_game Warden Scramble Recipes

JOE'S SPECIAL SCRAMBLE

Steps:

• Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the ground beef, and cook, stirring to crumble, until no longer pink, about 8 minutes. Pour off any excess grease, then stir in the garlic, onions, and mushrooms. Reduce heat to medium, cover, and cook until the onion has softened and turned translucent, about 5 minutes. Stir in the nutmeg, oregano, spinach, salt, and pepper and cook until the spinach is heated through.
• Reduce heat to medium-low, and make 6 egg-sized indentations into the beef and spinach mixture. Crack the eggs into the each indentation, then cover, and continue cooking until the eggs are done to your liking, about 5 minutes more for medium.

_GAME WARDEN DOG

Steps:

• When I hired on as a conservation officer for Idaho Department of Fish & Game (IDFG) in September of 1978, Snoose turned six months old. I'd come by her four months earlier when I ran into a friend at IDFG Headquarters where we both had meetings. Russell had hired on as an officer a couple of years earlier and I still worked as a Wildlife Technician. At a break in the meetings I caught Russ up on what I'd been doing and told him about the awesome log home I had rented near Wayan in SE Idaho. He told me he had the perfect pup to live with me in such a great place. He still had two female pups from a litter of nine who needed homes. Being a canine sexist at the time, I told him 'No Thanks!' No females for me. I'd always had males. Apparently, Russ didn't have any better luck peddling those two pups during the day 'cause when I arrived at the restaurant that evening he bought me a beer, one of many that night, and started his sales pitch again.After rolling out of bed the next morning I needed three things really bad. First, and most important, a couple of aspirin, followed by a cup of coffee and, last, a hot shower...in that order. Not being the first guy to wake up with the events of the previous evening being a little fuzzy, I 'thought' I remembered writing Russ a check for $75.00 late the night before. (It was brought to my attention later that I actually wrote the check about closing time.) When I got out of the shower I looked in my checkbook. Sure enough, the self carbon copy of the last check said 'Pay to the Order Of' Russ Kozacek. My consolation being at the time that although Russ did succeed in selling me a dog, I hadn't bought dinner or a beer all night! Anyway...Snoose moved to the big log house in Wayan with me. She spent the summer leaning how to fetch, stay out from underfoot a saddlehorse, and how to load in a pickup truck.The transformation from civilian to game warden doesn't happen overnight. How successful a game warden is depends on both tangible and intangible criteria. One of the tangible criteria being, of course, the apprehension of violators who go home with pieces of paper labeled 'Defendant's Copy' in their wallets! Six weeks into my career and hunting seasons in full swing, the only citations my name appeared on listed me as 'Assisting Officer.' With elk season a week old my ego and confidence hit rock bottom. Sure, I had encountered some folks with problems, but their stories always seemed truthful to me. So I'd give them a weak verbal warning and go off in search of a 'big game case.' At the time I naively believed everyone always told the truth to the game warden!On Sunday of the second weekend of elk season, Snoose and I left the house in the gray light of dawn, headed for Jacknife and Tincup Creeks. I started making the rounds of trailheads and campgrounds thinking that if things didn't change, I would find myself back driving a truck. About noon I checked a camp of moose hunters breaking camp after getting a bull packed out. I then headed for McCoy Creek. I hoped that I could find a violation in my neighboring officer's area! By mid-afternoon, and several camps later, my luck hadn't changed. Discouraged doesn't even come close to how I felt. I stopped at a creek thinking Snoose might enjoy a swim, as the day was getting warm. My heart dropped when I got out of the truck! No Snoose! I started backtracking, asking folks I'd just checked if they remembered seeing my dog in the back of the truck. No luck!I headed back to Tincup Creek, not believing I could have missed her for such a long time. Finally I ended back up in the camp where I'd checked the moose hunters. There she lay contentedly chewing on a leg bone that they'd discarded. Apparently she hadn't missed me at all. After chastising her I loaded her back up and decided to check a couple of camps where no one had been present in the camp on my earlier swing through.As I pulled into the first one, a fellow came riding in leading a couple of packhorses. He told me he'd killed an elk, and that it was boned out in meat sacks on the pack stock. I felt pretty good writing him a citation for an unattached tag while he unloaded the packhorses. But something still sort of gnawed at my subconscious. Why I felt compelled to go through the meat sacks I'll never know! Unless one has the space to lay out the individual pieces of boned meat to determine their anatomical location you can't make sense of what your looking at. This guy and his buddies had made it easy. When I located a heart in the third sack of meat it didn't raise any alarm. In the fourth sack, though, I found another elk heart, which did set off all sorts of warning bells. Then it was obvious! These guys had killed two elk and tried to disguise the fact by boning the meat and mixing it up. I didn't hesitate to give Snoose the credit for leading me to that breakthrough big game case.I spent two thirds of my career with Snoose! Over the years she assisted me on several cases and on occasion made cases outright for me. Snoose didn't spend much time at home those first ten years. Most of the time she rode in the back of the truck, but fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, drift boats, and rafts suited her just fine. Except for being in a duck blind, she was happiest trailing along ahead of my saddle horse as I pulled a pack string somewhere in the back country! The day finally arrived when it got too difficult for her to jump up into a pickup truck.Snoose spent seven years in retirement before she passed on just a couple days short of her fourteenth birthday. I still consider that $75.00 the best money I ever spent. A couple of years ago I returned the favor to Russ when I sold him a female pup out of my Chesapeake, Sis! Russ just wrote a check and saved me the expense of buying him dinner and beer for an evening!Spiced with More Tall Tales - Dedications

