Beyond Your Doorstep

by Hal Borland

  When it comes to fish and wild game someone always raises the question of the propriety of killing birds and animals—few people seem to have strong feelings about killing fish. I have no prejudice about taking birds, animals, or fish for food if the laws allow it, if the species is plentiful, and if the hunter or fisherman doesn’t kill and catch just to be killing and catching. When a species is scarce, only a fool kills. And the hunter or fisherman who doesn’t use the meat he takes is nothing more than a slaughterer. I hunt and fish, in season, and make no apology for it. We eat the game I take. When a species is scarce, I stop hunting it and forbid all shooting on my land until that species has re-established itself. To me, that only makes sense. I think that bag limits, both for hunting and fishing, should be set according to the supply, not the demand, and they might well be changed from year to year and certainly from area to area.

  With a river in our dooryard, we do a good deal of fishing, as I said in an earlier chapter. Most years we freeze fifteen or twenty pounds of fillets from the fish we catch for Winter use. In the Summer we eat a good deal of fresh fish. Our river has, in numbers that vary from year to year, brown and brook trout, yellow perch, rock bass, various of the sunfishes, both small- and large-mouth bass, and an occasional pickerel, as well as catfish, suckers, silver carp, and other fish that we do not eat. Even these are edible. They are best in Spring and Fall, when their flesh is firm and relatively sweet in taste. In hot weather they are soft and sometimes taste of mud.

  When we get big bass or trout, we usually bake them whole. Smaller trout we usually fry whole. All other fish I skin and fillet, and we fry or broil the fillets. We freeze only the fillets, and in Winter we fry or broil them or make fish chowder from them. I skin all except trout and big bass because I think it is easier than scaling them.

  I have tried all kinds of tools and gadgets for skinning, scaling, and filleting fish and have come down to an ordinary fish knife and a pair of common pliers as most satisfactory of all. To skin and fillet a fish, I slit the skin all the way around the neck just back of the gills. Then I make a deep cut the length of the back, with an added slit on both sides of the dorsal fin. Then a shallow slit all down the belly, just through the skin, and again a deep cut on both sides of the anal fin. Next I pull out the dorsal and anal fins with the pliers; they come out quite easily, and this removes the small fin bones. Then, holding the fish by the head, I get a firm hold with the pliers on the skin at the top of the neck and peel off one side, all the way to the tail, turn the fish over, and peel off the skin from the other side. There is the fish, skinned and with the big fins removed. To fillet it, I go in along the backbone with the knife, working as close to the ribs as possible, and slice off the fillet toward the tail. The same on the other side and the job is done. Head, bones, and entrails are left intact, to be discarded or buried in the garden. When the fillets are washed, they are ready for the pan or the freezer pack. With this method I can fillet a dozen fish in ten minutes.

  I know fishermen who take their fillets by gutting the fish, slicing through the ribs close to the backbone, then slicing neatly downward with the knife and removing the bones in what seems to be one deft gesture. That, too, is a good way, but I prefer mine.

  The only rule I would suggest about cooking freshwater fish is to have them cooked through but not overdone. Our test is to have the cooked fish flaky. When we bake fish we strip them with bacon and often put bacon inside as well. The only seasoning we use is salt and pepper; I have a prejudice against sauces on fish. Sometimes we dot fillets generously with butter, salt and pepper them, then wrap them, several in a pack, in aluminum foil, and bake or broil them. This is a good method for cooking fish over an open fire, too. Any good chowder recipe works for making fish chowder, but my preference is for a minimum of herbs in it. Fresh fish, like fresh game of any kind, has its own flavor which should not be smothered with herbs. But I insist on having my fresh fish fresh. While we are fishing, we keep those we have caught on a stringer and in the water. If any are dead before I am ready to clean them, I discard the dead ones. I kill the live fish just before I dress them at the fish-sink, an old kitchen sink I have rigged with running water out beside the garage.

