_game Warden Dog Recipes

_MAKING DO

Steps:

• Every camper ends up in camp minus from one to any number of necessities. The name of the game then becomes do without or make do with a substitute. When one forgets the can opener, for example, an old pocketknife can be sacrificed and other than being a pain in the butt for the cook, camp life goes on. On occasion I or someone in camp has carved a stirring spoon from a scrap of wood or made a DO lid lifter from a green tree limb. Of course the more complicated the item, the more ingenuity required.In 1983 another conservation officer and I spent a couple of weeks re-doing the flood irrigation system at a IDF&G back country ranch. I didn't miss the metal spatula that first evening when I grilled pork chops, but it was noticeably absent the next morning when I went to mix up some 'Poor Man's Sourdough Pancakes.' I've yet to see the pancake which one can flip with a fork! That morning we settled for granola bars and coffee but it was obvious we needed something to flip pancakes and turn eggs.That afternoon Terry Williams and I set out to solve the problem. Terry started out by taking the metal lid from a coffee can and gently hammering it as flat as possible on the chopping block. First he would hammer one side then turn it over and hammer the other side. Within 10-15 minutes it looked like a round piece of sheet metal. Meantime I cut a straight section of a mountain mahogany tree about 10" long and an inch in diameter. With the saw blade on my sheath knife I cut a groove in one end approx. 1 1/2" deep. Then taking a leather punch I bored two holes about a half-inch apart through the portion of the limb with the groove.Using two old pieces of strap iron and a pair of vice grips, Terry bent one side of the lid up so it would fit into the groove on the handle. We set the turned up edge of the lid into the groove and punched two holes with a horseshoe nail. Two minutes and two small pieces of baling wire later, we had a serviceable metal spatula. It wasn't 'purty' but it served our purposes. So next time you're in camp and realize you've left something at home, look through your miscellaneous and see if you can come up with a substitute!Spiced with More Tall Tales - Breakfast

_GAME WARDEN SCRAMBLE

Steps:

• Start with the local rancher giving a domestic goat to a subject. Have the subject skin the goat in his yard. Stir in a nearsighted informant who sees the subject skinning the goat. Have the informant find the game warden and advise him of subject skinning a deer. Let the excited game warden stew for 4 hours waiting for search warrant.Once game warden has received a search warrant and is thoroughly stewed, let him serve it on subject and find goat.Mix all together and you have a wasted day. Put egg on game warden's face.THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: "A game warden can always be relied upon to waste a day trying to get your goat."A Back Country Guide to Outdoor Cooking Spiced with Tall Tales - Meat in Camp

HOMEMADE DOG FOOD

Steps:

• Place the water, ground turkey, rice, and rosemary into a large Dutch oven. Stir until the ground turkey is broken up and evenly distributed throughout the mixture; bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce heat to low and simmer for 20 minutes. Add the frozen vegetables, and cook for an additional 5 minutes. Remove from heat and cool. Refrigerate until using.

_VEGGIES FOR CAMP

Steps:

• Keeping fresh produce in camp requires some planning, especially if you have to plan for salad hounds. Consider taking cabbage and making coleslaw instead of lettuce. The cabbage will keep several times longer than lettuce. A couple of years ago we shredded cabbage for coleslaw and packed it in resealable bags for a river trip. Squeeze as much air out as possible before you seal it. On day five we popped open the bags and made the dressing and had fresh slaw in less than ten minutes. If soups or stews are on your menu, throw in a few turnips and parsnips. Like potatoes, carrots, and onions they will keep fresh in a cooler or pack box for several days without ice. If you don't grow a garden, stop if you can at the local farmers' market on your way out of town on a summer trip. Farm fresh veggies taste better and are better for you. I try to keep canned veggies to a minimum just to save weight in my garbage sack. Also taking fresh veggies instead of frozen ones will reduce the amount of money you spend on ice. Depending on how long your trip is, many fresh veggies can be peeled, sliced, diced, etc., at home, which also saves preparation time in camp and reduces your garbage to bring out.Spiced with More Tall Tales - Vegetables and Salads

_GAME MEAT

Steps:

