Looking for some wild goose meat for Christmas dinner? Having eaten some, I can’t recommend it over the domestic variety, particularly with the soupcon of golf course seasoning.
But should you be interested, you might peruse this list of hunters who’ve qualified for the goose “hunt” in North Little Rock’s Burns Park next week. One of them might be able to hook you up. Each hunter can kill two geese, with the first to be donated to feeding the hungry and the second, if desired, a keeper for the hunter.
Some of the geese will go to a hunters group that puts wild game on the tables of hungry people when hunters have more than they can, or want to, consume. This e-mail, also released with the hunters’ list under an FOI request to the North Little Rock Parks and Recreation Department, indicates a little early reluctance on the part of the group over cost of processing. But this apparently has been worked out. Charlotte King of the Amboy Food Pantry said she’d agreed to take some of the processed birds from Arkansas Hunters Feeding the Hungry for the pantry freezer. She didn’t recall having received any geese previously, but said she was sure her customers, who’ve received deer and duck before, would be happy to get it. “It’s a little darker meat and a little greasy, isn’t it?” she asked me. “I’m told if you cook it with apple and onion it takes care of that. I don’t think we’ll have any trouble giving them out.”
The hunters group has said it might grind the meat into gooseburgers.