Cove Mountain Kennels

This is our family’s all time favorite pheasant recipe. (I think you could use it for any game bird, but it is particularly delicious with pheasant.)

Grilled Teriyaki Pheasant

1 cup oil
1/2 cup soy sauce
1 TBSP Garlic Salt
1 TBSP Horse Raddish
1 can sprite (or Mt. Dew)
2 pheasants, quartered

Mix the marinade ingredients and soda, add the pheasant pieces and marinate in refrigerator for 12 to 36 hours, stirring every so often. Grill on BBQ or in oven just until the inside barely starts to loose the pink color. Note that the different pieces (breasts vs leg/thighs) will cook at different rates. The key is not to over cook. Serve hot over mixed wild rice. The grilled pieces are also excellent cold the next day. 

We obtained this recipe from a friend and long-time hunting buddy, Damon Swenson, some 20 years ago and have been enjoying it ever since.

 

Daily exercise is one of the key fundamentals in our training program. So, we are always looking for ways for our clients to get their dogs the exercise they need. Often a good walk for us barely gets the dog warmed up, roading the dog like we do here with a 4-wheeler isn’t possible for many folks that live in more urban areas, so we often recommend  a bike. It must be done with caution however.

Years ago when we lived in Nebraska, we lived right off a great Rails to Trails bike path that, at the time, went more than 20 miles out through the country side (I think now it crosses the whole state). We would regularly take our dogs out on the trail for good long morning run. Not having any other way to do it, we would just hold the leash in one hand while riding. I no longer recommend this, in fact don’t try this unless you have a helmet and body armor. My 2 year old lab took off after a squirrel, crossed me up and sent me over the handlebars where I landed on my forearms and the side of my head. (No helmet of course). I dragged my bike, dog and myself to a nearby house and scared the owner to death, standing there bleeding. She took me and my dog home where I luckily didn’t die from intracranial bleeding.

The “springer,” a setup to run a dog with you bike is a much safer option. The price seems fairly reasonable and has gotten several good reviews. If you are looking for another way to exercise your dog, this may be something to look into.

Image: Web capture. Dog in Copenhagen.

I just found out that the mahogany tree I blogged about finding back in October during a blue-grouse hunt has been nominated as the biggest individual tree of its species in the State of Utah and in the Nation. Pretty cool if you ask me. If you know anything about curl-leaf mahogany trees, you’d know that this one was huge. It was worth the hike into see it. I guess it takes about a year for the registration process, so I’ll be watching for it. It is wild think that this tree was probably a respectable size mahogany when Columbus was playing with toy boats as a kid. (I guess it’s kind of like Boone and Crockett record for trees, eh?).

 

I came across a great quote in Gun Dog magazine the other day about consistency with our dogs, “Corrections are consistent when canine misdeeds are always corrected appropriately. If misbehavior is sometimes ignored, the dog must experiment every day to see what the boss currently permits.” Pro Tips – Spaniels – Gary Breithbarth G&D Kennels, CA. Gun Dog Oct 2007.

The idea is to be consistent with correction and what behavior is acceptable and what is not. Otherwise we have dogs that need to test us on everything all the time. Additionally, I think this make for a more unstable dog, because they don’t ever know where they stand.

I didn’t make it out for the closing of the waterfowl season. I did, however, have a great day at the pheasant shooting preserve training dogs. It was a chilly day, but beautiful and mostly sunny. We set the birds in thick cover along the river and gave them plenty of time to move around and leave good scent trails. I happend to have had all retrievers (flushers) we were training, so the thick cover was excellent for them. The dogs worked the birds well and the birds flushed with gusto and flew strong. It was a great training day for the dogs. We were able to work on a lot of different aspects: hunting close, not chasing running birds (coming back into gun range when called), flushing, pulling off missed birds, tracking wounded birds, and retrieving. It also tuned us up on our bird shooting. Mike, George’s son-in-law was a newcomer to upland game hunting; he did great and had a ball! Hopefully he’ll be hooked on upland game gunning for good.

We went chukar hunting this weekend. Late season chukar hunting is always tough, but worth getting out. It was a cold, but beautiful sunburn kind of a day. We did find two small coveys of birds high on the mountain, but they were seasoned and got the better of us. We ended up taking only one bird home, but had a great day. Everyone got a great workout and we saw some spectacular scenery. We only have 10 days left in the season!

 

 

4 pheasant breasts (Boneless, skinless)
1/2 cup teriyaki sauce
1 can pineapple slices
bacon
salt and pepper to taste

Marinate pheasant in teriyaki sauce overnight in the refrigerator. Place a slice of pineapple between 2 breast halves and wrap in bacon. Hold together with tooth picks. Salt and pepper to taste. Grill on low heat, basting with marinade, rotating frequently for 20 min. or until cooked through. Serve over wild rice and garnish with left over pineapple.

The key to cooking pheasant, as with most game meat, is not to over cook it. Grill it until the center barely looses the pink color, but is still moist.

 

A couple of weeks ago I had a chance to hunt California Quail with a good friend of mine. I  was struck by how beautiful these birds were. I absolutely love hunting quail. I don’t know what it is about them, their whirring wings when they flush, the challenge of the shot or their delicious taste; I love quail.

Due to drought conditions, Northern Arizona and southern Utah have been really poor for Gambles quail this year. However, I have heard that the Mearns Quail numbers in southern Arizona are better than they have been in 20 years. I don’t think I be able to make a trip down there this year, but I can dream.