All Outdoors November 27, 1998

1. Careful cooking makes gamy venison delicious

2. State officials seek information about mountain lions

"The opportunity the quail hunter has to maneuver for position while the quarry obligingly waits is another thing that makes bird hunting a unique and peerless pastime. What other kind of wing-shooting, pray, gives a gunner time to call a meeting of the ways and means committee?"- Havilah Babcock, Tales of Quail 'n Such

1. Careful cooking makes gamy venison delicious

Even tough old bucks can be good eating with the right recipe.

JEFFERSON CITY-After sending antlers to the taxidermist, some hunters despair of turning the remainder of trophy deer into first-rate table fare. But if you keep the following tips in mind, any whitetail can enrich your menu.

Back to the grind. Old deer tend to be tough. Sometimes the easiest way to avoid rubbery meat is to grind it up into burger or sausage. Grinding twice-once with a medium screen and once with a fine screen-is most effective.

The kindest cut of all. You can get some of the benefits of grinding with judicious cutting. When sliced across the grain into thin steaks, the loin and back strap of big deer can still produce dishes that require binding arbitration to divvy up. Even roasts from old deer can be cooked to reasonable tenderness if they are sliced across the grain in half-inch slabs before cooking.

Slow and easy does it. Any cut of meat will be more tender if cooked slowly. The difference in tenderness of a roast cooked at 275 rather than 350 degrees is well worth the extra hour.

Take the fat with the lean. Venison contains slightly more cholesterol than beef, pork or chicken, but it has far less fat. This makes venison a heart-smart dietary choice. It also means that cooked venison can be dry. But don't despair, the cure is easy.

Before Americans became cholesterol-conscious, they "larded" dry meats by putting fat on or in a cut of meat before cooking. Basting with bacon grease or putting chunks of salt pork inside a roast still works great if you don't have to watch your fat consumption, and you can use dry cooking methods like roasting or frying.

Wet plus wild makes diners smile. For those who want to limit dietary fat, the key to juicy venison is moist cooking. Putting a roast in a crock pot filled with water and vegetables is an option for large cuts. Steaks, chops and cutlets can be cooked on top of the stove in a covered frypan, again with plenty of liquid.

The ultimate moist cooking recipe is stew. Parts of a deer carcass that normally would be too tough for any other use can be cut into one-inch chunks and used as the main ingredient for a hearty soup. The natural enzymes found in fresh vegetables, perhaps aided by a few teaspoons of monosodium glutamate (MSG) work wonders during several hours of simmering. Marinades do double duty. Soaking meat in various liquid concoctions before cooking can tenderize veteran venison while also reducing its gamy flavor. Try this recipe from Cy Littlebee's Guide to Cooking Fish & Game:

--3 to 7 pounds of chuck, round or rump roast

--Cooking sherry or white vinegar

--6 bay leaves

--12 whole cloves

--1 tablespoon whole black pepper

--1 big onion, sliced

Place the venison in a bowl, cover with equal parts of dry wine or vinegar and water. Add the other ingredients. Refrigerate for one to three days, turning the meat several times. Remove the meat and sear on all sides in hot fat. Place on a wire rack in a covered roasting pan or baking bag and add a cup of marinade. Cook in a slow oven until tender, about three hours. Make gravy with the drippings.

Single copies of Cy Littlebee's Guide to Cooking Fish & Game are available to Missouri residents for $3.50 plus $2.22 shipping and tax from The Nature Shop, Missouri Department of Conservation, P.O. Box 180, Jefferson City, MO 65102-0180.

- Jim Low -

2. State officials seek information about mountain lion

The Conservation Department and the University of Missouri-Columbia are asking citizens' help in learning the origin of a pelt found in Texas County.

HOUSTON, Mo.-Officials with the Missouri Department of Conservation and the University of Missouri-Columbia (UMC) are looking into the discovery of a mountain lion pelt and head found in Texas County. They plan to use sophisticated genetic tests to try to find out where the remains might have come from, but say that alert citizens are just as likely to provide critical clues in solving Missouri's continuing mountain lion mystery.

Conservation Agent Roy Hoggatt got a phone call Nov. 13 from a hunter who had discovered a mountain lion skin beside a road in southern Texas County. The pelt still had head and feet attached, as if it had been skinned for mounting by a taxidermist.

Hoggatt and other conservation officials wonder if the remains came from a cat killed in Missouri or if they came from another state. They also wonder why someone who went to the trouble of skinning a mountain lion discarded the pelt.

Sporadic reports of mountain lion sightings have occurred in Missouri for decades. Most consisted of brief glimpses of large, catlike animals. A few involved paw prints, and a few have even involved dead mountain lions. In most cases, investigations showed that the dead cats had been brought from other states or had escaped from captivity.In recent years, two live mountain lions have been videotaped in southern Missouri. But the evidence has always been too sparse to tell if the big cats seen in Missouri were wild, free-ranging animals or if they had escaped or been released by one of the more than 50 Missourians with permits to keep mountain lions in captivity.