SKILLET SCRAMBLE

Steps:

• In a large skillet, saute the potatoes, green pepper and onion in oil. Stir in the onion powder, garlic powder and seasoned salt., In a large bowl, combine the eggs, ham, water, salsa, salt and pepper. Add to the potato mixture. Cook and stir over medium heat until eggs are completely set. Sprinkle with cheese; cook 2 minutes longer or until cheese is melted.

_GAME WARDEN SCRAMBLE

Steps:

• Start with the local rancher giving a domestic goat to a subject. Have the subject skin the goat in his yard. Stir in a nearsighted informant who sees the subject skinning the goat. Have the informant find the game warden and advise him of subject skinning a deer. Let the excited game warden stew for 4 hours waiting for search warrant.Once game warden has received a search warrant and is thoroughly stewed, let him serve it on subject and find goat.Mix all together and you have a wasted day. Put egg on game warden's face.THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: "A game warden can always be relied upon to waste a day trying to get your goat."A Back Country Guide to Outdoor Cooking Spiced with Tall Tales - Meat in Camp

_LAS PIEDRAS

Steps:

• For those of you who didn't take high school Spanish this translates to 'The Rocks'. Las Piedras Ranch owned by Dwain and Sandy Riney of Montgomery, Texas, is aptly named. Located in Real County, WNW of San Antonio, Las Piedras Ranch exemplifies the Texas 'Hill Country'! Their ranch, though not large by Texas standards, supports a healthy population of native wildlife and is also host to numerous exotic species. These wild, free ranging exotics escaped from neighboring ranches years ago. Dwain and Sandy recently invited me down to cook for some of their hunters. This particular hunt is a 'special hunt' for both the Riney family and the hunters. Once a year Dwain and Sandy donate a hunt for exotic species at Las Piedras to the Montgomery County Cattle Barons' Ball and benefit auction. The money raised from this annual event benefits the Montgomery County Unit of the American Cancer Society. In the course of my visit Dwain pulled out the 'ranch recipe box' and selected several favorites of his and Sandy's that he thought I'd like. In addition Sandy has since called me with a couple of other old family favorites. We hate to think of family heirlooms disappearing, but it happens when you prepare these recipes. My thanks to Dwain and Sandy for sharing them and inviting me down to share their corner of heaven in the Texas Hill Country!Spiced with More Tall Tales - Appetizers

_GAME MEAT

Steps:

