Have your bird and eat it too!

Or, Pluck your bird, and eat it too! :)



My son Koy is 13 years old. I don't know what other 13 year olds are doing after school and NYO practice, but mine is out hunting. He is mad because our beloved Cadillac Snow-machine is on the fritz, thanks to some not nice people who borrowed it and brought it back all fudged up. He would rather take the snowmachine out with a .17 strapped to his back to go Ptarmigan hunting then anything else.



Yeah, all you gun know-it-all'ers. A .17 Mach-2, NOT a shotgun, although I've tried to tell him that he'd get MUCH more with a shotgun. He says that people who use shotguns are wussies. He said it, not me.

Anyway, at camp, the boys came home with a few ptarmigan and decided that they were going to do it "THE REAL WAY!"

"Do what the real way?" I asked. "Eat our Ptarmigan!" he replied.

Uh...OK. I didn't know there was a REAL way! So, they went about gutting and plucking (Yes Michelle, they kill, gut and pluck them ALL without boiling water! Notice I said THEY and not me! hahaha) them and we watched from the window.




Then, for about two hours, the three boys cut kindling and made a fire (or tried to) on top of a snowhill about 20 yards from the house. We all laughed in the warm cabin with OUR dinner on the propane stove!

Eventually, they got the fire going and stabbed the ptarmigan heart, gizzards, legs and breasts with sticks and OPEN roasted them on the flames.



FOUR HOURS LATER...they came inside and said, "THAT was the BEST Ptarmigan we've EVER eaten!" I asked Koy, "Better than when we wrap it in bacon and bake it in BBQ sauce?" He explained to me that, "YES," it was better, because they hadn't eaten all day and waited for that "STUPID bird to cook SO long" that by the time they finally ate it, it was the best tasting thing, EVER. Good thing it was like 20 above zero!



So, there...if you lived in the Arctic, you could have your bird...and eat it too. Only I'd suggest you make it into soup, or bake it in the oven wrapped in bacon with homemade BBQ sauce, or make a ptarmigan casserole with rice and tomatoes!