When Steven asked if wild turkeys are eaten, I was reminded of a cowboy friend of mine who about 15 years ago rode off on his horse to investigate gobbles on his ranch. Billy Don with shotgun in hand rode his horse, Bugger Red, along the North San Gabriel River. I wish I had a photo of him on his horse. He is over six feet tall and was dressed in his ranch clothes, boots, jeans, shirt & rough jacket and a big felt cowboy hat and was sitting on his beautiful big palomino gelding.
Within the hour the two returned. Billy rode up with a huge grin on his face and a big ole tom turkey hanging from his saddle. He & Bugger searched out the turkeys along the river and Bugger stood stock still as Billy Don aimed & fired. This was the first time he had shot his gun while sitting on his horse and all sorts of bad things could have happened, but that horse was steadfast. The tom was retrieved, tied by its legs to the saddle & brought it back to the ranch house to pluck & cook in time for Thanksgiving. Now that was pretty darn cool!
3 comments:
Hope the wild turkey tasted as good as the farm-raised ones.
I'm curious too how different a wild turkey tasted.
I really don't know how a wild turkey tastes. I've never eaten one and don't remember what the report was on the one Billy Don shot. Seems like it might be tough, but that's just my guess. I just love the story of him riding out to hunt turkey.
Another story is about him hunting buffalo/bison. He kept the meat and the skin. For weeks he worked on cleaning the skin & curing it and in the end he had a beautiful buffalo rug. I would help him with the curing from time to time and he used the old Indian techniques of making scrapers from rocks & scraping the underside of the skin. It was a dirty, tedious job.
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