• Browsing through this section, one might think I've written a "Wild Game Cook Book". I confess, most of the meat recipes do feature "game" meat in this book. But, every "game" recipe easily converts to the cellophane wrapped meats found in your local meat market. Far be it from me to try converting those meat eaters who just don't like eating wild game, but read on to find out why I like it myself.Any gardener will tell you his or her home grown produce tastes much better than any store bought veggies. By the same token, pull the lid off a Dutch oven full of BBQ elk ribs and I guarantee they'll put the store bought variety to shame. Whether it's putting sun dried tomatoes on the shelf or filling the freezer with lots of plain white packages marked "Elk Steak", nothing beats the fruits of one's own labors.My love affair with game meat goes back to when I graduated from a high chair to a chair with pillows on it to boost me to appropriate height at the dinner table. Growing up in SE Idaho in the 50's and 60's dinner menus at the Welch household regularly featured venison along with beef, pork and lamb. Though not in a subsistence situation, venison and pheasants helped stretch the grocery dollars needed for a family of six.Sitting here many years and many deer later, writing this book, I remember how proud I felt going home after getting my first deer. I know mom quickly got bored with my story but a thirteen year old helping Dad bring home the "bacon" just naturally gets a swelled chest. Over the intervening years I've not got an animal every year, but my freezer has never been empty of game meat thanks to other family members or my hunting pards!Growing up, game meat was a staple on our table, as well as most of the neighbors. About the only folks I knew who didn't eat it were those few people who weren't hunters or fishermen. Like a lot of things from our childhoods, I just took game meat for granted. My education about folks who didn't care for game meat began in college. My roommate and I asked a couple of gals over to our apartment for steaks one evening. They thought it would be neat to have a couple of guys cook them a steak dinner with all the trimmings. Both of us being from southern Idaho, just expected these gals to be suitably impressed not only with our culinary prowess, but with the fare as well. Wrong! One of these gals would have put a circus elephant to shame with her nose wrinkling ability when my roommate slapped those elk steaks on the grill. To make a long story short, they ate the trimmins' and we ate steak. Being somewhat slow learners, both of us had to have this same lesson repeated just a month later with two different gals. In both cases we missed the clue of these gals coming from beyond the borders of "meat and tater" land! Rest assured though, this dislike of game meat is not gender specific. After graduating from college and becoming a wildlife professional, I learned just how many people in our society don't hunt and have never had the opportunity to eat game meat. I've also met a lot of folks who've been served game meat and for various reasons didn't like it. Without first hand knowledge I wouldn't venture a guess as to "why" they didn't like game meat, but I can make some guesses based on my own experience.Not only have I harvested numerous big game animals, but as a game warden I've been able to see how others take care of big game animals. By and large most folks do a pretty good job. Yet every year I see animals which, I've no doubt if you cooked a steak from, would gag a maggot! One of the worst instances I've encountered happened about ten years ago in the Little Lost Valley. It was mid morning on a Friday when I pulled into a camp to check a good size 6 x 6 bull elk. These fellows had been luckier than most. They'd been able to load the bull whole into a truck. The cottonwood tree they picked to hang it from lacked a branch at the proper height, so they hung it from the next best branch which left the head, neck and one front shoulder still on the ground. One front quarter lacked any air circulation at all. The elk had been field dressed, but not skinned. The tag showed the bull had been killed on Wednesday. I asked the lucky hunter if he thought the carcass had cooled adequately. He replied "sure." Though the October nights had been down into the twenty degree range, the Indian Summer days were getting up to about sixty degrees.When asked, the hunter had no objection to my taking a carcass temperature. I made a small slit in the hide and inserted a thermometer behind a shoulder blade. Thirty six hours after being killed the internal temperature was still over 60 degrees. Now, you tell me how many repeat customers a restaurant would get if they served beef given the same care?!? I'm not saying the quality of game meat totally reflects the care given in the field, but in my opinion it's a big first step.Yet, still others are adamant a bull elk or a big buck taken in the rut borders on being inedible. My personal experience doesn't support this. A person who harvests such an animal might be wise to put more of it into burger and stew meat and plan to adjust the cooking of other cuts accordingly. To make my point, I pose this question to you, the reader. When fast food chains purchase cattle to be ground up for burgers, do they buy corn fed eighteen month old steers or old stringy, worn-out range bulls?On occasion I've had the chance to serve some people their first taste of venison. Interestingly enough, most are pleasantly surprised, even those who may have previously had an unpleasant experience. Each different game animal will have a distinctive taste. There is no argument game meat differs in taste when compared to domestic meat. Not to be to "hoity toity" here, but having to acquire a taste for something different is not a new phenomenon. As for me, I'll take a nice elk steak over raw oysters any day! I don't know exactly when the "lite food generation" began, but I'm sure it's here to stay. When we as a society started this long road to health awareness, it became obvious, though it had just three letters, "fat" was now a dirty word. With that realization society began to look towards game meat from a health perspective. Published figures indicate game meat, on the average, contains less than 50% of the fat found in domestic animals. Even a well trimmed cut of meat from the grocery store yields more fat than the equivalent cut from a game animal due to the lack of "marbling" found in game meats. I've known individuals with heart problems who, on the advice of their doctors, limited their consumption of red meat to game meat.A Back Country Guide to Outdoor Cooking Spiced with Tall Tales - Meat in Camp

