Hunting Every Meal | hunting, butchering + cooking with Chef Jesse Griffiths at Pierce Ranch

So we flew into sunny Houston ready to ignore the very rainy forecast. I mean these clouds are fluffy and white, right? They can’t seriously be foretelling rain??? I thought it looked pretty promising.

Thankfully my precious cargo survived the trip. I was pretty excited to get both of these babies into the same case, especially with Checked Baggage Rates as high as they are these days.

We were picked up by Noel in her awesome dually, named CHIK. The only thing better than the sight of Noel driving CHIK is the sight of a bearded man driving her, as did three different men I witnessed over the long weekend, including Jesse and my old man.

Strangely, those men also put in soft offers to buy CHIK, and she wasn’t even for sale.

Spoiler alert: the forecast was accurate. It had been months spent in San Diego since I’d seen sheets of rain coming down like this.

By the time we pulled up to the beautiful 36,000 acres that comprise Pierce Ranch, the rain had subsided.

I nosed around the library inside. There was a practical book about how to break a horse (called There is a Method to this Madness), which reminded me a little of my book on how to toilet train my cats. That is an actual book I own and an actual thing I tried and mildly succeeded in, by the way. If you judge “success” as: the cats did use the toilet at times, regardless of times they may NOT have used the toilet.

Then I took a little walk around the grounds. This is the resident ranch dog who couldn’t even be bothered to rise for me. Some guard dog! I hope that I’m not spilling the beans that this place is robber-friendly. I mean you’d be very foolish to try to hold up a place where 100% of the guests possess firearms.

We set out for a late afternoon dove hunt. In case you didn’t know, there is no hunting birds in the rain. They won’t fly. But the birds do fly when the rain stops, which is what we were hoping for.

Here Jesse is doing some “doppler radar” whispering, acting like he knows what those colored blobs on his phone mean. I guess he did know because the storm cleared. Either that or we just got lucky!

Finally it cleared for us. We got a second ride to our spot, and hiked around some more and spread out. I’m not sure about the wisdom of holding a long steel gun up towards such an angry sky, but I’m still here to tell the tale so no harm, no foul. Or is it fowl? It’s kind of both here.

We only saw white-winged doves on this day. They were coming in by the hundreds, it seemed. The old man will tell you, “there were literally thousands in the sky. Thousands.” Now I know we’ve come to take the word “literally” much less than literally, but let me assure you that there were not thousands of birds up there – not even close. I’m stretching the truth a bit by even using the word, “hundreds.”

But yes there were many, and I know this won’t make sense to you, but in a way they are harder to focus on and shoot in a big group like that. Think of the effectiveness of a school of fish swimming tightly together. It’s harder to pick one out.

I still have a very hard time with this part of hunting. A very hard time. It’s only fair that I should, in my opinion. It’s not fair to just glibly buy a package of meat without a care for how it got there, if I’m being honest with you.

That said, there’s a joy in harvesting your own dinner. We had a mandate from our Chef: bring home some doves. He contributed nicely to the count himself of course, but he couldn’t be expected to do all of the hunting and also all of the cooking! We joked that it would be like the story of the Little Red Hen. I wasn’t going to be the lazy dog, the sleepy cat, or the noisy yellow duck.

Here’s the doves we set to plucking. We didn’t breast them out – we fully dressed them. We saved the gizzards to go into a nice confit later. At least before Jesse’s sous chef Chase accidentally knocked the tray of fully-plucked birds and gizzards into the rubbish bin. He did his best to get them all out, but not without a big silent SIGH from the rest of us. It happens to the best of us, Chase! And the clumsiest.

This is the leg the prosciutto came from. Jesse said this hog was a feral sow with a lovely golden hide dotted with white markings, and she carried a nice layer of fat that made her meat especially delicious. Then he honored the memory of that animal by having her hide tanned. I can’t wait to see a picture of it when it comes back from the tannery.

Do you consider that “trophy” hunting? If so, I am also a trophy hunter. I can think of no better tribute to the animal you hunted and ate than keeping some non-edible part (like its horns, head, feathers or hide) and displaying it as a reminder of everything: the hunt, the food, and the precious animal.

The paella and prosciutto. I don’t remember the last time I had “fifths” of something, but these birds cooked on the rare side of medium rare (since you can do that with doves, unlike chicken – don’t go rare on the chicken!) were everything to me.

I’m not sure anything good would have happened on this hunt without Russ. Did you think you could just go out there the first time and start shooting ducks without a guide? Wrongaroo. You might be able to distinguish a Blue-winged Teal from a Mourning dove or a Loggerhead Shrike or a Snowy Egret or a Crow (maybe), but can you tell the difference between Teal and a Whistling Duck? Or a Mottled Duck? Or a Redhead (a female)? No you cannot, not whizzing past you in the air in questionable light.

