Picture This Life

I like to hunt birds, and as a rule, I always eat what I shoot. To that end, I don’t hunt ducks and geese too often, mostly because they don’t taste very good. My buddy Dennis recently told me a story that drove this point home…

Last week I shot a duck called a hooded merganser. It was a beautiful duck, but I’d heard they taste pretty bad. Once I started cleaning the bird, I noticed the meat was pretty dark, and because they eat nothing but fish it smelled a really fishy. Instead of eating it myself, I figured that it would make a good treat for Gunner, my dog. So I put the breast meat in his dog bowl. He walked over and gave it a sniff then curled his lip, raised his nose and refused to touch it. And that’s saying something, because he licks his butt every single day. That’s the last hooded merganser I’m ever going to shoot.