Hi -

Welcome to Wild Bites #7 from Hunter Angler Gardener Cook, a brief biweekly newsletter designed to make you smarter about your wild food. We'll also tell you what we're up to right now - a taste of what's to come on our website, podcast, YouTube, or To The Bone.

 ~ Hank (the chef) and Holly (the photographer)

Hank completed the North American grouse slam last weekend in Alaska (more on that below), while Holly got back to work on her fly fishing skills in the High Sierra (no fish were caught, much less killed or eaten).

1. What's Hot Now

2. Smart Take: Get Ready for Dove Season

This might surprise you, but whether you're shooting with lead or steel, research by noted authority Tom Roster shows your best chances of success with doves are with an improved cylinder choke in your barrel, shooting at birds no more than 30 yards out.

Clockwise from top left: doves la Mancha, Dateland dove poppers, barbecued doves, Jesse's fried doves, Hank's poppers.

Dove season starts Sept. 1 in much of the country - are you ready? In addition to that sage piece of advice above, we have lots of resources to help you prepare:

How not to miss: Practice! Doves are almost always crossing shots, which require you to lead the bird a lot. The best way to practice that shot is to park yourself on stations 3, 4 and 5 in skeet. If you wanna be sporty, shoot doubles there. Struggling? Check out Holly's video, How to Lead a Moving Target with a Shotgun - the most common response Holly hears to this video is, "Oooooh, that's why I'm missing!"

Hunting tactics, identification and cooking: Hank did a podcast on dove hunting back in 2020 with Jorge Ramirez of Upland Jitsu and biologist Owen Fitzsimmons of the Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife (run time: 1:27, or there is a transcript you can read instead of listening). Right around the same time, Holly did a webinar on dove hunting for beginners (run time: 1:02).

How to clean doves: If you know us, you know we pluck most of our birds whole, and doves are the easiest gamebirds to pluck, by far. Ready to give it a try? Holly has a video on how to pluck and gut doves.

How to cook your doves: Well, that's what we're all about! Hank's got two dozen dove recipes in the website, and this collection of recipes is your gateway to them.

People often ask our favorites, which is like asking someone to pick their favorite child ... but today we're gonna tell you our favorites (the photo above was a sneak preview): Hank's are doves la Mancha, and Dateland dove poppers. Holly's also a huge fan of la Mancha, as well as Hank's poppers, Jesse's fried doves (a snipe recipe that works well on doves), and slow-and-low barbecued dove (they're tender beyond belief).

3. What We're Up To

Hank was pretty stoked (see photo at the top of the email) to complete the North American grouse slam last weekend on a hunt in Alaska with our old friend Tyler Webster and new friends Eric Locker and Evan Withrow.

It was an adventure made for someone who revels in hunting and gathering, with trials befitting a classic Gen X'er's approach to life: Fine. This is fine. Whatever.

Read the whole story in this free post on To The Bone.

Holly took a weekend off from mushroom hunting to run a women's shoot in the San Francisco Bay Area on Sunday. It was for members of Outdoorswomen of California, an 8-year-old Facebook group she runs with former co-worker SarahBeth Gonsalves.

The group, with more than 225 members, is geared toward female adult-onset hunters. Its goal is to provide the hunting family that most of them didn't grow up with - friendly people readily available to share advice, loan gear and buddy up for a day in the field. As women progress, the goal is to help them grow the confidence they need to hunt independently, and ultimately take other new hunters under their wings.

4. Gettin' Birdy: One Book to Cook Them All, 30% Off! 

September 1 kicks off a cascade of bird seasons that define early fall for hunters across much of the Lower 48. To celebrate the impending bounty of varying dove, quail, grouse, pheasant and turkey, we're offering a huge 30% discount off signed copies of the one book to help you cook them all: Pheasant, Quail, Cottontail.

This book covers a wide array of small game - birds and mammals - with a super useful "Recipe Index by Animal" starting on page 331. Simply look up the animal you want to cook and find a list of all the recipes that would be appropriate for it - there's a lot of crossover!

-Offer is good through Labor Day (Sept. 5).

-One use per customer (multiple copies OK).

-Discount applied at checkout.

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