Duck Poppers

 

Want to do something with that duck you shot besides stick it in the oven or grill it? Try my friend Aaron Custer’s duck poppers.

First, shoot one duck. Filet the breasts and peel off the silver skin. Slice filets long-ways into ¼” or 3/8” slices and soak in cold water for several hours.

Marinate over night in your favorite marinade. I used Italian salad dressing. Anything short of brake fluid should do as long as it includes McCormick’s steak seasoning.

Slice jalapeno peppers long-ways and remove seeds. Six peppers and one mallard makes a ginormous pile of poppers. Fill jalapeno halves with cream cheese and place a strip of duck on each. At this point I deviated from Aaron’s recipe by slicing each popper in two crossways making them more bite-sized. Wrap a half strip of bacon around each popper, secure it with a toothpick, and grill until bacon is done. You want the duck medium rare. If you want to include the legs, wrap bacon around them and grill them but allow more cooking time.

When I tried it the bacon caused a huge flame-up when grilled on high. With the next batch I moved the poppers off the direct flame, lowered the temperature and it worked better.

Prepare some poppers and take them to the duck blind with you to grill at mid-morning when you’re having trouble staying awake. It’s a nice break from Ho Hos and Ding Dongs.

Eat your heart out Rachel Ray! A pile of poppers

 

Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing, Inc.

A catchphrase making the rounds nowadays is “I want to do something to make a difference”. What makes a difference varies from person to person but here’s something that will definitely make a difference regardless of your political persuasion: Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing, Inc.

PHWFF provides fly fishing, fly casting, and fly tying instruction for wounded military personnel. If you are proficient in any of these areas this great organization can find a use for you.

If you’re not confident in your instructional abilities but would like to contribute to PHWFF please mail your check to:

Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing, Inc.
PO Box 695
La Plata, MD  20624

Support our wounded servicemen and women. visit http://projecthealingwaters.org.

PHWFF

 

Ebony Of Lone Oak 1999 – 2013

Obituary

Yesterday we had to have our old Lab Ebony Of Lone Oak put down. She was slowly dying before our eyes from a nasty combination of age-related problems.

A gentle pet and  eager retriever, Ebby began her thirteen-year career in 1999 as an outrageous eight-month-old  puppy and retired after the 2011 season to spend her remaining days as a pampered house pet.

As with our previous Labs, her ashes will be loaded into shotgun shells and fired  over the area where she made her most memorable retrieves. At some point in the future my own remains will join hers.

I think it was Gene Hill who said, “If there are no Labrador retrievers in heaven, I don’t want to go.”

Photography by Jon Blumb

 

Another Duck Season Comes to a Close

If you have to bag a lot of birds to have a good duck season 2012 was not your kind of year. We didn’t have many good days… unless you consider watching a beautiful Missouri sunrise or grilling sausage & cheese biscuits with friends in a twenty-six year old duck blind a good day.  How about stroking the damp fur of a good Lab who would rather be there with you than any place else on earth and would eagerly leap into ice-cold water to retrieve a duck (if you ever shot one)?   What about an evening sitting by a fire, cradling a cold drink in your gloved hand while hoping to spot a late flight of wood ducks cruising in for the night or a doe getting an early start on her nightly prowl for acorns and left-over field corn?

 If these things float your layout boat then you would have been right at home at the Lone Oak Duck Club this past season.

It’s Tweener Time

As the New Year festers on the horizon, threatening to cut a wide swath through our hopes and expectations, lighten your load with a brief moment of laughter.

As you may recall from a previous lesson, a “Tweener” is a cartoon that’s a little too raunchy for outdoor publications but too outdoorsy for Playboy. It’s in between. The urban metrosexual Playboy reader knows nothing of doe-in-heat scent (unless he leads an even kinkier sex life than most) and the typical outdoor magazine editor isn’t comfortable publishing a cartoon that, in this case, deals with cross-fertilization between deer and deer hunter.

But you’re a weirdo or you wouldn’t be looking at this blog, so you should be able to view a Tweener once in a while without having your moral compass knocked off kilter.

Annual Winter Outing: Heart Of America Fly Fishers

The HOAFF winter outing at Bennett Spring State Park is one of our most popular events each year. Always the first weekend in December, the weather is usually pleasant but this year Mother Nature out-did herself and smiled on us with 60-degree afternoons.

A picnic lunch near the spring on Saturday, followed by more fishing till 4 PM, then barbeque at Ollie’s at 6:30.  Throw in a trout or two and you’ve got yourself a super weekend.

If you’ve never taken advantage of the winter catch & release weekends at Bennett Spring you’re missing out on some of the best trout fishing of the year. The winter season runs from the 2nd Friday in November to the 2nd Monday in February.  All three zones are open to catch & release fly-fishing from 8 AM to 4 PM Friday through Monday. No daily tags are required but you must have a valid MO fishing license.