  Game birds, on the other hand, benefit by being hung or even frozen for a few days. But I prefer to have them gutted soon after they are killed, even though I do not pluck them until the day we eat them. The flavor of any bird depends in large part on its diet, and game birds eat different food at different seasons of the year. Fish-eating ducks have a fishy flavor. Winter grouse often have a cedar or hemlock flavor because they have been eating cedar berries or hemlock needles. In the West, sage grouse have the flavor of the sage leaves they eat. And any bird badly shot up will have a strong taste from the fluids in the intestinal tract unless gutted as soon as it is killed. It is my experience that game birds with an unpleasantly rank flavor have been taken at the wrong season, have been improperly dressed, or have been hung too long. If I find any bird has an unpleasant odor when I dress it, I don’t try to eat it.

  In cooking all game birds, we treat them much the same as tame fowl. We stuff ruffed grouse with bread stuffing made from the same recipe we use for roasting chickens, and we roast them the same way. With all game birds, however, it is necessary to baste with oil or fat, since they have drier meat than pen-fed domestic birds. We sometimes strip those we roast with bacon. This holds true for grouse, pheasant, ducks, even geese, though wild geese are fatter than any of the others.

  Nearly all birds are edible, but I wouldn’t shoot a song bird for anything. In Europe they even eat larks, which seems to me barbaric. Besides, there isn’t a mouthful of meat on any lark I ever saw. I have eaten doves, but haven’t shot one since I was a boy; to me, it is almost like eating robins, which I would deplore utterly. There are places in this country where people eat blackbirds, and I have heard of people eating crows. They seem to me like starvation fare, both of them. But ducks, geese, grouse, partridges, pheasants, woodcocks, and quail where they are plentiful—all are legitimate fare and all have their merits at the table. But, as with fish, I frown on sauces and elaborate flavoring for birds. Their own flavor should not be masked. If one doesn’t like that flavor, one should eat domestic birds, chicken or turkey.

  Much the same rules hold for game animals, and again it is essential that the meat be fresh and properly handled. When I shoot rabbits I like to gut them in the field, and when I take a deer I bleed it at once and hog-dress it as soon as I can get it hung up. Game animals, just as domestic meat, should be bled thoroughly and cooled at once if the flavor of the meat is to be right. When I see hunters carting a deer carcass for miles on the fender of a car, usually in the hot sun and always with the car’s engine keeping it warm, I know why so many people find venison a “strong” meat. If they did the same thing to beef or lamb it would be just as rank.

  The quality of venison—all wild meat, for that matter—depends on whether it is fat or lean and what it has been feeding on. Winter deer that have lots of evergreen browse in their diet are, to my taste, inferior venison. I’ll take my deer in the late Fall, when they are well larded with fat and before they have started eating cedar or hemlock. There is a firm difference of opinion about whether does or bucks make the best venison and whether a buck with a trophy head—a big, old buck—is worth eating. I prefer my venison young, and if I have a choice between a big, old buck and a three-year-old doe, I’ll take the doe. But some hunters whose opinion I respect say the biggest buck in the herd, if he is fat, makes the best meat. Such a buck will be satisfactorily fat only before the rutting season. It is generally agreed that late Winter or Spring venison is inferior, lacking fat, tasting of evergreen browse, and generally tough. And only a fool or a starving man would kill a doe in the Spring, when she is carrying fawns.

  After a deer carcass is hog-dressed—the intestines and other organs removed—it should be left hanging to cool. I prefer to skin my deer before it cools; some wait till they are
ready to cut it up. I have heard deer hunters say that a venison should be hung for two weeks before it is cut up. I think this is nonsense. Venison is ready to cut up, to cook, to eat, to stow in the freezer, as soon as the carcass is thoroughly cooled. Some of the best venison we ever had was cut up the second day after it was taken. Some of the most unpalatable venison I ever tasted was given to me by a man who left it hanging for ten days. No wonder such meat has to be soaked in wine and vinegar, marinated is the term, before it can be eaten.

  Once we have fresh, properly butchered venison, we treat it like any domestic meat. We broil the chops and steaks, dotting them liberally with butter unless the meat has plenty of fat of its own. Sometimes we fry chops and steaks. Venison shouldn’t be broiled or fried too long. Medium rare is about right. And the only seasoning it needs is salt and pepper.

