the grilled cheese is in fact the king of sandwiches. Pure comfort food combining crunchy toasted bread and rich melty cheese, there is no better vehicle for taking a sandwich over the top than stuffing all sorts of goodies between toasted bread and cheese, and that’s what this is.

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Wild Recipes 

Wild Turkey Po’ Boy

Shawn West 0 Comments , ,

Up here in Ontario, we are among the last wild turkey habitats to get a proper spring. I’ve hunted turkeys in blizzards, and I’ve been out on the last weekend of May in a heavy coat and toque. Although we are building our own wild turkey tradition in the province, the traditions we are developing are built on the back of a greater historical legacy, one that is arguably rooted in the US South (apologies to Pennsylvania). All the yarns and tales of turkey hunting that I grew up reading were in the Carolinas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Louisiana. It is a staple sandwich from that last state that my mind headed to when I pulled the trigger on my biggest tom turkey to date in early May of this year. I had been to New Orleans pre-Katrina and had fallen immediately in love with the people, the food, and city’s culture. I went once again in 2013 for a business engagement, and although things had changed in the Crescent City, po’ boy sandwiches had not. They remained everything that a sandwich should be: simple, portable, and packed with flavour.

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Wild Recipes 

Whitetail Rogan Josh

Shawn West 0 Comments , ,

There is just something about stew that appeals to me as a hunter. Warm, soothing comfort food, with complex and layered flavours built through the alchemy of slow braising, stews are how I imagine the earliest hunters rewarded themselves. Some will argue that primal cuts roasted over an open fire represent the origins of wild-game cooking, and that is probably right from a technical sense, but I like to imagine our hunting ancestors started doing what many of us do when we cook; they began experimenting. I picture chopped meat slowly simmering and the hunter and their families adding in whatever else they felt would enhance the taste, only to discover that it made for an amazing meal.Roasted meat was protein procurement. Stews were culinary.

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Hunting 

The Sneak Bird

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It was starting to feel like we were jinxed, or at least that our tactics were jinxed. We were almost an hour into our third set up of the morning, and aside from some very curious jakes that were eager to die (and for the better part of twenty minutes I was very, very tempted to oblige them) the mature toms had been cagey and spooky of our positions. The most recent bird had skirted wide of us after initially committing well, and I was questioning everything I knew about the pursuit of longbeards.

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