I have eaten duck

"...most uninitiated find they have to develope a taste for it..." That's for sure. Domestic duck is fed totally different food than Daffy finds in the pond. The flavour is totally different. Domestic ducks tend to have more fat as well so they're greasier when cooked. Daffy is a lean bird. Just like other game.
"...duck hunting for the sport is another story..." Killing any game and leaving it there is illegal in most places.
"...tried it in a chinese restaurant..." If you ever saw what goes on in the kitchens of Chinese restaurants, you'd never eat in them again. Drove a truck, long ago, delivering supplies to Chinese restaurants. Haven't eaten Chinese since. Mind you, other restaurants aren't much better.
 
i don't think it's the best meat I've ever had, but I also enjoy it from time to time. most of my friends give me theirs cause they aren't that happy with it.
 
Hunted duck and cottontail along the Missouri and Big Sioux River running down Iowa, Nebr and South Dakota borders back in 49-50. Had an old 12 gauge with 32 inch barrel. The local hardware man would sell shotgun shells for 10 cents apiece...never knew that there was any other shell besides REM Shur shot 7 and a half. Would clean the
game when we got lucky and sell the duck and rabbit for 50 cents each to a bartender up in Jefferson, SD. Of course then to me there was no such thing as sport hunting. We ate a lot of duck and rabbit to survive. Don't remember ever selling enough duck to buy a whole box of shells. Had a corn stock blind built by a protected cove on the Big Sioux. Mallards would come in every morning. Never took a wing shot then, but would wait until a group was settled down and then cut loose...of course only got one shot...Was lucky once and got 5 ducks with one shot...
 
Yeah, domestic duck at a restaurant. The meat was almost as light as chicken. Wild duck is much worse? The domestic duck was great. But it was a nice restaurant, and the meal was over $300 for us. I'm seriously suspecting that wild duck is not the same now after reading your posts. I have a canoe and a retriever. But the canoe is some immensely heavy, 150 lb mystery material affair, and the dog is scared of both water and guns... Does all wild meat taste worse than it's domestic counterpart? Any wild meat that tastes good? Does deer compare to a good cut of beef? Pheasant to good chicken?
 
Wild duck tastes like burnt liver to me. I gave up the sport after many failed attempts to cook and eat it.
I just hope someone will tell me how to cook a decent mallard drake. I love the hunting part but don't wish to kill something I am not going to eat. (except coyotes)
Lemme know how to prepare a duck I can eat. Thanks.
 
he he ha ha lol!!!

Seriously, duck hunting in a canoe or kayak? If you have 2 shooters and both are aiming at the same side and both shoot close to the same time you will get dunked.

Here's what I use:

Mossberg 500 (28" barrel with full or mod. choke) 12 ga (fairly cheap and if you dunk it or lose it over the side not a complete loss compared to an 1187 remington)
Steel shot, sizes depends on what type of waterfowl shooting
12foot flat bottom jon boat with 10hp johnson short shaft
homemade blind to go over boat
a dozen or so decoys (make sure you put them out in the right setup or the ducks will see that something is up and fly high and away from you).
a good dog (I have labs) or a good set of hip/ chest waders
a call (get a cheap call with a video from walmart to learn then buy a better one when you get good)

gave up on duck hunting seriously and started hunting goose in the fields . My dog refused to go into the water one year when it was freezing and I ended up getting into the water and I understood exactly why he didn't want to freeze his balls off. Now both of us prefer the field hunting geese better (much dryer and your lower extremities don't turn blue).

happy hunting.

Also jump shooting a pond doesn't work that well in my experience even when you can sneak up close without them hearing you.

Wild duck is good (always dark meat), but the best I had was organic grown duck at a Thai restaurant with a nice crispy crust and sweet/sour sauce. Yum.
 
I find most duck to be dark meat, not white like a chicken's.
I mostly duck hunt from a boat, with a buddy and his yellow Lab. We just do the normal thing, set out the decoys, use the call, and blast away.
 
Duck is greasy

I don't like it. It's a pain to get the feathers out. Then there are all those pesky pellets. Stick to farm grown chicken. Much better and U can buy that in a store. Oh and I really wouldn't call duck white meat. Seems dark to me.
 
My mother used to cook wild ducks and geese that turned out great. We skinned all of ours versus plucking, it's a lot easier. She basically cooked them breast side up in an oven bag inside a roasting pan. The whole top breast section was seasoned and covered with bacon and the inside stuffed with apples and onions. The bacon kinda moisturized it and it turned out nice and tender when cooked long enough.
 
