Grilled or pan fried...doesn't matter.  Missouri turkey is delicious.

Grilled or pan fried…doesn’t matter. Missouri turkey is delicious.

Hard to believe that after nearly ten months of planning, studying, practicing and hunting, my time with the Missouri Department of Conservation and my journey with my two mentors, Kyle Lairmore and Jim Low, is coming to an end.

You’ve followed my steps from hunter education through deer, duck and now turkey hunting and I hope we’ve provided good information along the way to help you get started.

The final step, now that I was able to harvest a turkey on my first hunt, is to show you how to prepare this delicious meat that is a great protein source.

On our final video (watch below), Kyle will walk you through a quick and easy, pan fry and bake recipe that goes great with rice and vegetables.  Ever since we’ve hosted Thanksgiving at my house, I’ve prepared our bird on a charcoal grill.  So I was really interested to see how a Missouri jake would turn out.  I was very happy with the results as we used the grill meat to make a delicious muffaletta from a recipe straight out of the Cooking Wild in Missouri cookbook.  Of course, turkey season isn’t complete without Morel mushrooms!  Another great resource is to get a copy of the Missouri’s Wild Mushrooms book.

In fact, for being a faithful viewer and reader of my hunting journey, I want you to have an opportunity to win these great books.  Click here to sign up to win.

After going through the process of each hunt, if I had to pick a favorite, I would choose turkey.  I mentioned several reasons in my last story, but the final decision came down to how delicious the meat tasted. I had heard from multiple people, hunters and non-hunters who all told me the same thing…store bought turkey doesn’t even come close to the taste of a native Missouri gobbler.  Man, they were right!

What I learned about hunting is that the whole experience isn’t just about whether or not you harvest an animal.  The best part of this final video shoot was cooking the food, sitting down at the table and sharing a meal, great stories with plenty of laughs.  That’s what truly completes the experience.

Here’s a post on the Department of Conservation’s Facebook page that I think sums up what hunting is all about.  This comes from Randy H.

Can’t thank you guys enough for these blogs. I started turkey hunting at 40 and brought my son along for the first time about 5 or 6 years ago at the age of 12. We have been every year and have yet to bag a bird although we’ve been very close. You guys are absolutely correct that the adventure and the stories are sometimes better than a kill. At 18 now, he chose to go hunt by himself for the first time last weekend and had one within shooting distance but couldn’t take the shot through the brush in the woods. Just hearing his stories were really cool and I was extremely proud and happy for him. My hope is that we can both bag our first birds in the same morning while sitting together. He will be going off to college in the fall and our times together will be fewer but I will always have the memories in my mind and in my heart. We still have this weekend…

I know I started this post by saying that my journey was coming to an end, but that’s incorrect.  It is really just beginning.