_shoestring Bull Recipes

Steps:

• Line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil, 10 ½ x 15 ½.
• Cover with graham crackers (whole honey graham crackers).
• Chop 1 cup pecans and sprinkle evenly over crackers.
• In a boiler, melt 1 stick butter and 1 stick of margarine (only this combination will do!).
• Add ½ cup sugar, stirring constantly
• Boil for exactly 2 minutes.
• Pour or spoon over crackers and pecan (I find it better to use a big spoon).
• Bake at 350 for approximately 12 minutes.
• Cool and break into pieces.
• 1 box of graham crackers is enough to make 2 batches of brittle.
• You can also try it with Oatmeal Crunch Graham Crackers or Chocolate Graham Crackers.

Steps:

• Throw the mud duck in a roaster that was last cleaned out by your hound dog. Mix all of the ingredients, except caster oil and beer. Stuff the duck with this mixture. Give the duck a good dose of castor oil and then pour beer over all. (Beer is very important since brothers-in-law go into a frenzy when they smell it.) Cook in oven on low heat for 1 hour. Garnish and serve piping hot. If this does not stop your brother-in-law from coming to your house and drinking up all of your beer or asking for seconds or thirds, there is only one sure ingredient that you can add next time. It is illegal and you may have to do some time for it, but it probably would be worth it. Add ARSENIC! LOTS OF ARSENIC!!A Back Country Guide to Outdoor Cooking Spiced with Tall Tales - Fowl & Fish

Steps:

• Two things act as magnets on little boys, mud puddles and pitch. I'm not talking about the card game "Pitch," but sap from coniferous trees. When the folks took us kids camping, despite repeated warnings and dire threats by Mother, I usually managed to get the sticky stuff on my hands, clothes, and in my hair within thirty minutes of getting to camp. I did it to my folks and my son did it to me. As an old cowboy buddy of mine told me when my boy was born, "You don't pay for your raising till you raise one of your own!" That particular saying has proven true on many other occasions! Anyway...Like many situations in life there is 'the easy way' and 'the hard way' to remedy the situation. Normally the first line of defense in most situations requiring cleanup is soap and water. Besides being sticky in the first degree, pitch immediately attracts dirt. Pitch on a kid's hands will just smear and spread with soap and water. Anything the kid touches ends up sticky, which if he handles enough stuff will wear the pitch off his hands! That is an option, but one most mothers would rather not exercise. Unless you take a set of full body restraints to camp, don't even think you can successfully comb a wad of pitch out of your kid's hair!For a quick fix, dig around in your camp box for your charcoal starter fluid. Any other petroleum distillate, such as white gas, kerosene, etc. will dissolve pitch, but charcoal lighter seems to be the least harsh. Just squirt a little bit in your hands and rub the spot, then wash with soap and water. To clean clothes, first change into something clean and soak the spot with the lighter fluid and work it into the fabric. Repeat a couple of times then hang on a limb to dry. Getting the stuff out of one's hair is a little more difficult. Soak a washrag and gently massage the pitch to dissolve and repeat if needed. Soak another washrag with warm water and rinse. Of course, I shouldn't have to say this, but if it's after dark, use a flashlight or other source of light, not firelight or gas lantern!Spiced with More Tall Tales - Breads

Steps:

• My pocket dictionary defines stew as "to boil slowly" or "a dish of stewed meat and vegetables served in gravy". So even for those folks whose cooking talents are stretched by just trying to boil water, they only have to add some meat and veggies to make a stew. In other words, beginning Dutch oven cooks and stews were made for each other. Someone with a new Dutch oven, wanting to cook something, is just like a student pilot landing an airplane. Any landing you walk away from is good, some are just better than others! For first time Dutch oven cooks, that translates to if your dinner guests do not leave the supper table in search of immediate medical attention, it must've been okay! As with flying and many other things for that matter, the results usually improve with a little practice.You can make a stew as simple as Tony Latham's "Warden Stew" or create a masterpiece containing exotic vegetables and spices. If you're bored with just plain old cooking and you want to try "ethnic cooking" there is no better place to start than with a stew. For example, take your Great-great-great Grandmother's stew recipe which she brought West in a covered wagon and add some oriental vegetables and seasoning to create a stew with a distinctive, new taste.Most of us who hunt big game, when rummaging around our freezers, leave those packages of meat labeled "stew" until everything else has been used. At least the way I cut up my animals, the amount of stew meat always exceeds what I'd call prime cuts.Though you can't cut chunks of elk shank with a fork when fried in butter, to me it's no reason to leave it till last. Cooked slow in a Dutch oven with your favorite veggies and spices, an old elk shank will produce as many oh's and ah's as tenderloin sauteed in butter and garlic! A good mathematician could fill a fair sized room with nothing but stew recipes by calculating all the combinations and permutations of possible ingredients for stew. So if you fancy your self a creative person, take your new Dutch oven and a "Stew" recipe and create a master piece! Around my house or camp, stew tends to end up as a "kitchen sink" dish. i.e. everything except the kitchen sink is likely to be thrown in the pot. As a result no two are the same. Besides being easy to make, nothing tastes better when one comes in from the cold than a steaming bowl of stew and a chunk of homemade bread. On more than one occasion the last night in camp, dinner consisted of some leftover meat and everything else left in the bottom of the camp box with some baking powder biscuits to soak up the juices. What ever the occasion, whether at home or in camp, A Dutch oven stew will fill'em up and keep'em smilin'A Back Country Guide to Outdoor Cooking Spiced with Tall Tales - Camp Chili, Stews, Soups and Sauces

