Rate ‘em (but for the table only)

[Lou (Louis)]

1. What are your 3 favorite big game animals for the table only.
I mean just to eat, not to hunt.

2. 3 favorite fish?

3. 3 favorite birds?

[Tigger]

Animals
1 Tie Elk and Pronghorn
3. Whitetail

Fish
1. Walleye
2. Crappie
3. Sunfish

Birds
1. Ruffed Grouse
2. Pheasant
2. Wood duck

[7mmfan]

Animals
1. Elk
2. Whitetail
3. Blacktail deer
- Never eaten pronghorn, I hear its fantastic

Fish
1. Yelloweye Rockfish
2. Lingcod
3. King Salmon

Birds
1. Ruffed Grouse
2. Quail
3. Pheasant

[WapitiTalk1]

Hmmm, let’s see. Good thread Lou.

Big game-Elk, Moose, then Deer.
Fish-Silver salmon, Steelhead, then maybe pan fried Brook Trout… perch, small bass, crappie filets deep fried are somewhere in the mix.
Birds? If we’re talking wild game, I’d probably go with pheasant, quail, then blue grouse.

[Lefty]

Im going to throw a few wrenches in this"

Most big game is great table fair. Every year of my adult life after moving into my house at 20 years-old Ive mostly eaten wild game and fish.

Even years where we raised cows we were eating game, selling the cows I think Ive kept 3 quarters and one half from steers
I have yet to have any game prepared by anyone that taste better than a decent ribeye or New York Strip grain fed heavily marbled cooked to a warm blue, seered in butter crispy on the out side

My early years as a trapper We put up a lot of beaver meat,, definitely the best tasting rodent,, but I was a bit picky only keeping blackstrap and sometimes hams for grind sausage.

Our dad worked out a deal with a local butcher a pound of brauts for every beaver ,,, what a deal
Make all the beaver jokes you want ,,, Beaver meat was in high demand from friends and even their uppity wives and girlfriends: church ballgame picnic and parties I brought the meat!

Muskrat, grey and fox (tree) squirrels were my small game challenge in the fall, and like muskrat ( prairie dog a couple times,,, just plain tough ) mostly cooked for party finger foods Killed a few cotton tails ;(and hundreds of jacks and handful of snowshoe) ,,, cotton tails are better than squirrels
Jacks and snoewshoe make better coyote bait

Big game somewhat in this order
Bear: great texture which I like, but one is really limited to make sure it is completely cooked lightly seasoned and salted
Bighorn sheep and antelope
Then maybe moose then elk ,, Whitetail tossed into the mix don’t know ifI would say its better or not

I like the moose texture too, never had a bad whitetail

Mule deer!!! Bottom-of –the-barrel for me. Killed a couple yearling does depredating an alfhafa field,,, did it taste as good as whitetail,,, yes

I think , even removing the silver skin the bucks need to be seasoned
Worst was a monster blacktail a Ishot,, Had the hide off and in the cooler well before noon, Big old mature rutty buck , 4 shoots in the top of the heart before he dropped
Took him into the locker and they labeled it a bull elk… Big and stinky.. Gave him to the VA men’s shelter in Vancouver Washington


Birds, any white meat bird, grouse pheasant chucker,, cooked in a cream or butter sauce,, a bit boring and too often have that bird crap flavor, only exception might be sage grouse tenderloin

Waterfowl,, well our daughters ate a lot of them,, Canada geese taste better than ducks .
And without a doubt snow geese stand out from ducks..
We’ve had swan,, all three were adult birds and a bit tough,, nothing bad,, but tenderizing would have helped,
only killed one crane,,, ,, must have been plain ,, I just don’t recall
Did I say snow geese are the best fowls, yeah snow geese,,,

Never ate a Merganser

Love me some salmon,, even pinks and chums ,,, well maybe sorta a mno on the dogs. Cooked in butter a bit of salt a fatty king can’t be beat.
Seas basses were very good,,(greens blues blacks?) I thing they were a lot like Willard bay Utah Wipers, a good solid fish.
Sturgeon and catfish,, Not so good I ate at all the best catfish places in Arkansas,, only the breading was good
My mom loved spring caught Minnesota bullheads 8” battered and fried,,, yum
Minnesota caught walleye, perch and sunnies I would say rank about the same top of the fresh water list
Smallmouth and largemouth bass can taste muddy, northern pike and lake trout can be soft.
Ive onkly had a few good Idaho trout older 4 lb fish, dark red meat, that only ate little trout, crawdad’s and grasshoppers and more grasshoppers

However a few limits of hammer-handles * 2 lb norther pike my dad pickled them ,
, ohh yeahhh


Carp, clean caught fatty carp and buffalo smoked nothing better,,,, except for maybe whitefish

Ive eaten other critters, Illl pass on skunk, possum and coon,, yuk and a punkie . The white meat reptiles, frog legs, snake alligator all mild and tasty
And the 1830 mountain men ate beaver tail,, a week after their boot laces.

Shell fish,, crawdads are great and so are many crabs,, squid, octopus good stuff

Clams and mollusks still scare me, ate some raw oysters,,, that was a bad story 3 days of puking and cool hallucigens

I still like the cheap canned sardines,,, how come they come without the guts now days

Bear Lake Cisco, Lake superior smelt,, Columbia pacific run smelt In that order for eating,, reverse order for fish bait


didnt know what we didnt know 700 lbs of Smelt on the Grand Portage Indian reservations,,, I was the tribal old ladies hero

[>>>---WW---->]

I'll make this one short and sweet! Nothing beats Bob White quail breast or fresh frog legs. A word of caution on the frog legs. You need to soak them in salt water the evening before you fry them. They'll start twitching but wear themselves out before you fry em up the next day. If you don't soak them, they will jump right out of the hot grease. If they don't jump out, they will splatter hot grease all over the kitchen!