Left to our own devices, we probably would have just thrown the decoys into the swamp face-down, sat in the wrong spot failing to camouflage ourselves, shot the wrong bird (which is against the law), and then tried to retrieve that bird ourselves without a dog, slipping and falling into the muck until we drowned under the weight of our waders.

Our guide also had a beautiful retriever named Bella. She was tireless and ran the length of the land we were hiding out on, and also went out and retrieved just about every duck we shot. Some people insisted on getting their own birds. I was kind of like, Hey that’s what dove hunting is for, not duck hunting with a very capable bird dog. Why not let Bella run? I don’t want to steal her joy.

You will need, and want, a nice pair of waders for moving through the swamp. They also keep your undergarments (not underwear, but the clothes under your waders) from getting wet. It’s almost like a dry suit when you go scuba diving! Except for the scary physics of dive tables and “the bends” and not being able to pee in your wetsuit and all the other things that turn me off about dry suits.

On this first teal hunt, there was a lot of down time waiting for the birds to come in. I was able to focus on the area immediately around my hiding spot and spy on spiders and insects. The dragonflies love this habitat and are downright beautiful.

Here are our ducks. Nobody limited out on this morning, but this was enough to make our chef happy with the dishes he had planned for the day. Yes, these ducks are absolutely beautiful – so much prettier than their decoys, which are works of art in themselves.

Have you ever plucked a bird? With doves and quail (and even pheasant) you can just pluck them straight away without any preparation. With chicken and turkeys, it’s best to dunk them in hot water to get the feathers to come out more easily. And with ducks you really need to go a step further: to get butcher-shop quality roasting-ready skin, you can wax your ducks. That’s right.

When you dip them into a pot of very hot water with a layer of wax on the top, the feathers will come off in a sheet when you pull the wax off, much like going to a professional eyebrow (or other!) waxer. Sorry but it really is the same idea. That’s Chase on the left from Dai Due taking a photo…

His camera angle was better than ours. See?

Check out this video of our combined duck hunts: Saturday with Russ, and Sunday with Russ and Andrew. Chef Jesse walks you through how waxing your ducks works, too.

Then Jesse worked his magic on these teal with one of his signature duck recipes: Teal in a Jar. Find the recipe here.

“You can bake off these little ducks—sealed tightly in mason jars and slowly cooked with beans, bacon, sausage, and onions—and then reheat gently before serving. The cooking vessel also makes for a nice presentation. Quail, which are smaller, could also be used, but a teal just fits so nicely into a pint jar.” —Jesse Griffiths

Add the stock and bake slooooowly…

They were actually served out of the jar, family-style. Look at them now! And try to tell me this melt-in-your-mouth food doesn’t look delicious?

Possibly even better was this duck confit. Jesse’s partner in cooking magic, Chef Morgan, described how to make this but I’ve since forgotten. If I don’t write something down sometimes it’s just lost forever to space and time. Luckily I have the cookbook so I can pour over all of these recipes, and try my hand at them even if I wasn’t paying proper attention because I was too busy chit-chatting.

More Morgan magic. This is a terrible picture of her but she evades being photographed so this is all I’ve got.

Dessert was a lemon pie with a flaky crust and simple whipped cream. Every course was paired with a Texas wine in keeping with Jesse’s focus on locally-sourced food. I think that’s called being a locavore. 

I’m not lying when I say the wines were absolutely delicious! Granted I’m not a wine snob so maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I’m still a Californian who drinks almost exclusively California wine. And you know… California wine is pretty good. It’s kind of a “thing” here.

Our intrepid group of hunters – all Texan except for me and the old man! They embraced us with open arms, of course. The South has nothing on Texan hospitality.

And NO I’m not pregnant in this picture! I’m going to blame any bloat on the humidity. Nevermind that no one else looks pregnant or bloated.

That night I went on my first feral hog hunt. Can you see the nervousness in my face? I would like to have a pig for a pet one day. But I also love pork chops and bacon. Well it turns out that feral hogs are very destructive in this part of Texas and they make good eating, soooo…

I was initially set up to shoot one out to about where that white tree stands, if one were to happen by. That’s where we were expecting the hogs to come in. There was a feeder nearby, but it never went off.

Sitting in the “ready” position for hours will pump you full of adrenaline that has nowhere to go! Except into that bolt-action rifle when the time is right.

Did I mention that there were mud dauber wasps nesting next to my open window? I know they’re supposedly harmless, but they would flit just in and out of the window next to my face the whole time we were in the blind, providing a bit of distraction from the mosquitoes that were biting us all.

I tried not to think about Zika.

And if I wasn’t ready to capitalize on an unsuspecting hog, it would seem that Hanuman was. I think you could caption this photo, “trigger happy.”