Steps:

• If you're not a duck hunter or married to a duck hunter, just skip this recipe. Personally, I've never tried to cook a coot, primarily because I've never even shot at an "Ivory Billed Mallard". Remember, this is the guy who will eat every thing except grits and green lima beans. In this modern age, it seems to me, too many people blame events in their childhood for the mistakes or failures they make as adults. Some rightly so, but I can't help but feel a lot of it is over done!So where is all this leading, you ask yourself? Yup! you guessed it, my childhood. Since my dad first took me duck hunting at age three, the list of things I've done in life longer than I've duck hunted is fairly short. Memories of those first duck hunts are still vivid. Back in that distant past, I learned that the preferred duck of those who wait at home while others duck hunt, to be mallards. Those of the green headed variety! My dad, being a pretty fair hand with a shotgun, seldom got skunked in those days. He'd been there before, but it was a new experience for me, just four years old. About the only thing flying in the marsh that day were coots, which Dad had several different adjectives to describe. I didn't understand why dad didn't shoot them as they patterned by. At that time I obviously thought-ducks are ducks! Wrong! How long I pestered Dad to shoot them, I can't remember. What I do remember is him saying, "Mother didn't like any kind of ducks except those with green heads" and it wouldn't be very smart to take something home she didn't like. Though I was just four years old, that part I understood! I'm sure Dad first passed this recipe on that day. Over the years, Dad repeated this recipe so many times I've memorized it without ever having cooked it.A Back Country Guide to Outdoor Cooking Spiced with Tall Tales - Fowl & Fish

Steps:

• The mountain men and free trappers who explored the Intermountain West in the early 1800's referred to it as their "possibles" sack. A small leather poke sack with essentials they might 'possibly' need in the course of their travels. Such items as flint, steel, tinder, whetstone, needle and thread were staples along with other small items each individual deemed essential. Today's equivalent takes the shape of a fanny pack or day pack in which we carry things we might need during our trip outdoors be it a day hike or an extended stay. Today's "possibles" most likely include matches in a waterproof container, a map and compass, an extra shoelace, etc., and other important small items excluding of course cell phones and GPS Receivers!What's included with one's "possibles" varies according to a person's wants and needs. Sometime when you're out in the woods with a bunch of folks, sit down after dinner and have everyone go through their "possibles" to see the variety of things that folks consider essential. For sure there will be things peculiar to each individual and include items which at first glance appear insignificant! But...there are those occasions when one of these seemingly insignificant items tucked away in the bottom of a day pack saves the day. Such a day occurred for my pard, Rich Rodgers, on a cold, snowy day in mid-November, 1983.Rich, Tom and Bill Beck, and I were hunting deer and elk out of a horse camp on Indian Creek Airstrip on Middle Fork of Salmon River. A wall tent with smoke wisping from the stack and the glow from a lantern greeted Rich as he trudged in about an hour after dark on the third day. Before he said a word, we knew from the grin on his face and blood on his boots that he'd connected. His first elk, a six-point bull, needed packed out the next day. Starting out as a city kid from Glen Ellyn, Illinois, another dream came true for Rich that cold, snowy November day. Other dreams already realized by Rich included being a collegiate All-American football center at 5' 10" and 210 pounds, obtaining a MS in Range Management on a NCAA scholarship, becoming a farrier under the tutelage of Henry Ketchie, and marrying Sue.Happy hour that evening extended until way past supper as Rich told and re-told the story with more detail each time. After describing where the bull was down, the trail, and the heavy snow conditions, we decided to walk in leading a packhorse, bone the elk, and backpack the meat up to a ridge top where we could get the packhorse with minimal difficulty. One of the details Rich had added the third or fourth time he told the story concerned the steepness of the hill where the bull lay. He told us he'd tied the bull to a short, scrubby tree to keep it from sliding down into the bottom of Mowitch Creek.Rich, Tom, my Black Lab, 'Snoose,' and I left camp in the gray light of dawn leading Black Jack, one of my packhorses. Where Rich's tracks from the previous day hit the horse trail I loosened his cinch and tied him securely to a tree about forty feet off the trail. If recollection serves me correctly, we dropped about 500-600 vertical feet through a foot plus of snow on a mountain steeper than a cow's face to get to the bull.It wasn't the fact that Rich had tied the bull up to keep it on the face of the 'earth' that struck me. It was how he tied it up which caused Tom and I to bust out laughing! The previous day Rich had quickly realized how precarious a position this bull was in if he expected the rest of us to help pack it out. Had the bull slipped into the bottom, it would have been easier to just pack in a frying pan and eat him on the spot! To stabilize the critter, he'd started with a piece of rope from his day pack and tied it to the antlers. This chunk of rope was way too short to reach the only scrubby Doug Fir tenacious enough to grow on such a steep slope. Scrambling up to this scrubby Doug Fir, he tied his remaining piece of rope and stretched it out towards the first line. Guess what? We've all been there! He was still short! Having once been a football player, Rich knew the importance of having an extra shoelace. Connecting the two lengths of rope was a shoelace from among his "possibles"!Whenever campfire talk turns to elk hunting, this bull will forever be known as the "Shoestring Bull!" The last time I saw Rich before he passed away from cancer, the telling of this story again brought the smile from that cold, snowy November night in the wall tent back to his face.Spiced with More Tall Tales - Dedications