Author: Timothy Fowler

Here’s How Elk Bones and Sweet Spices Enhance Rich Pho Broth What can you do with all those elk bones from the butchering process? Because it pains me to toss elk, moose, deer, antelope and/or bear bones into the garbage, I make soup stock. My freezer contains an inventory of stock made from the bear, elk and moose I have hunted. Occasionally, I get to fillet a few lake trout and add fish stock to the selection. It seems like every week I am making soup or sauce. When these are made with a properly constructed stock, the results are…

Make Your Own Pasta Topped with Delicious Ragu Winter is ragu time. Winter here in the north has rolled in with a vengeance, so it is time to share hearty heartwarming food with family. While deciding what to do with my canned venison, the idea of rich tomato ragu on fresh pappardelle captured my attention. Last year, there were more four-legged animals harvested than could fit in my freezers. This meant two things: we could eat well, and because there wasn’t enough room for all the venison cuts in the freezer, we pressure-canned some tougher cuts of venison and bear.…

Stop! Don’t toss those shanks in the grind pile––make Osso Buco instead. The way I approach game butchery is with this question: ‘How do I get the most value from this animal?’ Don’t get me wrong. I love back straps, but the slow-roasted dishes are pure luxury. Given a choice, I would choose this recipe for Osso Buco every time. We all use ground venison, but once you eat a well-prepared Osso Buco, you will want to make sure going forward that every shank is carefully cut in two- inch crosscuts and prepared this way. This has become my favorite…

A frenched venison loin is a fancy cut of bone-in meat worthy of a celebratory dinner. Think of those bone-in lamb loins at the custom butcher shop—the ones with a row of rib bones protruding from the loin, each one scraped clear to the bone. Fancy. And delicious. Frenching is a fun treatment for a bone-in loin and it looks impressive when carved at the table. Many hunters butcher their own deer. Others leave this detailed work to the butcher. Either way, you will need to provide cutting instructions to get more of what you want. Knowing what you want…

Braising is the ideal treatment for tough shoulder cuts Get on it: Clear your freezers. If you were lucky enough to tag more than one big-game animal last season, you may well need to clear your freezer prior to this year’s hunts. Hunters having year-over-year success often find themselves with an inventory of less-desirable cuts and aging package dates. Anticipating filling most of the eight big game tags on deck for me for the fall 2023 season, I combed through my frozen inventory in search of aging chunks of venison. Some big-game archery and bear seasons are already open, and…

Celebrate autumn and a successful hunt with a traditional meat pie Fall is my favorite time of year. In addition to providing the unfolding of a collection of successive hunting seasons, the weather is cool enough for long sleeves and a cap, and the grass no longer needs cutting. It’s also the time to turn the oven on or build a roaring fire and bake something delicious, like a meat pie. The British have mastered the art of the meat pie, and the following recipe is one modeled on that idea with a cheater top crust. (That only simplifies an…

Peasant food fit for royalty As a boy, hunting rabbits wasn’t something I did. My hunting apprenticeship completely missed the heart-pumping action that comes from stalking rabbits, having never acquired rabbit-hunting skills as a boy that would have sped up my (late onset) big game hunting education and success. Hunting rabbits requires effective scouting, keen spotting, quick reflexes and square shooting––every skill required to hunt big game successfully. Rabbits favor the same woods elk, deer and upland birds do and often appear while hunting big game or birds. To be clear, I won’t ruin an elk or whitetail stalk for…

Make Perfect Pillows of Pasta Filled with Snow Goose What was I thinking? I paused for a moment and asked myself this question out loud. Now that I was home, I had a garage floor covered with five dozen snow geese all waiting for careful attention. When the snows are coming in properly, the shooting can be non-stop. After all, the goal of a goose hunt is to take some geese. Why not knock down the limit? But a multiple-day limit of snows is a lot of geese. I suggest taking some pride in processing and packaging all that delicious…

If you’re lucky enough to hunt snow geese successfully, you may well have a stack of lean protein that begs the question: What now? Goose breasts and legs respond well to the confit process. That can be done right after harvest and frozen, made ready to be used in the coming months. The confit process is simple: heavily salt breasts and legs overnight, and rinse and simmer the meat in fat for six to eight hours until the meat is so tender it will shred easily. While the traditional French tradition simmers confit submerged in duck fat, today that process…

Here are some simple steps to help select your perfect canoe and get up the creek with a paddle. Why canoe? Paddling a canoe can be restorative. The canoe is the original platform for commerce, travel and community development in North America. A canoe is an intimate space where paddlers get to know one another and come to rely on each other’s specific skills. The right canoe can be easily transported to water, and depending on the model, carried on your own or with the help of a fellow canoeist. Paddle strokes are perfected over a lifetime. They are strokes…