Like muskrat? How about some moose head cheese?

LYNETTE HINTZE/Daily Inter Lake

I may be one of the few people in these parts with a recipe for wolf stroganoff. This is because I own a copy of the Hawley, Minn. Rod & Gun Club Wild Game Recipes cookbook.

While sorting through a bunch of old cookbooks recently, I came upon this gem. I don't remember buying it or getting it as a gift, but there it was in all its glory, with recipes spanning from 1929 to 1981. Obviously, the wolf recipe was concocted before wolves were put on the endangered species list.

My hometown in Minnesota dairy country never struck me as a hunting hotbed, so I opened the cookbook expecting to find Norwegian hunters' recipes for how to turn Northern pike into lutefisk. Imagine my surprise when I came upon recipes for sweet pickled beaver and muskrat meat loaf. I laughed out loud at the moose head cheese and fell off my chair when I came to the "headcheese without the head" recipe.

Then I lost my appetite when I flipped to recipes for roast and broiled skunk.

"Don't laugh," the cookbook instructs in a paragraph prefacing the unusual recipes. "During the depression in the 1930s, rugged individuals who were too proud to accept welfare ate everything they could shoot or trap. They discovered, like their forefathers had done before them, that skunk meat was white, tender and tasty. It was also a favorite delicacy of the Indians. So don't knock it until you're tried it."

I had to find out if my father had hunted skunks in the depths of the Great Depression, so I called home to find out.

"Mom, did Dad ever hunt and eat skunks?"

"Oh, ishda (this is a Norwegian word for complete disgust)," she replied. "No, I'm sure he didn't, I'm absolutely sure. Oh, ishda!"

THE CHAPTER on "wild birds" had its own surprises - smothered crow for one. Like many of the recipes, it had a notation from whoever supplied the recipe.

"Sportsmen learn that the crow, as well as being an elusive target, are good to eat. Young birds are the best," the cookbook advises.

Rod & Gun Club members were fairly sophisticated in some of their offerings: wild duck a la orange, pheasant Mulligan with dumplings, elk liver kabobs and breaded frog legs. Some dishes were run of the mill: raccoon pie, turtle stew and roast squirrels.

Did you know you can cook woodchuck as a pot roast or pair opossum with chestnuts for a savory entree? I didn't.

I didn't even know there were opossum in Minnesota, but a quick Google check indicates that their ideal habitat is woodland, farmland and suburban neighborhoods.

Celery salt apparently brings out the essence of ground hog. And here's what you need to know when fixing beaver tail: "Blister the tail over fire till skin loosens or dip in boiling water for a couple of minutes. Pull skin off. Cut up and boil with a pot of beans."

Beaver tail was afforded more explanation later on by these hunters-turned-cookbook-writers.

"This tid-bit of the old-time trappers will be tasted by few of our generation, more's the pity," they wrote regarding beaver tail, later noting that once you get the "rough, scaly hide" to blister and fall off over hot coals, the tail meat is white and solid. "This is considered very strengthening food."

I'm not a connoisseur of wild game. I normally don't mind it, but I don't seek it out. When my husband ran a meat processing plant in Eastern Montana, we cut and wrapped hundreds of deer each season. In short, I got my fill of wild game.

The general big-game rifle season begins today, so there will be plenty of venison and other wild game going into freezers across the Flathead. I stand ready with recipes such as pickled venison with cream gravy, if any of you need a break from your favorite dishes.

And back to the wolf stroganoff. The key, it says, it to start with a "good wolf rump." It just might be awhile yet before anyone can legally cook it.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com