• Browsing through this section, one might think I've written a "Wild Game Cook Book". I confess, most of the meat recipes do feature "game" meat in this book. But, every "game" recipe easily converts to the cellophane wrapped meats found in your local meat market. Far be it from me to try converting those meat eaters who just don't like eating wild game, but read on to find out why I like it myself.Any gardener will tell you his or her home grown produce tastes much better than any store bought veggies. By the same token, pull the lid off a Dutch oven full of BBQ elk ribs and I guarantee they'll put the store bought variety to shame. Whether it's putting sun dried tomatoes on the shelf or filling the freezer with lots of plain white packages marked "Elk Steak", nothing beats the fruits of one's own labors.My love affair with game meat goes back to when I graduated from a high chair to a chair with pillows on it to boost me to appropriate height at the dinner table. Growing up in SE Idaho in the 50's and 60's dinner menus at the Welch household regularly featured venison along with beef, pork and lamb. Though not in a subsistence situation, venison and pheasants helped stretch the grocery dollars needed for a family of six.Sitting here many years and many deer later, writing this book, I remember how proud I felt going home after getting my first deer. I know mom quickly got bored with my story but a thirteen year old helping Dad bring home the "bacon" just naturally gets a swelled chest. Over the intervening years I've not got an animal every year, but my freezer has never been empty of game meat thanks to other family members or my hunting pards!Growing up, game meat was a staple on our table, as well as most of the neighbors. About the only folks I knew who didn't eat it were those few people who weren't hunters or fishermen. Like a lot of things from our childhoods, I just took game meat for granted. My education about folks who didn't care for game meat began in college. My roommate and I asked a couple of gals over to our apartment for steaks one evening. They thought it would be neat to have a couple of guys cook them a steak dinner with all the trimmings. Both of us being from southern Idaho, just expected these gals to be suitably impressed not only with our culinary prowess, but with the fare as well. Wrong! One of these gals would have put a circus elephant to shame with her nose wrinkling ability when my roommate slapped those elk steaks on the grill. To make a long story short, they ate the trimmins' and we ate steak. Being somewhat slow learners, both of us had to have this same lesson repeated just a month later with two different gals. In both cases we missed the clue of these gals coming from beyond the borders of "meat and tater" land! Rest assured though, this dislike of game meat is not gender specific. After graduating from college and becoming a wildlife professional, I learned just how many people in our society don't hunt and have never had the opportunity to eat game meat. I've also met a lot of folks who've been served game meat and for various reasons didn't like it. Without first hand knowledge I wouldn't venture a guess as to "why" they didn't like game meat, but I can make some guesses based on my own experience.Not only have I harvested numerous big game animals, but as a game warden I've been able to see how others take care of big game animals. By and large most folks do a pretty good job. Yet every year I see animals which, I've no doubt if you cooked a steak from, would gag a maggot! One of the worst instances I've encountered happened about ten years ago in the Little Lost Valley. It was mid morning on a Friday when I pulled into a camp to check a good size 6 x 6 bull elk. These fellows had been luckier than most. They'd been able to load the bull whole into a truck. The cottonwood tree they picked to hang it from lacked a branch at the proper height, so they hung it from the next best branch which left the head, neck and one front shoulder still on the ground. One front quarter lacked any air circulation at all. The elk had been field dressed, but not skinned. The tag showed the bull had been killed on Wednesday. I asked the lucky hunter if he thought the carcass had cooled adequately. He replied "sure." Though the October nights had been down into the twenty degree range, the Indian Summer days were getting up to about sixty degrees.When asked, the hunter had no objection to my taking a carcass temperature. I made a small slit in the hide and inserted a thermometer behind a shoulder blade. Thirty six hours after being killed the internal temperature was still over 60 degrees. Now, you tell me how many repeat customers a restaurant would get if they served beef given the same care?!? I'm not saying the quality of game meat totally reflects the care given in the field, but in my opinion it's a big first step.Yet, still others are adamant a bull elk or a big buck taken in the rut borders on being inedible. My personal experience doesn't support this. A person who harvests such an animal might be wise to put more of it into burger and stew meat and plan to adjust the cooking of other cuts accordingly. To make my point, I pose this question to you, the reader. When fast food chains purchase cattle to be ground up for burgers, do they buy corn fed eighteen month old steers or old stringy, worn-out range bulls?On occasion I've had the chance to serve some people their first taste of venison. Interestingly enough, most are pleasantly surprised, even those who may have previously had an unpleasant experience. Each different game animal will have a distinctive taste. There is no argument game meat differs in taste when compared to domestic meat. Not to be to "hoity toity" here, but having to acquire a taste for something different is not a new phenomenon. As for me, I'll take a nice elk steak over raw oysters any day! I don't know exactly when the "lite food generation" began, but I'm sure it's here to stay. When we as a society started this long road to health awareness, it became obvious, though it had just three letters, "fat" was now a dirty word. With that realization society began to look towards game meat from a health perspective. Published figures indicate game meat, on the average, contains less than 50% of the fat found in domestic animals. Even a well trimmed cut of meat from the grocery store yields more fat than the equivalent cut from a game animal due to the lack of "marbling" found in game meats. I've known individuals with heart problems who, on the advice of their doctors, limited their consumption of red meat to game meat.A Back Country Guide to Outdoor Cooking Spiced with Tall Tales - Meat in Camp

_GAME WARDEN DOG

Steps:

