Any idea how hunting was regulated during WW2?
Texas is a “special” place. There are tons of wild populations of exotic game that has been there for a long time. New Mexico has wild gemsbock and Maryland Japanese sika deer. And of course one of the most iconic game animals is from around China - the common pheasant.
It depends upon the type of animal and who took care of the handling and processing of the meat.
Beef is typically grain fed for a period before slaughter. People rave about grass fed beef but to me that tastes off, and gamey.
Venison and elk meat: The fat must be carefully removed and all the little glands. That is where the gaminess is. When you want to grind hamburger with these a lot of beef suet is used, not the wild fat. And since the meat is very lean it makes poor, mealy, burger if you don’t add the beef suet.
Bear is greasy and tough not matter what you do. But I have heard that cougar is a good meat, I have not tried that.
Once the animals are killed/hunted it is important to skin and cool the meat down soon. The guts must be removed almost immediately. People who drive around with an unskinned deer to show off are ruining the meat. Antelope and goats are particularly susceptible to this. If you are out camping away from your cooler or storage area, skin it and hang it in a tree to cool down. You want to get the body heat out of the animal. You can re-bag it to bring it home, once it is cooled at least to ambient temperatures.
Once you harvest a game animal, that is when the real work begins. How and who performs that part is critical to the flavor of what you end up with.
And they are what they eat. A white tail deer from the mid-west eating acorns, apples, and field grain is going to taste much better than one from a wilder area.
I’ve only had deer stew, and it was delicious.
Someday, I wish Disney would make a cute-baby-animal movie where the cute baby animal is a carnivore. Did The Fox and The Hound address the issue? Depending on your point of view, The Lion King either sidestepped the issue, or took the coward’s way out.
I was referring to the one being shot in Southern Africa. Which, unlike Texas, has plenty of native antelope of its own, so importing an Indian one struck me as weird. Although apparently it happens.
Grew up hunting, can hunt no longer but I still like game. It all depends on if it is dropped with one shot or runs - adrenaline and panic hormones make game taste nasty, I refuse to try any form of catfish farmed or wild as it all tastes muddy to me. I dislike tiny fishes and really oily fishes like mackeral [blargh, cats can have it, as long as I don’t have to open the cans] because it all tastes rancid to me. I like fresh water fish if I can turn it into mousseline or quennelles because I got a bone from a perch stuck in my throat when I was about 5 and now I am paranoid about bones.
I have made the family cabbage soup [rischert] with pretty much every farmed or game meat [including frog, snake, crocodile and wild caught salmon. Never again on the salmon.] While I prefer it with some form of dead pig it is excellent with squirrel, rabbit and wild duck. I can’t wait to move out west, I want to have a go with some javalina. mrAru and I want to go on a guided moose or elk hunt every year to fill a freezer - I can see we will be popular - just guide us to the first legal target, we are not into trophies, just meat, bones and hides =)
I have never had bear, I want to try it, same with javalina. I have done the fishing thing for anything one can catch in Lake Ontario and environs, off the coast of Virginia and both gulf and ocean Florida. Done the diving thing getting my open water 1 and 2 we also scrounged fresh aquatic life for sashimi on the dive boat off one of the islands of the Bay Bridge Tunnel, and I remember harvesting some mussels off the rocks, and I have clammed here in Connecticut even though I can’t eat them, ditto coquina on the beach at Casey Key in Florida, and I liked crabbing in Virginia a lot and sort of miss it.
Like about deer above you have to remove the fat. It looks like it should be good meat but it’s not. Often commercial butchers don’t. Also smaller specimens taste better. After that, it may still not be to your taste, but most of the muddy is gone.
I had reindeer stew at the “Santa Claus” farm on the Arctic Circle in Finland. The meat was ground instead of in chunks, and the gravy was thick and brown. Very tasty!
Reminds me of the story about the Soviet troops who captured a Finnish field kitchen during the Winter War of 1939–40. They were chowing down on all the high-fat goodies the Finns ate (Red Army soldiers were basically supplied with bread and tea rations) when an artillery strike came raining down on them. Ouch!