  We treat venison roasts like lamb roasts, and again don’t cook them too long. And we make venison stew exactly as we make lamb stew. Never do we marinate venison. We tried it, egged on by cookbooks written by people who apparently never had prime, fresh venison; we soaked venison chops and steaks and roasts for hours and days in spiced wine and vinegar, according to the recipes. And after we had cooked them we tasted them and threw them out. The marinades and elaborate sauces and gravies just didn’t go with our kind of venison. They spoiled good meat.

  The same is true of rabbit. Young rabbit is as sweet a meat as chicken, and we cook it much the same way, frying it or roasting it with none of the tricks the cookbook writers think up for disguising the flavor of old meat or rancid meat. Old, tough rabbit isn’t worth eating, no matter how it is disguised.

  Gray squirrel is considered good eating in some places and in certain areas is hunted as a game animal. I have eaten squirrel stew and don’t care for it, certainly not enough to shoot squirrels and cook them. Squirrel meat is somewhat more gamy in flavor than rabbit, but quite palatable.

  Raccoon is thoroughly good to eat and makes a tasty roast with a flavor something like rabbit. Opossum is regarded as a delicacy in the South, with a flavor something like pork; it is a fat meat and the fat, I understand, is rather strong in flavor. Roast ’possum and sweet potatoes make good fare, if you like ’possum.

  Woodchuck is not only edible but, I understand, quite palatable. It should be. The woodchuck is a rather fastidious vegetarian, clean in habits and diet. Call it a ground hog and there should be no particular distaste about eating it.

  Bear meat, if from a young, fat bear, is excellent, particularly when roasted. Beaver meat is good, and beaver tail is a food of long and honorable tradition, even regarded as a delicacy by beaver trappers of the past. The meat is dark but not especially strong in flavor.

  In fact, most animal meat can be eaten, as hungry men have proved time and again. A friend of mine tells me that he ate wolf meat once, a roasted ham of fat wolf, and found it tough but palatable. Since the Indians ate dog meat, I can accept his appraisal and stand on that. Men lost in the woods have killed and eaten porcupine and survived, though none that I know would recommend porcupine as a gourmet item. I once heard of a man who had cooked and sampled skunk meat. He didn’t recommend it, though he insisted that it didn’t taste really bad; he just kept remembering how the animal smelled when it was alive.

  Muskrat makes quite acceptable table meat, something like rabbit. In fact, a good deal of muskrat meat is sold and eaten in Louisiana under the name “marsh hare.” I have never known of anyone eating fox or bobcat, but either one would certainly be edible if a man were hungry enough. Long ago I ate fried prairie dog and found it much like jack rabbit. The prairie dog is a minor cousin of the woodchuck, a vegetarian like the rabbit, and if it weren’t for the name it might have become a common item in the country diet of the West. But prairie dogs were starvation fare and weren’t eaten even by hungry men as long as they could get prong-horn antelope or rabbits. The prong-horn’s meat, which I have eaten, tastes like lamb; like strong mutton, if the prong-horn is an old buck.

  Even snakes and insects are edible, though most of us want none of them. Years ago I was tricked into eating rattlesnake meat, which tasted something like fishy chicken. But when somebody began canning rattlesnake meat for sale to experimental eaters a few years ago I didn’t see any rush to buy it. Probably most people feel as I do about eating snakes. And although roasted grasshoppers and chocolate-covered ants have been offered to devotees of exotic foods, they don’t seem to have stampeded the market.

  Turtles, of course, are not only edible but provide gourmet items such as turtle steaks and turtle soup. The big snapping turtles are the best flavored of our common turtles. They have to be butchered with an ax, however, and one must know how to choose and extract the meat. The amateur will be wise to leave turtles alone unless he is an insistent experimenter or lost and starving.

  To sum up, the person who knows what to look for and where to find it would have no reason to starve in the woods, even today. A natural abundance is available, though it takes a bit of knowledge to find it and make the best use of it. Few of us, however, are equipped by either knowledge or inclination to live entirely on this abundance. Most country folk, when they use wild plants at all, eat them only a few times a year. Fish and game are more common than wild plants on the rural table.

  All wild fare, plant, animal, bird, or fish, demands care in the taking, the preparation, and the cooking. Unless one knows how to handle it one is better off with bread and butter, meat and potatoes, fruit and vegetables, all from the nearest market. But those who take game or fish should remember two things. First, treat all wild meat, from butchering to refrigeration, with the same care you give expensive beefsteak or swordfish. Second, cook it simply. Most cookbook recipes for wild meat either mask its flavor or ruin it for any sensitive palate.

