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Grilled Birds
Pick them dry, and singe them if necessary. If they are big birds empty them, and cut off their heads and feet if in the way. You probably won't bother to empty the little ones for that much discussed epicurean point of the "trail" of birds disappears on the trail. (Thus do the sticklers in matters of bird eating etiquette denominate the innards of snipe, woodcock, and other small varieties.) Season with salt and pepper. Fasten a generous slice of salt pork or bacon across the breasts or completely wrap in bacon, impale on a spit before clear quick coals, or lay on the grill, and broil over a bed of steady coals. Success depends on the fire. If the bacon chars to a blackened crisp, you do not have to eat it. Here is one hunter's time table for spit roasting or grilling according to Hoyle: Quail .... 10 minutes Partridge Wild ducks 15-20 minutes Wild goose Grouse 15 minutes ...
Pheasant 20 minutes ..
Snipe .... 20-25 minutes 1 hour 15-20 minutes Woodcock 15-20 minutes Turn birds frequently while grilling so they will cook evenly. And have toasted bread or hot biscuits ready to catch the juices that run out, especially when you are removing them from the fire and opening them.
A camp method that assumes a wood fire burned down to coals and a hunter's willingness to cook by eye. The barding pork is structural, not decorative: wild birds carry almost no fat and will dry out in minutes without it.
- The fire is the recipe"Clear quick coals" means a bed burned down past flame to even, ash-grey embers throwing steady heat, roughly what a chimney of charcoal gives twenty minutes after lighting. Flames will scorch the bacon and leave the breast raw; wait the fire out rather than starting early.
- Pick dry, and singeDry-plucking rather than scalding keeps the thin skin intact so the fat from the bacon has something to baste. Singeing burns off the hair-fine pinfeathers; a gas flame or a lit taper does the job in seconds.
- Barding is not optionalWild birds carry very little fat compared with a farmed supermarket chicken. A generous slice of salt pork or two rashers of bacon lashed over the breast with kitchen twine is what keeps it edible. Modern bacon is often wetter and leaner than older dry-cured pork, so expect it to shrink and slip.
- Doneness, not minutesThe listed times assume a specific fire and specific bird weights, and neither is reproducible. Cook game birds to 165F at the thickest part of the breast, away from bone. Duck breast is often taken to 135-140F by choice, but that is a decision about risk, not a timing.
- The undrawn small birdsLeaving the viscera in snipe and woodcock is a genuine old practice, but it depends on birds shot cleanly and cooked within hours in cold weather. A gut-shot bird, or one carried warm in a game bag all day, taints from the inside. Draw anything you are not certain of.
- Know what you may legally cookQuail, grouse, pheasant, partridge, wild duck and goose, woodcock and snipe are managed game with seasons and limits that vary by jurisdiction. Songbirds and most other small birds are protected outright in the United States, Canada and the UK.
- "According to Hoyle"An idiom for doing a thing strictly by the rules, from the eighteenth-century card-game authority Edmond Hoyle. It signals that the table is one hunter's orthodoxy rather than a measured standard.
- The toast underneathSetting the bird on toasted bread to catch the juices is the classic service and worth keeping. A slice of good country bread per bird, grilled on the same coals, absorbs everything that runs out when the carcass is opened.