Cleaning fish and game an essential, insightful task
A golfer, my wife Kathy is fond of joking that I should take up that sport because when you have a good day on the course, no onerous tasks await you afterward. You share a drink with friends, compliment one another on long putts, and you鈥檙e done. She鈥檚 referring, I know, to my fishing and hunting. Success in those pursuits results in game or fish to skin, fillet, butcher or pluck, always in the cold and dark, at late hours when a chair by the woodstove tempts with warm comfort.
Poking fun about such self-imposed duties is only natural, and I鈥檝e done it myself. When my son Aaron was younger, he likely wearied of my jesting about the generational change that evolved in the preparation of bounty gleaned outdoors. 鈥淲hen I was a boy,鈥� I told him, 鈥淚t was the kid鈥檚 responsibility to clean any fish or game that my dad, uncles and I brought home.
鈥淏ut, nowadays,鈥� I went on with the punchline, 鈥渟omehow, it morphed into Dad鈥檚 job. What鈥檚 up with that?鈥�
Something about the game-care obligation records deep memories that reach back even further. When I was very young, too young to go along on hunts, my dad, uncles and their friends returned from the woods with jaw-dropping bags of wild pheasants, grouse, rabbits and squirrels. While the men relaxed inside鈥揵efore they cleaned their game鈥揑 lingered there in the cold admiring those gorgeous ringnecks. Once, I was so stricken by those birds鈥� splendor that I hid my father鈥檚 penknife to spare them from final dissection, as if that would make any difference at that point in their fate.
It helps to approach cleaning game as something that simply needs done. Ducks are admittedly tedious. Their fine puffy down is hard to remove from corners and folds. Fortunately, in a way, I don鈥檛 get many, though roasted wood ducks make a fine repast.
Turkeys pose a different challenge; they鈥檙e big. One option is to just fillet out the breast meat, which accounts for 90 percent of the edible flesh. If your image of an oven-ready turkey is a commercially-produced Butterball, you would not recognize the lithe, athletic anatomy of a wild turkey after plucking. My in-laws long forbade me to serve a wild bird at Thanksgiving because the rangy creature in no way resembled its over-fed, store-bought substitute.
I have done it but filleting out a turkey鈥檚 prime breast cuts feels like a betrayal to the bird, whose drumsticks, if I鈥檓 honest, are bundles of indestructible tendon. So, I pluck, which takes a long time, especially when your fingers are wet, cold and shedding flexibility. Occasionally, I read about 鈥渟hortcuts,鈥� like dipping the bird in boiling water or encasing it in melted wax so the feathers 鈥減eel right off.鈥� But I only face the task once or twice a year, so it seems more efficient to just go ahead and get it done, without elaborate contrivances.
I skinned a lot of squirrels when I was younger because squirrel was revered in our home as the finest of all wild meats, a view I still hold. But I haven鈥檛 shot a squirrel in a long time, partly because the skinning of a small, tightly constructed mammal is somewhat tiresome, but more so because the most enjoyable part of high-dining on squirrel was sharing the experience with other people who relished it too. That culture feels harder to come by now. So, I contemplate bagging a mess of squirrels for the table, but they always scurry off unmolested.
Cleaning wild game teaches you things firsthand that you otherwise would never appreciate. It鈥檚 amazing to me that there is no direct connection between the bones of a deer鈥檚 front leg and the rest of its skeleton. But it makes elegant sense when you think about how a deer lives.
The front leg 鈥渇loats鈥� free, linked to the ribcage, not by bone, but through flexible yet incredibly strong layers of muscle, cartilage and tendon. When a deer bounds through the woods, its front feet hit the ground with great force. To withstand that impact, a rigid bone-to-bone joint would need to be massively built, bulk that a deer can鈥檛 afford. So, it compensates with a flexible link that is streamlined but absorbs the shock. Pretty neat.
A deer鈥檚 back leg is built with opposite purpose. It must propel the animal鈥檚 weight forward. So, that rear joint is a solid ball-and-socket. It rotates as needed but it鈥檚 also rigidly efficient at transferring energy from muscles into movement. Pretty neat, too.
Of course, a domestic cow exhibits that same design, inherited from wild bison-like ancestors. The modern cow has more built-in agility than it needs for its unchallenged life in the pasture.
Cleaning game and fish isn鈥檛 so objectionable. The right state of mind is an asset, accepting that proper care of anything you take it upon yourself to kill is only a necessary part of the larger act. Once you鈥檝e pulled the trigger or creeled a fish, you really have no choice, so set your mind, roll up your sleeves and get it done.