RLeep2 wrote:
>>I said: what for, they taste even worse than bald eagle. >>
My Paternal Grandfather got his brains stirred good in the trenches in France during the Great War and it left him a lifelong PTSD sufferer who never worked a conventional job. He sired 10 kids and put food on the table by butchering hogs for neighbors, building the odd porch here and there and witching water. He spent most of his free time (which was considerable...) spearing spring suckers in Elk Creek, running coon and by poaching whatever he could poach. Back before they figured out the aluminum box thing for wood ducks, my Dad said the old man probably poached half of the 25 or so woodies that were left between Erie and Pittsburgh at the time. Nor did he make an exception for Great Blue Herons, which were also way down numbers wise around the same time. The old man was very knowledgeable about the woods and what he did not know, he was intensely curious to learn. So, he'd see the odd heron now and then and he wondered how one would be browned up in a pan. So, he shot one and ate it, reducing the number of herons in PA to about the same level as wood ducks. Before he died (he lived to be 89, mostly by always making a point of eating the ring of fat on the edge of a pork chop first...), he told me that while he had a rule that he always ate what he shot, one heron was enough for a lifetime. He said they were better eating than mergansers, but not as good as a crow.