If the videotaped cats were wild, the question remains whether they migrated here from other states, if they escaped from captivity or if they were remnants of the wild mountain lions that roamed Missouri before European settlers arrived.

Scientific advances could shed some light on the pedigree of the latest mountain lion remains, which now are in a freezer at the University of Missouri-Columbia. University officials are conducting genetic testing to find out as much as possible about the origins of the mountain lion whose pelt turned up in Texas County.

David Hamilton, a wildlife research biologist at the Conservation Research Center in Columbia, says genetic fingerprinting won't reveal how the big cat's pelt got to Missouri, but it might link the remains to mountain lion populations in other parts of the country.

"Right now, we have no idea where this lion may have come from. If it migrated here from Texas, we should be able to see genetic similarities to the DNA of Texas cats," says Hamilton. "If it was killed by someone in Colorado and brought here, its DNA would look similar to cats from Colorado. If its DNA didn't look like the genetic material of cats from anywhere else, that would be really startling-and exciting. We're very eager to see what can be learned from this new find."

Hamilton says that without a DNA specimen from a Missouri mountain lion from a century ago to compare with current samples it may never be possible to tell if any of the original stock survived. He says the general information from genetic testing of the Texas County remains will be interesting, but it is no substitute for first-hand knowledge.

"Folks in rural communities generally know what goes on in their own back yards," says Hamilton. "We are hoping that someone in Texas or Howell county might be able to shed light on how this mountain lion pelt got there. We will pursue any useful leads people can give us."

Hamilton said anyone who has information about the mountain lion remains can call Roy Hoggatt, the Conservation Department's West Plains office or the Department's toll-free Operation Game Thief hot line, 800-392-1111. Callers can remain anonymous.

Conservation Department Director Jerry Conley formed a special Mountain Lion Response Team in 1996. The team, which includes Conservation Department and UMC personnel, has developed systematic procedures for investigating mountain lion reports to ensure that such investigations capture as much information as possible about mountain lions in Missouri.

- Jim Low -

3. Outdoor events feature wild eagles

The United States' national symbol is the main attraction at seven events from December through February.

JEFFERSON CITY-Want an eagle-eye view of Missouri's wintering bald eagles? Attend one of the Missouri Department of Conservation's seven Eagle Days events. The programs are designed to let you view eagles in their natural habitat and learn about their population recovery.

Eagle Days will include live eagle programs, films documenting the biology and recovery of eagles in Missouri, displays and activities for children. Conservation Department staff and volunteers will be on hand with spotting scopes to help visitors view eagles in the wild, but bringing a pair of binoculars is a good idea. For some locations the Conservation Department also has mapped out auto tour routes for viewing eagles.

In recent years, Missouri has been the winter home to 2,000 to 3,000 eagles. Only Alaska and Washington have larger wintering eagle populations. An abundance of good habitat and food sources attract the birds to the state. Missouri's large bodies of water, which usually remain unfrozen during the winter, supply eagles with one of their dietary staples, fish. The birds also eat injured and dead waterfowl and other carrion.

Eagle Days events are scheduled for weekends December through February. Unless otherwise noted, each event begins at 9 a.m., and is free of charge. The dates and locations of the events are:

--Dec. 5-6 at Squaw Creek National Wildlife Refuge, Mound City;

--Jan. 9 from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. at School of the Osage Elementary, Lake of the Ozarks;

--Jan. 16 at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Jerry Litton Visitor Center on Smithville Lake;

--Jan. 16-17 at the Springfield Conservation Nature Center;

--Jan. 30-31 at the Apple Shed Theater, Clarksville, and Ted Shanks Conservation Area south of Hannibal;

--Feb. 6-7 at Chain of Rocks Bridge, St. Louis;

--Feb. 6-7 at Mingo National Wildlife Refuge and Duck Creek Conservation Area northeast of Poplar Bluff.

Because many of the events will take place outside or in unheated buildings, those attending Eagle Days should wear warm clothing.

Missouri has many locations where you can enjoy viewing eagles on your own in winter. Swan Lake National Wildlife Refuge near Sumner, Table Rock Lake near Branson, Eagle Bluffs Conservation Area south of Columbia and Mingo National Wildlife Refuge near Puxico are among the sites where large numbers of eagles winter. Plan a visit to one, or all, of these locations, and watch for eagles perching in large trees along the edges of rivers or lakes.

For a brochure with directions to all Eagle Days events, write to Missouri Department of Conservation, P.O. Box 180, Jefferson City, MO 65102-0180 or call 573/751-4115.

- Arleasha Mays -