• When I hired on as a conservation officer for Idaho Department of Fish & Game (IDFG) in September of 1978, Snoose turned six months old. I'd come by her four months earlier when I ran into a friend at IDFG Headquarters where we both had meetings. Russell had hired on as an officer a couple of years earlier and I still worked as a Wildlife Technician. At a break in the meetings I caught Russ up on what I'd been doing and told him about the awesome log home I had rented near Wayan in SE Idaho. He told me he had the perfect pup to live with me in such a great place. He still had two female pups from a litter of nine who needed homes. Being a canine sexist at the time, I told him 'No Thanks!' No females for me. I'd always had males. Apparently, Russ didn't have any better luck peddling those two pups during the day 'cause when I arrived at the restaurant that evening he bought me a beer, one of many that night, and started his sales pitch again.After rolling out of bed the next morning I needed three things really bad. First, and most important, a couple of aspirin, followed by a cup of coffee and, last, a hot shower...in that order. Not being the first guy to wake up with the events of the previous evening being a little fuzzy, I 'thought' I remembered writing Russ a check for $75.00 late the night before. (It was brought to my attention later that I actually wrote the check about closing time.) When I got out of the shower I looked in my checkbook. Sure enough, the self carbon copy of the last check said 'Pay to the Order Of' Russ Kozacek. My consolation being at the time that although Russ did succeed in selling me a dog, I hadn't bought dinner or a beer all night! Anyway...Snoose moved to the big log house in Wayan with me. She spent the summer leaning how to fetch, stay out from underfoot a saddlehorse, and how to load in a pickup truck.The transformation from civilian to game warden doesn't happen overnight. How successful a game warden is depends on both tangible and intangible criteria. One of the tangible criteria being, of course, the apprehension of violators who go home with pieces of paper labeled 'Defendant's Copy' in their wallets! Six weeks into my career and hunting seasons in full swing, the only citations my name appeared on listed me as 'Assisting Officer.' With elk season a week old my ego and confidence hit rock bottom. Sure, I had encountered some folks with problems, but their stories always seemed truthful to me. So I'd give them a weak verbal warning and go off in search of a 'big game case.' At the time I naively believed everyone always told the truth to the game warden!On Sunday of the second weekend of elk season, Snoose and I left the house in the gray light of dawn, headed for Jacknife and Tincup Creeks. I started making the rounds of trailheads and campgrounds thinking that if things didn't change, I would find myself back driving a truck. About noon I checked a camp of moose hunters breaking camp after getting a bull packed out. I then headed for McCoy Creek. I hoped that I could find a violation in my neighboring officer's area! By mid-afternoon, and several camps later, my luck hadn't changed. Discouraged doesn't even come close to how I felt. I stopped at a creek thinking Snoose might enjoy a swim, as the day was getting warm. My heart dropped when I got out of the truck! No Snoose! I started backtracking, asking folks I'd just checked if they remembered seeing my dog in the back of the truck. No luck!I headed back to Tincup Creek, not believing I could have missed her for such a long time. Finally I ended back up in the camp where I'd checked the moose hunters. There she lay contentedly chewing on a leg bone that they'd discarded. Apparently she hadn't missed me at all. After chastising her I loaded her back up and decided to check a couple of camps where no one had been present in the camp on my earlier swing through.As I pulled into the first one, a fellow came riding in leading a couple of packhorses. He told me he'd killed an elk, and that it was boned out in meat sacks on the pack stock. I felt pretty good writing him a citation for an unattached tag while he unloaded the packhorses. But something still sort of gnawed at my subconscious. Why I felt compelled to go through the meat sacks I'll never know! Unless one has the space to lay out the individual pieces of boned meat to determine their anatomical location you can't make sense of what your looking at. This guy and his buddies had made it easy. When I located a heart in the third sack of meat it didn't raise any alarm. In the fourth sack, though, I found another elk heart, which did set off all sorts of warning bells. Then it was obvious! These guys had killed two elk and tried to disguise the fact by boning the meat and mixing it up. I didn't hesitate to give Snoose the credit for leading me to that breakthrough big game case.I spent two thirds of my career with Snoose! Over the years she assisted me on several cases and on occasion made cases outright for me. Snoose didn't spend much time at home those first ten years. Most of the time she rode in the back of the truck, but fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, drift boats, and rafts suited her just fine. Except for being in a duck blind, she was happiest trailing along ahead of my saddle horse as I pulled a pack string somewhere in the back country! The day finally arrived when it got too difficult for her to jump up into a pickup truck.Snoose spent seven years in retirement before she passed on just a couple days short of her fourteenth birthday. I still consider that $75.00 the best money I ever spent. A couple of years ago I returned the favor to Russ when I sold him a female pup out of my Chesapeake, Sis! Russ just wrote a check and saved me the expense of buying him dinner and beer for an evening!Spiced with More Tall Tales - Dedications