_WARDEN STEW

Steps:

• This camp cookbook tends to focus on "sagebrush gourmet", or in more civilized circles what's referred to as fancy cookin'! Yet, there comes a time when it's "hold the garnish, hold the special herbs, hold the time spent slicing and dicing, and hold digging through all the horse packs for a measuring spoon, let's just get something on the fire so we can eat and hit the sack"! Tony Latham, an Idaho Game Warden, aka the "Laser" who has spent more time kicking around the Central Idaho wilderness areas than most, wanted to pass on his favorite "Wilderness Fast Food" recipe. To those outside the wildlife law enforcement fraternity, let me preface this recipe with a little of my own experience. Here in Idaho, the typical game warden has in excess of a thousand square miles to patrol. Obviously, some patrol areas are larger than others, with back country patrol areas up to three times the average. During the fall big game seasons, it's an understatement to say one can get spread "purty thin" tryin' to effectively patrol areas of such size! It reminded me of an old warden buddy of mine, who used to tell of trying to feed a whole troop of boy scouts with two little dinky hatchery trout and a bag of stale hamburger buns! Kinda tough to get enough to go around without divine intervention. It doesn't matter if you're jerking a string of horses in the back country, trying to float an extra mile before darkness sets in, pulling one's truck off on an old log road at midnite, or getting home in the wee hours, "Lasers Warden Stew" sure beats the hell out of dreaming about over priced, foreign sounding dishes at restaurants four hours by plane away!A Back Country Guide to Outdoor Cooking Spiced with Tall Tales - Camp Chili, Stews, Soups and Sauces

_CULINARY BOMBS

Steps:

• While being a game warden for over twenty years, it was my good fortune to be invited into many camps. Of course I ended up being an uninvited guest in many others, but I will save those stories for later. Anyway...I couldn't come close to putting a number on how many camp cooks I've crossed paths with over the years, but it for sure numbers in the hundreds. As you might expect, the skill level of these cooks runs the gamut from totally inexperienced to a chef who quit the big time and went to work for a wilderness outfitter to escape the concrete jungle. It's probably safe to say that many of these cooks began their camp cooking education with a wiener on a stick or a can of stew set in the coals at the edge of an open fire. Properly done, you can cook canned goods without a pot and save having to wash some dishes. Improperly done, however... you might end up with beans on your face!As taught to me when I was a Boy Scout, cooking in cans is simple and easy. Even now these many years later, I will occasionally heat a vegetable up in a can if all my DO's are in use. To do this, I merely take a can opener and pierce the top in three or four places on the top, then set it on a couple of small coals right at the edge of the fire. As liquid begins to bubble out the openings, I turn the can a quarter turn with a pair of leather gloves. I keep turning the can until liquid has bubbled out of each of the three or four holes that I put in the top. This allows for even distribution of heat and prevents burning the contents.I CAN'T EMPHASIZE ENOUGH THAT THE TOP OF THE CAN MUST BE PIERCED BEFORE YOU APPLY HEAT TO THE CAN! The openings allow pressure to escape as the contents begin to cook. Failure to provide for the release of pressure will in a very short time result in a 'Culinary Bomb' proportional to the size of the can and how much heat was being applied! A fellow officer responded to a call a couple of years ago to a site along the Little Salmon River in Central Idaho where some subjects were reported to be fishing with 'Dupont Spinners'! For those of you who do not know, a 'Dupont Spinner' consists of one or more sticks of dynamite, or similar explosive, deposited into the water. The explosion in the water stuns the fish, which allows for them to be retrieved merely by using a net.Needless to say, such actions are contrary to regulations and constitute a major violation.When Roy arrived at the riverbank campsite where the explosions had been reported, evidence of the explosions was readily visible. The rookie cook in this camp had set two family size cans of chili con carne with beans in the fire and HAD NOT PIERCED THE TOPS OF THE CANS! Not only did dinner turn out to be a 'bomb,' But he had to endure ridicule from his buddies and a grin from the game warden!Spiced with More Tall Tales - Vegetables and Salads