Well, if we’re counting wild-caught fish as wild game, all the goddamn time before moving away from Newfoundland, often caught it, myself. Mostly trout and salmon.
Venison is good. Gator tail tasted like an uncanny valley mixture of chicken and fish if my memory serves.
Wild fish is too varied to draw any generalizations for me.
As do frogs’ legs. I once had a girlfriend who would order these at the Chinese restaurant we went to on Valentine’s Day, along with a platter of tofu swimming in hot pepper oil. Yeccch! :mad:
I’ve had them as well and I actually like them but I don’t think the ones I had were wild. My experience was that they were more of a less-flavorful and more tender chicken and I don’t recall any fishy hint in mine. I think it was probably the way they were raised and the diet or maybe the species. At any rate, even though they are much better than chicken IMO pound for pound, I still wouldn’t order them again because they are also much more expensive pound for pound. (I guess maybe if they sold a frog leg for like a buck as an appetizer I might splurge for one again.)
FWIW, the restaurant was in Moscow. I don’t know if the frogs’ legs were imported or locally sourced (I suspect the latter).
They didn’t taste bad, just … different.
I started a thread here years ago about this. I was freaking bombarded by people telling me I’d never had it cooked right.
Fuck no, I don’t care, I ain’t eating it.
I find frog leg is like a rubbery-texture bite feel, and tastewise like chicken with a tiny tiny dab of some sort of fish, maybe sardine oil? Not overly fond if them but enough garlic OK to eat if I am being polite. I think snake tastes pretty much exactly like chicken with a slightly different texture, not really rubbery more spongy.
It’s disgusting. I wanted to like it. I expected to like it. I don’t like it. I’ve had venison in Illinois, Montana and Wyoming. Gamy, no matter what it had eaten, how it was aged, how it was cooked. Have also had elk, pheasant, grouse, game hens, and partridge. All gross.
Common scenario: I am dutifully trying not to make my Soylent-Green-is-People face while eating gamy spaghetti/chili/sausage/salami.
Host, grinning slyly: What do you think of the spaghetti/chili/sausage/salami?
Me: It’s, um, OK.
Host, smugly: That’s elk! Toldja I could cook elk so it wasn’t gamy! Didn’t suspect a thing, huh?
Me, trying to quietly snap my fingers to summon the dog: Ha-ha. Look at that! All gone!
I’m with Beck. The only meat I like is the kind born in styrofoam trays. I do view my fussy taste as a failing, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to change it.
That’s unfortunate.
Wild game does have a stronger flavor than domestic meat. For some of us, that’s a good thing. For other people it isn’t, regardless of whether they just don’t like the flavor or they don’t like the intensity of the flavor or both
You like what you like and don’t like what you don’t like.
It’s like the argument about chicken meat white vs. dark. People have their preferences and if you don’t like one or the other that’s just your taste, and as we all know de gustibus non est disputandum.
I went through a few years when calamari was trendy around here. I tried it a whole bunch of different ways and concluded… I don’t like calamari. It wasn’t the way it was cooked, it was that I didn’t like squid. Lots of people feel the same way about venison or whatever. It you don’t like it you don’t like it, and that’s fine with me.
Dang, I’d forgotten about frog’s legs counting as wild game. Those are great. Maybe I can convince the wife to go out for dinner tonight.
Though, when I order those, I have to endure a little pouting while she envisions the frogs rolling around in wheelchairs. She knows that’s not happening, but the cartoons still come to mind.
Moose can be delicious. Especially in stew.
I know this because my wife is from Newfoundland, and when there, I’ve eaten, with her extended family, moose.
Also tur (a game bird).
All delicious.
And then there’s seal. Not good at all.
And back here in the Northeast US, venison and various game birds. There’s also a very good local restaurant that specializes in game in the fall. They have a wider selection – they’ll bring in meat from around the country.
And I’ve eaten a bunch of game in Africa. Some good, even great, some, well, when in Rome, etc., but not good.