A forum bird hunt ?

[yukonjasper]

I can't imagine they would be bad tasting. Give it a try and let us know.

[Pat]

If some of you guys are serious about a hunt, and know the safety rules when hunting in a group, count me in.

[crbutler]

I think what rankles is that it used to be a state where a boy with a dog could walk up to a farmers door and walk awa with permission to hunt his back 40, come away with a coupld birds and have a good day. Now he has to have the cash to outbid the guy who flew in that morning in his leer. It is not just SD of course but some of our old ways are slowly passing into a different era...

+1

Because of the connections I have, I've hunted at these SD game ranches with guys who have LITERALLY flown in with their leer, 10K bird gun, and top trained dog who doesn't know who the **** his master is, and watched them miss all day long. However, it was fun knowing that the freeze dried pheasant they went home with had my shot in it....

My issue with the SD ranches is that they are charging you a premium price to hunt "wild" birds. Chatting with the guy who owned the property I hunted the last time I went out there, it sounds like most of the big money leases and quite a few of the less expensive ones have a substantial amount of released birds on them. It's not quite the game farm put 5 birds in the field and you and rover hunt them up, but it seems that if its pen raised birds, its a game farm and not worth the kind of money they charge.

I'm not saying anything against game farms, and I tend to shoot pheasant on a game farm during the winter once the hunting seasons are closed-- its all good! but, to me, I would not pay $250/gun/day for 3 game farm birds when I can do the same thing and shoot a heck of a lot more birds locally.

Now, I know there are plenty of places that don't do this, and there are public land places in SD that can offer a difficult hunt with good bird numbers, but whenever I hear about the Lear Jet set I realize these games are being played because these guys are not going out to just walk a field- they want a guarantee to see birds.

[tazdevil]

So where do we stand with this? Happening or not?

[Snowgun]

I think what rankles is that it used to be a state where a boy with a dog could walk up to a farmers door and walk awa with permission to hunt his back 40, come away with a coupld birds and have a good day. Now he has to have the cash to outbid the guy who flew in that morning in his leer. It is not just SD of course but some of our old ways are slowly passing into a different era...

+1

Because of the connections I have, I've hunted at these SD game ranches with guys who have LITERALLY flown in with their leer, 10K bird gun, and top trained dog who doesn't know who the **** his master is, and watched them miss all day long. However, it was fun knowing that the freeze dried pheasant they went home with had my shot in it....

My issue with the SD ranches is that they are charging you a premium price to hunt "wild" birds. Chatting with the guy who owned the property I hunted the last time I went out there, it sounds like most of the big money leases and quite a few of the less expensive ones have a substantial amount of released birds on them. It's not quite the game farm put 5 birds in the field and you and rover hunt them up, but it seems that if its pen raised birds, its a game farm and not worth the kind of money they charge.

I'm not saying anything against game farms, and I tend to shoot pheasant on a game farm during the winter once the hunting seasons are closed-- its all good! but, to me, I would not pay $250/gun/day for 3 game farm birds when I can do the same thing and shoot a heck of a lot more birds locally.

Now, I know there are plenty of places that don't do this, and there are public land places in SD that can offer a difficult hunt with good bird numbers, but whenever I hear about the Lear Jet set I realize these games are being played because these guys are not going out to just walk a field- they want a guarantee to see birds.

The rub is that usually the pheasants are so filthy in SD that these guys don't have to farm birds, all they have to do is pay the farmers who crop lease the land to wait a little longer to harvest, or skip a row or two, and the shear volume of acreage they have does the rest. I'm all about taking crap land and planting birds, but taking prime land and fencing it off for corporate hunts seems icky to me.

[Holland&Holland]

Plenty of MN raised birds get sold to SD for release. Call it what you will. I have no issues with a game farm either and go when I can but if you think SD is just wild birds galore running around you are deluding yourself. It is a business and big business at that and the pump needs primed in order to keep it moving. Not good or bad but it is what it is.

[yukonjasper]

Tried this out with duck breasts and it was really good.

A couple of things:
- Ham was tough to roll as it kept breaking - I was using Black Forest ham, so maybe another would be better - mine ended up being double wrapped.
- it was a little salty, but that could be remedied by the quality of the soup used and a low sodium version would help this.

Try this:

Ingredients:

4-6 pheasant breasts
thinly sliced ham
shredded cheddar cheese
1-2 10.5oz cans of cream of mushroom soup
flour
salt & pepper to taste


Take your deboned breasts and put them between two pieces of plastic wrap and with a mallet pound them out till they are nice and thin no more than 1/2" (I like to try and get closer to 1/4" if I can).

Take the one of the flattened breasts and place a slice or two of ham and then a layer of the cheese leaving a space around the edges so you can tuck it in to seal it up. Roll them up as well as you can doing your best to close up the edges and secure with a toothpick or two. Repeat on the remaining breasts.

Once all the breasts are filled and rolled up lightly coat them in the lightly seasoned flour. Preheat a pan and with about 1 tbl spoon of olive oil and place breasts into pan to sear. Sear each breast quickly on all sides and then turn the heat to low. Add cream of mushroom soup and place lid on pan. Let cook for about an hour or so.

I like to serve this with wild rice and a nice Pinot.

I wonder how this would taste with a couple if goose breasts or some duck breasts? Any body try it before?

[tazdevil]

Yukon, the ham could be making it salty too. Maybe different types (brownsugar/honey style) would help as well?

[yukonjasper]

yes, thought about that. I used Black Forest Ham - presliced from Costco. It was what I had on hand. A thicker slice of a different style ham would probably do the trick. It was difficult to keep the cheese in the roll with the ham not cooperating. I also need to get a larger hammer for flattening those breasts.......