Birds for Hire

The pheasant recipes worried me. Early on we contacted a friend in Iowa where I had hunted successfully before, knowing this was stretching Cooking Wild in Missouri beyond its borders, but also thinking it was my best bet. No dice - he said I'd be wasting my time. He didn't have any birds on his farm this year.

Several years ago I attemped to pheasant hunt in Northwest Missouri with my Dad and one of his buddies. I remember doing what appeared to be mud-bog racing to keep from burying Dad's new truck in what I had mistakingly thought was a county road. I remember walking so much that the dogs gave up and layed down. And I remember that we never saw a pheasant. I can honestly say that I've seen more prairie chickens in the wild in Missouri than pheasants.

So I consulted my lifelong bird-hunting partner, my father. He's a farmer that has a lot of feeding to do this time of year, and wasn't too interested in going to South Dakota or Texas. I only needed two cups of pheasant meat. He suggested we go to a private pay-to-hunt place close to home where we could get pheasant and quail. I agreed and told him I would check into it, as a delay tactic, and then invited him to go as a Christmas/birthday gift to him.

This Saturday is a the day. Going to a pay-to-hunt pheasant farm is kind of like going to brothel. Sure, you look forward to the experience and will probably enjoy it while you're there, but even if you perform well you're not going to brag to your friends about it afterward. The contrtactual nature of the arrangement implies a guarantee of success that takes away from the manly pride of the hunt somewhat.

It's also probably cheaper to go to a brothel than a pay-to-hunt ranch. I price shopped several hunting farms online, and their prices don't vary a lot, and all seem quite steep. I won't say exactly how much, because Ann may read this blog. Let's just say it would be cheaper to eat pheasant at a nice restuarant, with white table-cloths, and follow it up with dessert and coffee.

Then again, these guys have raised these birds from eggs, to tiny helpless hatchlings, to young birds learning to fly, and finally to maturity. And I'm asking to come out to their farm and shoot them with a shotgun. I suppose a man deserves to be compensated for that.

My one previous experience with this taught me that success doesn't necessarily come easily, even when you pay for it. I took Dad to a pay-to-hunt quail operation a few years ago. When we found the quail that we had purchased, which had been hidden from us in Easter-egg fashion while we drank hot coccoa, they were rather hard to get out of their thorny thicket. When we did get them up, they seemed to be impervious to our birdshot. After I finally downed one, I realized why. This creature was unlike any Bobwhite quail I'd shot before. It was at least twice as big, as was able to shake off a scattering of the light shot we were throwing at it. To drop one you had to get it dead-center in your pattern, and do it pretty quickly. I needed heavier shells, but it was too late. Some of the super-quail I had just purchased escaped to the nearby woods, where I hope they are still living happy lives. My sympathy to any predator that tries to take one on.

This Saturday, we'll be hunting pheasants and quail, so I'll have an array of shotshells on hand. In addition to my two cups of pheasant, I also need quail for some recipes. Dad has hunted the farm this year and not found many, so I thought I had better leave what was there to him and my nephew Eric. So several recipes are riding on how well Dad and I shoot Saturday, even if we are paying for the birds.