We started to see a lot of feral hog action on a side road instead, so I turned by attention out that way. We also saw a fox, and a good number of deer. When I finally got what I would consider a good shoulder shot on a large grey hog at about 75 yards, there happened to be a doe standing behind the hog maybe 20 yards back and to the left. I lined up my shot perfectly and pulled the trigger. Well if you don’t know how a Browning X-Bolt 270 fires, be aware that it is very smoky – when the smoke cleared I thought I’d be looking at a downed hog. Instead, after much tracking, it was apparent that I had missed it completely.

Now I had sighted my rifle in and had tight groupings, so the rifle was not to blame and neither was my aim. Was it nerves? The doe standing in the distance but within sight? My feeling is YES to both. But I’d rather come out of a hunt with a complete miss than an injured animal, so off we went for the evening.

The next morning was Day Two of teal hunting, and we awoke nice and early again but rode out to a different spot. We had more hunters this day, and an extra guide – Andrew of Pierce Ranch – and he was delightful company with expert knowledge in duck calling and bird identification! He also had a great sense of humor that made this my very favorite hunt of the whole trip.

Me and Andrew. He was also shooting a Benelli, but a 12-gauge, and helped me figure out a little field problem I was having with my gun. Rest assured, Benelli users: the problem was my user error, not my Benelli! I have fallen in love with my shotgun all over again.

Our “blind.” Kinda rethinking the blue waders right about now since they don’t camo too well.

We watched the sun come up, and this time there was very little “down time.” Just constant action.

We’ve never watched Duck Dynasty. Would we like it? I feel like if it’s anything like this teal hunt than yes we would.

Russ, Bella, and Andrew confirming that we’d all reached our daily bag limits.

Bella and her quarry. This dog makes you want a bird dog or two SO BAD. These breeds really showcase what humans have been able to do with selective breeding, and how hard-working and dedicated these animals are.

Packing up after an eventful morning.

Our group: Jesse, John, Noel, Debbie, Me, Hanuman, and Steve, with Andrew, Bella and Russ out in front.

Hanging out in the Polaris checking emails. No! I was disconnected from most modern “devices” for most of the weekend and it was divine. I was actually listening to Debbie tell hunting stories. Hunting stories are like diving stories to me: I can never get enough!

Riding out. You can cram 6 people into this thing, and the only slight danger is falling out or tipping over. It’s no accident that I’m squarely in the middle in the back. I might have packed myself into a box in the steerage compartment if it weren’t frowned upon, so strong is my phobia of ATVs.

What are the rollover stats on this thing? The ground is not very level in most places.

When in Texas? Beer always tastes better when it’s cold, you’re hot, and you’re pumped full of adrenaline and feeling lucky to be alive.

After getting back from our second day of teal hunting we had tortilla soup, made with duck meat from the day before. Cute pic because of the duck figurines, but kind of a terrible representation of the duck component in this soup. The Californian who took this picture clearly placed more emphasis on the avocado on top of the soup than on the protein featured below! It wasn’t me, so that kind of narrows it down. Also, that beer is not at all local.

My favorite of all the duck dishes was the salad with slices of medium-rare duck on top. I had already greedily eaten some of it by the time I remembered to take the picture, so don’t think it was this sparse. It was about as good as the dove paella that first night. This dish completed my conversion to duck-hunter, let me tell you.

After lunch was a class on big-game skinning and butchering, with a sausage-making class as well. Since I didn’t catch us a hog the night before like I was supposed to, we relied on the crazy cowboy and former bull rider (not kidding) named Jody who caught a hog the night before. We called this hog “Stunt Double,” and he was to be the basis for all of our education as well as an incredible number of upcoming meals.

Skinning a boar is not as hard as it sounds. Once the animal has been gutted, there’s actually not much blood at all, especially between the skin and the subcutaneous fat.

Even the old man got in on this!

The end was a bit tricky, and more than a few “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” jokes were levied at Jesse.

He’s got what appears to be a good commanding form here. I will spare you what happened next beyond mentioning that the word “trachea” was spoken.

And now down to the meat. This butchering class helped me make sense of all those cuts I buy at the store, and also helped me understand why they taste so different from one another.

Look at these tenderloins! They are bathing in a marinade after being expertly tied up by Jesse.

Check out the videos, here. Don’t complain to me about how incomplete they may be – it’s hard work keeping a GoPro charged and ready for classes as lengthy as this!

We did have a bit of a break before sausage-making class. We had been swimming in the pool every day even in the rain, but on this day, the sun was shining. Pierce Ranch is just beautiful!

And now for the sausage-making. I would include more video except for the fact that it was really very simple: add the chunks of meat you will be grinding to the grinder with salt and pepper, put that ground meat into the casing machine and carefully inject the casings with the ground meat, and then twist off the ends. The sausage should sit refrigerated for several days to “dry out.”