  Chapter 13

  Out of This Nettle, Danger

  There are some things, but not too many, toward which the countryman knows he must be properly respectful if he would avoid pain, sickness, and injury. Nature is neither punitive nor solicitous, but she has thorns and fangs as well as bowers and grassy banks.

  “WHAT,” THE NEWCOMER TO the country sometimes asks, “are the hazards? There must be vicious animals, poisonous snakes and insects, and poisonous plants. Which are the dangerous ones, and how dangerous are they?”

  Of course there are hazards. There are hazards everywhere. But, on the whole, city life is more hazardous than life in the country. The principal difference is that those accustomed to urban life are aware of the hazards in the city and avoid them almost by instinct; they are less aware of rural hazards, and the unknown is always disturbing. But this must be said: There are practically no vicious animals left in the United States, very few in the East, and even they will run from a human being unless they are wounded or cornered. Poisonous snakes are rare and seldom bite unless cornered or stepped on. Insects can be a painful nuisance but almost never worse than that except to unusually allergic persons. There are poisonous roots, berries, and mushrooms, but only a fool eats those he cannot positively identify.

  Actually, the most dangerous living thing I know of in this country, plant, animal, snake, or insect, is poison ivy. And it grows in cities and suburbs as well as in the country. I believe that more people suffer from ivy poisoning every year than from any other natural hazard except possibly sunburn. For every person bitten by a snake or a spider, clawed by a bear or made ill by eating poisonous plants, ten thousand others probably require medical help or hospitalization for ivy poisoning.

  I shall take up the other hazards one by one, but let’s start with poison ivy.

  Botanically, poison ivy is a cousin of the harmless common sumac. It grows both as a climbing vine and as a sprawling shrub, and it grows in almost any kind of soil, in sun or shade. It is most common in good soil, in damp places, and in partial shade. Every part of the plant—root, stem, leaf, and berry—contains an oil called cardol that is an extreme irritant to the skin. Some people are immune to it—I
seem to be; but that immunity sometimes disappears overnight. One friend of mine was acutely susceptible until he was in his twenties, was then immune for ten years or so, and without warning became susceptible again, even more so than in his youth.

  Contact with the plant usually has no immediate effect, but within hours, nearly always within a day, a rash appears. The rash soon becomes a mass of small blisters. If much of an area is affected it can be not merely painful but serious. Susceptible persons can be infected by handling clothes someone else has worn in ivy-grown places. They can get it by touching dogs or cats that have been in an ivy patch. They can even get it by standing in the smoke from a fire in which any part of the plant is being burned.

  Any number of “cures” and “preventives” have been tried, including pills and injections. I know of none that is universally effective, probably because of the individual differences in susceptibility and skin sensitivity. Among everyday remedies, washing with strong soap soon after exposure usually is of great help because it removes and neutralizes the poisonous oil, which is chemically acid. The application of any alkaline substance seems to help. Some people wash exposed areas with white gasoline and get relief. Among natural remedies, the juice of the common jewelweed appears to be effective for some cases. A handful of the plant’s juicy stems and leaves is crushed and rubbed on the affected skin. Unless one uses a strong alkaline soap and uses it generously, a bath after exposure can spread the infection and make it worse.

  The best means of protection I know is to recognize the plant and avoid contact with it. Poison ivy is easily identified, once one knows it by sight, but the uninitiated sometimes confuse it with Virginia creeper, another common but harmless vine.

  Virginia creeper, sometimes called woodbine, grows as poison ivy does, in old stone walls and on trees. But Virginia-creeper leaves, lance-shaped, saw-toothed, and deep green, grow in groups of five, occasionally seven. Poison-ivy leaves grow in groups of three, never five. Poison-ivy leaves are smooth-edged, lighter green, and broader in shape than Virginia-creeper leaves, and have a shiny, oily look. Virginia-creeper leaves tend to droop on their stems. Poison-ivy leaves stand up straight. Virginia creeper’s stems are smooth, like grapevines. Poison-ivy stems often have grayish-white, whiskery-looking rootlets by which they cling to stones and tree trunks.