Elevate Your Game

Brian and Michael walk listeners through how to make confit. Their newest book Pate, Confit, and Rillettes is out on bookshelves anywhere culinary books are available. We chat about what makes confit delicious and why we still have a hankering for confit even long after the necessity confit solved (preserving meat with no refrigeration) is no longer a necessity.

Brooks Hansen from CampChef walks listeners through the entire line of CampChef products.

Join Matthew Dickerson and I chat about his writing, fishing, and ecology. Dickerson walks us through his journey to learn the love of fishing from the pond in his back yard where he caught largemouth bass to the wilds of Ontario, Canada where he trolled for lunkers, to the streams small enough to jump across on the land near his home. This is where he learned to pursue his beloved trout. All the while he writes about his adventures and the outdoors.

Greg Buchel, president of Big Horn Armory Inc., and I explore lever guns. I used Big Horn's model #89 in Smith and Wesson 500 this spring to take a beautiful black bear with Tate Island Lodge on Reindeer Lake in Saskatchewan. Greg and I talk Big Horn lever guns and what sets them apart from other offerings in the market.

Watersheds are actually landmasses, in the case of the North Saskatchewan Watershed, 57,000 square kilometres of land. All of it collects water that runs into the backbone of the watershed, the North Saskatchewan River. Join Leah Kongsrud, the Executive Director of the North Saskatchewan Watershed Alliance on our podcast where she talks about the mandate and outcome for this critical natural resource.

Since grade three, Holly Moroz has been dedicated to eating just vegetables. Recently she started hunting, and this past spring she took a fantastic Vancouver Island black bear––her first self-harvested protein in her life. This is her story, and it is a good one!

Cassoulet is a glorious (Tarbais) bean-based dish made with gelatinous stock and an assortment of meats. Often you will find duck confit or goose, pork sausage, ham hocks, and fresh or cured pork belly.

I make this celebratory dish with game: smoked cured bear shanks or black bear bacon, confited pheasant, Mallard, Canada Goose, or hare: fresh rabbit, elk, or deer sausages. This is a good place for gizzards and hearts too. Follow Kate's guidance, give the cassoulet lots of time in a slow oven to develop the flavours and tenderize the toughest cuts of meat. Then savour the flavour with family and your closest friends. (I almost always prepare cassoulet in advance of an outfitter tenting adventure so we can enjoy cassoulet heated on the coal stove.) It is an epic meal.

Join Brad Fenson and me as we talk about the best ways to pay homage to animals we harvest. How about Captain Morgan-finished goose pastrami? Tune in to get access to Fenson's hard-earned culinary tricks. Fenson throws down a three-part challenge for me to tackle unlove game and game parts.

Challenge accepted: stay tuned.

Tori and I talk about the connections that happen due to hunting: connections with the natural world, with your inner self, with our environment, with our past, with our hunting partners, and with nature. She talks about the pursuit being the thing over the result. And how 60 days of hunting is (finally) rewarded with an animal to feed her family for the next few months. This is hunting.

She demonstrates the wisdom of someone three times her age.

"Hunting, for me, is like going home." She said and, "You come out here to learn."

Patience is a thoughtful act. A collection of preparations so we hunters come to the field fully prepared for what lies ahead.

Tori talks about adult-diagnosed ADHD, gratefulness, and being prepared.

Tori Loomis is a chef, and she shares some game preparations secrets you won't want to miss. Oh, and she WAS a vegetarian.