Wild Bites #19: a 3-minute read that makes you smarter about wild food and tells you what's to come on our website, podcast, YouTube, or To The Bone.

 -Hank and Holly (Team Hunter Angler Gardener Cook)

1. What's Hot Now

Venison ragu - how comforting is that?

2. Teal & Dove Culinary Hunt 

Join Hank and our friend Larry Robinson of Coastal Wings Outfitters on a big hunt for delicious little birds in September!

The event, which runs Sept. 17-20, includes three mornings of teal hunting, two afternoons of dove hunting, meals featuring our game, as well as cooking tips and demos from Hank.

The cost is $2,000/person, which includes three nights of lodging, all meals, demos by Hank and hunting. Email Hank to book your spot.

3. Smart Take: Freeze Drying

Dehydration is a common tool in a hunter/forager's toolkit, but freeze drying can get results vastly superior to dehydration, especially in terms of texture. 

In the latest Hunt Gather Talk podcast, Hank spoke with the intrepid Shannon Waters, who turned her disgust with commercial freeze-dried food she had tried while hiking into a new company, Gastro Gnome Meals, that makes high-quality stuff.

Shannon shares her successes and failures, and they talk about who might want to take the plunge into freeze drying.

4. What We're Up To

Holly's last duck of the season - a gorgeous drake gadwall

Duck season is finally over; the season and travel and projects is upon us!

Hank is headed to Oklahoma next week for Pig School - a culinary hunt with our friend Larry Robinson of Coastal Wings Outfitters. This will kick off a spring full of travel, including a trip to Montana in March to cook at the Backcountry Hunters and Anglers Rendezvous Field to Table Dinner.

Holly is working on a project that's not ready for daylight yet, but in the meantime, she has posted her end-of-season duck gear review, so for all of you who have asked how happy she was with her new $1,100 (😮) waders, that's where you can find the answer.

5. Did you notice...

... the band on that dove in the photo in Item #2? Holly bands doves in our back yard each summer, and that bird in particular has a good story. 

And no, we don't get to eat the birds she bands. But one year Hank's cat Harlequin caught and ate one of Holly's banded doves a few months after banding season.

Yes, our cat got a band.

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