Thanks to Webmaster & Event Coordinator Bill Brant for these excellent photos.

Now put on your waders, get out there, and start pounding the water to a froth.

Buckville

Bruce Cochran      Sept./Oct. Wyoming Wildlife News    

July

I was in full fishing mode and the female voice on my GPS commanded me to go through Buckville on the way to a secret stream that only I and several thousand other people knew about.  I’ve been married over fifty years so I’m used to doing what a female voice tells me to do.

I had heard of Buckville. Never been there.  As I drove into town I couldn’t help noticing the billboard that proclaimed Buckville the deer capital of the Universe.  The only café in town was right on the highway and the parking lot was jammed with eighteen-wheelers, usually a sign of edible grub, so I decided to stop for lunch. Several weary truckers were eating in an area marked DRIVERS ONLY. Not being a trucker, I wondered what would happen if I took a seat there. I decided not to chance it.

The waitress brought a menu and I ordered the chicken fried steak for $8.95. I glanced around the café and wondered why there was anything else on the menu. Everyone seemed to be eating chicken fried steak.

While waiting for my food I browsed through a local newspaper. The first baby born in Buckville this year was christened… you guessed it… Buck. And she was a girl. I noticed the rest room doors were marked Bucks and Does. Looking at the high school girls basketball schedule on the wall I saw their colors were blaze orange and camo and they were called The Daring Does. Staring out the window I noticed for the first time the MacDonald’s up the street had golden antlers instead of arches. That was the clincher. I was definitely in deer country.

I finished my chicken fried steak, paid up, and ambled toward the door. Outside I stopped to talk with several old men in overalls who were seated on a bench, whittling.

 “I’ve heard this is the deer capital of the universe. Are there really a lot of deer around here?”

The old men stared at me like I was from another planet, then looked at each other as though trying to decide which one should field this absurd question. Finally one spoke.

“Are there a lot of deer around here?” he croaked rhetorically. “Why Son, they come into town at high noon, walk right down Main Street, and pee on the school bus tires!” The others nodded in agreement and continued to whittle.

“The dang bucks rub the velvet off their antlers on the lamp posts!” added another old-timer.

I decided right then, come October, I would definitely be back in Buckville.

October

It’s much cooler now, the hardwoods have taken on their fall colors and most are shedding leaves. The aspens are school bus yellow and some are starting to fade. The population of Buckville seems to have tripled and most of the newcomers on the streets are wearing blaze orange. A huge WELCOME DEER HUNTERS banner is stretched between two lampposts above Main Street. I wonder where they keep it the rest of the year. Probably in a closet in city hall with the WELCOME BUCKVILLE HIGH ALUMNAE, WELCOME TROUT FISHERMEN, WELCOME SHRINERS, and WELCOME ELK HUNTERS banners.

The streets are crowded with SUVs and pickups, most with camper shells or dusty ATVs in the beds. I finally find a parking spot and walk several blocks to the café where I see scrawled on the window in huge blaze orange letters OPENING DAY SPECIAL!! CHICKEN FRIED STEAK! ONLY $15.95.

The same waitress waddles toward my table. This time she’s wearing a blaze orange vest, and perched on her old gray head are a pair of floppy velvet antlers. She hands me a menu and I ask for a cup of decaff coffee. The room goes silent. Other customers – especially the truckers – stop eating, put down their forks and stare at me.  The waitress rolls her eyes and stomps back toward the kitchen.

Reading from the top of the menu I see “SCOPE OUT OUR DEER HUNTER SPECIALS!”  Ms. Antlerhead brings my decaff and I order the Opening Day Special.

“Don’t let it scare you”, she says, scribbling on her order pad. “It’s blaze orange but that’s just food coloring.”

It’s comforting to know that no one will draw a bead on my chicken fried steak, mistaking it for a trophy muley.

I finish my meal and leave a couple of bills on the table. I notice most of the other customers have already left and there seems to be a crowd gathering out front. I walk out and see the same old men, still sitting and whittling, now waist deep in a huge pile of wood shavings.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“You must be the feller who ordered decaff,” says one, without looking up.

“Parade”, answers the more informative one.

I hear music in the distance, growing louder. The local high school marching band in all their blaze orange and camo splendor is approaching, all wearing antlers on their heads. The band is followed by a pickup truck with a deer stand in the bed, and seated high on the stand is an attractive young lady, waving to the crowd and tossing out little sample packets of doe-in-heat scent. She’s wearing a blaze orange formal with a sash proclaiming her to be Miss Opening Day.

I pick my way through the blaze orange crowd, past the face-painting booth and the pony rides, past the petting zoo, to my truck. After buying a deer tag I head out of town in hopes of finding a place to hunt tomorrow. On the way I swerve to miss a nice four pointer loping along the highway toward town.

 He seems to be heading straight for Main Street and the school buses.

Bruce Cochran