Wild Birds Smoked for TX

And I say, Oh Yeah! It's good to be me!

Last week-end, all you faithful blog followers recall, Michael cleaned out his freezer.  At that time, I brined a turkey breast, a pheasant, and 10 ducks.  They have been in the solution for 5 days.  Some of you may say, "That's too long."  And, for smaller bits, you may be right.  But I did not use all that much salt.  I did add pepper flakes and cayenne to the mix though.

Tonight, I fired up the smoker with apple wood.  I put the turkey and pheasant on the upper rack and the ducks on the lower rack.  I wanted the duck fat to NOT drip on the turkey and pheasant.  Well, what little of it there was.

I pulled the smaller bits off after an hour.  You could taste the salt in them.  The pheasant was perfect - no salty flavor at all.  I have not yet tried a duck.

BTW, I smoked the duck to 140 F, the pheasant to 150 F and the turkey to 160 F.  All done at 225 F smoker temperature.  Low and slow boys, low and slow.

And I read an article online from an editor of a hunting magazine that said - every half hour, pull the meat out and spread Maple Syrup over the birds as it gives the smoke something to adhere to.  That sounded pretty delicious to me.  So every 1/2 hour I pulled the door and spread on the syrup.  I know, if you're looking, you ain't cooking.  Got it.  I figured the end result would be worth a little more time in the smoker.  And I was right.

The only way it could have been better is if I put BACON on them with the Maple Syrup.

Anyhows, the plan is to freeze these birds now and take them to Texas with us on our annual prairie dog hunt.  Man are we going to be eating good!

Following are some pictures:

The smoker getting going tonight.

The Beer Fridge - Locked and Loaded!  From L to R:
Warsteiner Dunkle, Longboard Lager, Sun King WeeMac, Sun King Cream Ale,
Landshark, Shiner Bock, and Leinkugle's Summer Wheat
You won't see any Reindeer Slobber.  Gotta go to Montezuma to get that.

Opening up to put more Maple Syrup on the birds.
Note temperature probe in turkey breast - exiting on the left hand side.
Hand-held thermometer in duck breast on top rack.
Pheasants have already been pulled and taste-tested.  YUM!

I also learned that the lower in the smoker you go (closer to the heat) the quicker you get cooked.  Makes sense, eh?  Gotta go pull some more birds and taste-test me a duck! 

Don't hate the player......hate the game.....go shoot you some birds and do the same.....



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cleaning Winchester SX3 / SX4 Shotguns

Image
The Winchester SX4 is my Go To shotgun for everything - clays, doves, ducks, geese, pheasants, whatever.  It is an awesome firearm.  The drawback?  There are multiple moving parts and a few of them like to collect carbon.  And this carbon sticks as if it were put on those parts with super glue! Specifically, the magazine tube and the gas piston are the main carbon collectors.  Those parts come out more black than silver & gold. The inner components of an SX3 / SX4 with highlights where carbon will form So what is my trick for cleaning those bits?  I drop the gas piston into my Hornady sonic cleaner.  Inside the cleaner I put in about a cup of Hornady's One Shot Sonic Clean Solution for gun parts, add some DI water, a couple squirts of Dawn liquid dish soap, and then top it off with a dash or two of the citrus version of Dr. Bronner's pure castile liquid soap.  I have found that the citrus Dr. Bronner's is awesome at removing grease and oil....
Read more

Winchester SX4 Trigger Assembly Update

Image
First, you need to read the post immediately before this one to understand why I had to take my Winchester SX4 shotgun apart - all the way apart - specifically the trigger assembly. Second, my bad.  I had neglected to clean the gun after returning from last October's pheasant trip.  I had about one bale of grass seed inside that gun, which in the end, may have kept the #8 pellet from getting out on its own.  Shame. Finally, I did not give up.  I watched four different YouTube videos on how to disassemble and reassemble the trigger group.  Sadly, no one did the SX4, only the previous version, the SX3.  Close enough.  Why did it take 4 videos?  Because no one explained HOW the damn sear goes back in.  Everyone either ASSUMED we all know how OR in two cases, the reassembly process was out of the camera frame.  Aggravating! The key, and this is more for me to remember, was on the fourth video, the author said, "The sear kinda slides down int...
Read more

Determine Sex of Deer from Tracks

Image
It IS possible to determine from a set of tracks whether the deer you are tracking is a doe (female) or a buck (male).  And, it's actually pretty simple if you know a few facts about deer. First, you have to know what a deer track looks like.  Deer leave a track that looks like the outline of a heart. Next, you have to know the direction of travel.  Deer are moving toward the "pointy" end of the heart.  So in the above example, the deer is traveling toward the top of this post, or up. Here is an actual photo of deer tracks in the wild so you can get a better idea.  Again, this deer is traveling up, or towards the top of this page.  (It is also clear that this deer was STANDING, not walking - well clear enough to me.  Read on to find out why I know that). Sometimes if the ground is soft or if the deer is traveling really fast (jumping), the track left will show the deer's dew claws at the rear of the direction traveling, like so: The ...
Read more