Duck's pretty good, actually. My ex-wife used to fix it similar to NRA4Life. Instead of apples, she'd use regular stuffing or an oyster stuffing. I'll have to try the apple idea. It's the bacon on top and the roasting bag that really makes it good. Even wood ducks are pretty good when given this treatment. +1 one the skinning. I gave up on plucking them, quickly.
I too have eaten badly cooked duck. Describing it as tasting like burnt liver would be an insult to the liver.
Someone asked a few posts back how deer compares with beef. I actually prefer venision to beef when roasted but nothing beats a chargrilled beef steak. I've found that deer that are killed quickly and unalarmed are much better than one that has been run for a couple of hours. A young doe is the best eating, as would be expected. The main thing about getting quality venision is taking care of the meat after the kill. You wouldn't ride around with a 100lb tuna on your tailgate. Don't do it with a deer. Don't over cook it, either. It's not pork.
There is really no comparision between deer jerky and beef jerky. Deer wins, hands down.
YUM, YUM, YUM!
 
I am going to clean mine on the boat this year (after toping them use a large coffee can to keep them from walking around). Just keep the parts so you don't tick off the DNR guy.

I also find that the faster that game is cleaned the better it tastes. I take fillets of fish as soon as I can, and off them as soon as I know they are legal.
 
If you want to sweeten up that mallard taste:
Breast em
Chunk the breast
Soak a few hours in OJ, couple dashes of soy sauce and garlic salt
powder them with flour
and deep fry til golden

best you'll ever get and it's easy to find pellets before cooking

IMHO
 
i will agree with many here, waterfowl hunting is expensive, but when u get into them it is a blast. the main things u need to get started would be 1)20 gauge or bigger and steel shot 2) ducks or geese to hunt 3) a spot where the ducks or geese go.
the most important thing that i haved learned about waterfowl hunting is you almost always have to be in a field or water where the birds are going. If you don't find one of them two spots ur screwed most of the time. Geese and ducks have to be one of the most stubborn animals i have ever hunted. if they don't like what they see they will go somewhere else, and thats a fact.(Personal experiance)

good luck and hunt safe:cool:
 
You will need a shotgun and some stick-to-it-ness. Everything else is not required for jump shooting ducks. If you fish, use your rod and reel to cast a plug across a dead duck. If not you probably need to start fishing while you are at it.

There are alot of other things you may want to get after you get started. Just remember, you need a gun and ammo to be hunting... everything else is not really required.
 
Most wild ducks do have a gammy taste to them, however, ducks (like people) are what they eat. If there are mud divers they will taste pretty rude, but some like the teal, I have found taste pretty dam good. My recipe for most wild ducks: Soak the breasts (dark meat) in soy sause for about two hours or so, add sea salt, balsamic vinager, chop up and add 1 clove of garlic, pan fry (in olive oil) or barbque, don't over cook.
 
i hated duck until i tried this--breast them out (no skin), cut the breasts into thin fajita-type strips, place in salt-water in fridge for a couple days to get blood out (change the water a few times)--use the meat with an old el paso soft taco kit instead of beef, the chili powder seasoning in the kit totally hides the gaminess, i also add some lime juice and garlic powder as it cooks, fine eatin'.....
 
The guy I hunt with has got to be one of the best game cooks. He's been cooking ducks and geese for 30 years and he ages them for a week or two (or more I think, but he won't admit to it.) He bleeds them and either leaves them outside if it's cold enough or throws them in the refrigerator until they're "ready" to mess with.

Even if you cook them without aging you have to know how to soak them and how many times to change the soak. Everybody seems to have a favorite - saltwater, milk, buttermilk, vinegar, etc.

OTOH, the best duck dinner I ever had was in a little Chinese place London. They had pressed ducks hanging in the front window of this tiny restaurant and I think the four of us drank two bottles of wine while we waited for them to prepare out dinner. Maybe it was three bottles. ;) I love visiting people who know all of the good places.

John

P.S. - I just did a little surfing. Here's a recipe from the americansportsman site that uses sauerkraut. (SAUERKRAUT????)

Soak in salt water overnight. Drain, wash in cold water. Fill cavity with sauerkraut. Lay strips of salt pork or bacon on breast. Bake at 425 degrees. Baste with hot water, then drippings from pan.

Instead of sauerkraut you can fill cavity with: one small onion, one stalk celery with leaves, one small apple-discard after cooking.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top