Why is there even a saying about not watching how sausage is made? I thought it was awesome and it made me hungry… of course, that’s what good fresh ingredients will do. And a kind and supportive teacher who is so generous with his knowledge.

Next we rode out for our second hog hunt. We passed a ton of these cattle every time we rode out anywhere. Pierce Ranch plays host to cattle farmers and also cotton fields on some of its 36,000 acres of property.

Set up in the blind again. This time, Hanuman would get to take the first shot.
The feeder failed to go off again, so again we stalked, and waited.

Jesse got out of the blind and tried to shoo her away several times. It was hilariously similar to a Mexican standoff. Except Bessie pretty much won the standoff. And we were skunked again – Hanuman didn’t even get to take a shot!

When we got back, Noel gifted me this beautiful boar’s-tooth necklace, which could’ve represented victory in the hunt OR “the one that got away.” It was The One That Got Away, and I’m okay with that. For now.

Did I mention that everything we ate on this adventure was comprised of wild game? Well this night would be Wild Boar Night. Maybe you’re been told that wild game is “gamey” and that wild boar, in particular, is “inedible.” Well that really couldn’t be further from the truth.

I present: our Stunt Double hog made into ribs, shish-kebabs, sausage, and pork chops. Not pictured: the carne asada tacos we had the next day, the pork tenderloin, or the brisket sandwiches we had on the boat for First Lunch on Monday.

The pork chops.

Also, an apple tart with simple whipped cream. The whole meal was one of those succulent feasts that you know you will remember your whole life.

The final day of our adventure centered around bay fishing. I was pretty excited to try this out since fishing is probably the most easily-accessible hunting one can do, especially here in California – and for sure at our beautiful local Lake Poway, which is stocked on the regular with trout, bass, and catfish depending on the season.

So the only animal I ever really “harvested” in my youth was a single fish on a deep-sea fishing field trip, around age 12. I was so proud to have caught one, but still struggled a bit with the concept of keeping it instead of setting it free.

Did anyone ever tell you that “fish don’t have feelings?” It’s pretty ridiculous when you think about it, but that’s what I believed back then because that’s what the adults told me. I also kinda wanted to believe that, since I had caught one, thereby killing it. Thank God it’s now settled science that fish do have feelings, and can form personal relationships and use tools and solve problems. But most fishing today is still carried out in the most barbaric way possible.

It’s ironic that people demonize the relatively quick, humane death of a hunted terrestrial animal while okaying the torturous suffocation of millions of fish every day.

Me learning to cast. The guy who took us out just showed me once and that was it. He was good at changing up the spots we were fishing from, though. And he was good at helping us take any caught fish off the hook and either throwing them back to the sea (if they were too small) or into the cooler.

Confession: it nearly killed me when he put that first fish in the cooler, which happened to be a sand trout (I believe) that Hanuman caught. I could hear it banging around in there but I was worried about offending our captain if I were to ask to put the fish out of its misery, because this guy had literally written a book on trout fishing. How was I going to ask him to let me kill the fish quickly instead of letting them flop around in there, when that was all he’d been doing with fish his whole life?

I recalled my lesson from my Spearfishing Instructor John Dornellas on a humane brain jab when you harvest a fish in the ocean. It’s about humanely putting the fish out of it’s misery… and also about stopping the fish from wriggling, thereby sending out signals to other predators that there is a wounded fish nearby.

I decided to ask the captain to practice on those fish.

He was confused, but agreed. He was actually so taken aback by my request that he asked if he could take a photo of me doing it, no doubt to send to his fishing buddies with lots of LOLs attached. I know being a woman from California – especially one who wants to put all the fish out of their misery – sounds nuts! But you read What a Fish Knows and tell me it doesn’t change your life and how you view these intelligent creatures. I will never let a fish suffer on my watch and I’m not going to apologize for it.

It took some practice, but this is the perfect placement for the knife: draw a virtual equilateral triangle in your mind between the fish’s eyes and the third corner back will be where you drive the knife. It is instant “lights out,” as humane as fish-eating can get. Be careful with your hands that you don’t cut yourself. I did this about eight times before I really perfected it.

This was a beautiful Speckled Trout. Apparently the ocean variety have much harder scales than freshwater trout, but a similar sweet taste. It affects your expectations when you cut into it to filet it, though.

We filleted the trout and shelled the crab for soup, serving the croaker as filets for dinner. The scraps went into this pot for fish stock.

Before dinner we were playing in the pool with bird dogs Ranger and Dot.

See their antics here:

Behold, the soup! A delicious corn and potato chowder featuring crab and trout. With beauties Noel and Debbie laughing it up in the background. And some kind of delicious Texas wine being served.

Our last supper.

Ending on a sweet note: a poppy lemon cake with these Texas berries… not raspberries or blueberries though. The empty wine glass might be why I can’t remember the berry!

Thanks for looking, and happy hunting and cooking!
xo