My friend Gil Stacy is a naturalist- hunter, reader, game cook, and fine gun addict who lives in Georgia and hunts everything with zest and style. While like me not...
quite a collector, he has things like a Fox or two, an uncommon ten magnum Ithaca, English boxlocks. He even likes FRENCH guns, putting himself into a very small minority with me. His current snipe gun-- he HAS a snipe gun, and I swear I will get out there to hunt snipe, and maybe Woodcock, before I die, partially because he does, is a Manufrance Robust 16 bore.
I know from these and other things that he is a man of taste and necessary obsessions, and one who would never cook either of those incredible birds for a half hour in the oven. I put mine in a very hot one for no more than ten minutes after setting them up, with or without "trail"-- I know some otherwise sensible folks who accept all our other traditional food madness, but won't go that last inch, so if we have a good harvest we cook them with AND without, though If I am the cook I will insist on leaving the heads on, just because...
Guy Valdene once saw one of those recipes that get published in newspapers and local hunters' cookbooks, the ones where you get Jello recipes and the like, that recommended breading and deep-frying woodcock and then cooking them in two cans of Campbell's cream of mushroom soup for hours. His furious and correct response was : "As this negates the very motive for killing the birds in the first place, why not take it a step further and poach the woodcock overnight in equal parts of catsup, pabulum, and Pepto-Bismol?"
But I digress (!) I wanted to put up Gil's first gobbler of the year, with one of his highly modified 1- shot .410s, with which he has made more than a few immediate kills (custom chokes, custom loads, knowledge of the terrain, calling ability, and the patience to wait until they get close-- don't try it unless you have all those factors).
Gobbler, Turkish Yildiz folding .410, and a caller made from a turtle shell. We will have more to say about that, as Gil has just sent me a package of the "ingredients"... (WE? sorry-- I am neither a king nor Elmer Keith. "I"!)
