Cooking Doves

choosing what to fry

Once at a dove hunt I was pan frying dove breasts for around twenty shooters.  I’d gotten my limit early and retired to drink scotch and smoke reefer and cook and shoot the shit with my hunting pals as they came in from the field to drink, eat and clean their birds. (Before I quit drinking and smoking dope in 1983.)

Guns were wiped down, put away.  We were in a large open tractor shed, using a big cast iron frying pan on a wide-ringed gas burner set on top of a long work table.  Layers of clean paper towels were set out on newspapers to absorb the oil from the dove breasts as they were taken from the pan with tongs.  Hunters came with paper plates and took ‘em in their hands and ate ‘em.  Someone had brought some big red tomatoes.  Oysters were being opened and dipped in hot sauce.  A loaf of bread, jugs of wine, chips and pickles and store-bought coleslaw were on the table nearby.  

I seasoned the breasts with salt and pepper and shook them in a bag of flour before putting them in hot Crisco, cooking them breast-side-up first so they wouldn’t collect moisture and blood in the concave underside and pop hot grease while they cooked.

When I’d been out in the field shooting earlier in the day a couple of my friends stopped by my hiding spot to tell me that a new guy, a business guest of the land owner where we were shooting, was being a real asshole, shooting too close to other hunters, picking up birds other shooters had shot, and leaving his dog to run wild, where it interfered with other hunters’ dogs and ate downed birds and made a general nuisance of itself.  Apparently, the guy’d had a few too many beers, which was frowned upon.  We all drank a few cold ones during the hot afternoon to ward off the heat, but any concentrated drinking was left until the day was over and the guns put away.  There had been some harsh words exchanged with the new man.

Another aspect of the new guy’s personality quickly became known when he came in from the field and started telling me how I should be cooking the birds.  Said he was a real cook, did lots of doves.  I don’t remember the details, but it involved wine and simmering.  I fry the little fuckers and they’re damned good.  His unsolicited opinion was barely disguised criticism. 

The evening wore on, and he almost got in a fist fight about one low shot he took at a dove.  The birdshot had hit another shooter with pretty good force, and he was pissed.

One by one, most of the shooters came to get birds to eat, and most of ‘em had something derogatory to say about him.

Then the asshole decided to come over to the cooking area to leave his clothes on the table while he changed.  He took off his sweaty jeans and shirt and piled ‘em on the table a few feet from where I was serving, and walked away in his undershorts to his pickup to get fresh pants and a shirt. I saw him a few minutes later all freshened up, talking loudly with broad hand gestures about his shooting.  He’d forgotten about his pile on the cooking table.

A local attorney friend was helping me get the last few birds fried, when he noticed the asshole’s wallet sticking out of his pants where he’d left ‘em.  From there it was an easy matter for a couple of experienced outdoors cooks like us to improvise.

We had some difficulty getting the flour to stick to the slick leather until we soaked it in beer, then rolled it in sand, then in flour.  It fried up nice.  Once it was drained and cooled I slipped it back in his pants.  It was the last time he was ever seen on a dove hunt.