Trappers dinner

A tasty treat that is fun to seek....!

Pete

Yeah !Fun too. Looks like some hard snow.

Good eats. Nice looking rifle setup, Did you add the peep sight?

It was pretty cold since early November and the snow piled up; soft deep flounder fest. Not much fun. Then we had that melt down and some wind and it's firmed up pretty good now.
I haven't had that rifle long but it came with the peep sight. I need to practice some more I burned a few rounds before getting the right sight picture. The other thing is the magazine tube came loose in the scabbard and all the rounds fell out. After 2 dry fires I figured that out. Reloaded and added a little black tape to hold the tube in place and took care of that.

Good looking birds!

Nice! I got lucky this week and picked up two on the road that died from hitting telephone wires. Saw three more dead ones being eaten by loose dogs

Is there breast meat lite or dark?

The feathered feet are neat. Are they feathered in the summer too?

Haha well there you go! I imagine you have some big flocks to see much of that? My cousin told me about the eiders raining onto the deck of the crabber he was working in the Bering Sea. I guess they'd fly for the lights at night and hit the rigging.

I think their feet are feathered in the summer but not as heavy but it's been a long time since I've seen summer (fall) ptarmigan up close. The breast meat is dark but if I recall it is quite a lot darker in the winter than the fall. Again it's been a while since I've had fall ptarmigan. Fall ptarmigan flavor seemed to have a nice willowy tang.

Are those White tailed?

Ptarmigan around here taste like berries in the fall.Sweet meat. In the winter get more of a willow taste. Even their eggs taste a bit like willow.

Try them dried . they are very good too. They dry them here in the spring.

I had a old school buddy I used to hunt with, he was born in a cabin out in the sticks' and trapped with dogs back in the day. He told me when they would have no luck hunting and hungry, they would scoop out the ptarmigan hole of snow with turd and all and make soup.

I recall years ago when a Back East animal rights lady was testifying against wolf control plans before the BOG. Sidney Huntington asked her: "Lady, have you ever been so hungry that you had to boil ptarmigan "dung" to make soup?" Apparently it was a "thing" along the Koyukuk too!

Pete

Theyr['e willow ptarmigan waggler.
I see where they hole up in the snow there can be a pretty good little handful of droppings in there like they either sit there for a couple days maybe, or re-use the same little snow hole or just crap more than you might think. Either way I'll file that little tidbit away for starvation plans. All the same- sounds better than letting your own blood for a meal which I read about them having to resort to in desperate times back in the day....
Sidney Huntington was great on the BOG. Don't know how many copies of his book I've given away.

They all (grouse too) dive into the snow for the night to keep warm. Lot warmer under the snow. In the day too on a real cold day. You be going along and you see nothing and then a head pokes up as you get close and they get nervous. You can shoot them that way with just the head poked up; grouse and ptarmigan. Some times you go along on skidoo at night and they explode out of the snow just ahead of you.

One of our univ profs got a grad student to go out and collect those droppings (DPM) and test them for the protein content left behind. Seems that at -20c the grouse re-eat the droppings rather than go out and get cold again. After every 4 hours the grouse expel and the white is the uric acid, so they could tell in the burrow what was recycled. The salic acid was quite high when willow was fed on in those droppings.
The bulk of chicken farms re-use the droppings as re-feed DPM is dried poultry manure up to three times because of increased protein absorption on the extra go-arounds.

Here's the feet in September.

Beautiful bird !

Do people hunt them with dogs up there? My favorite pastime is Grouse and Woodcock behind a pointing dog in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

When the boarders were open
fellows came up from Minn and traveled through northern Manitoba and would stop on drainage ditches and work their dogs down them since they are bound with willows. Above the 53 parr the season is open to 15 Feb most years and the willow ptarmagin come down south. One budding in a tree was a good sign there was going to be more. Most of these guys had been up during the grouse season as well so they were still using the same licence.

Yes
https://thebirddogbabe.libsyn.com/episode-018-the-beauty-of-hunting-alaska-w-christine-cunningham
https://www.adn.com/outdoors-advent...r-another-bird-hunting-season-in-alaska/
I'm sure there is much more info to be found

Hungry times back then for sure. After my old buddy told me the ptarmigan poop soup story I asked if he ever ate fox. I wish I didn't. He said "yes" one time when he was a boy his brother would give him one 22 shell to go get dinner in the winter. He went out hunting and shot a fox, (was good money back then) he brought it home but his older brother wouldn't let him in the door, but instead handed him another 22 bullet and told him to get dinner and shut the door. He said he skinned out a back leg and was crying eating walking down the trail.

I Bought fur from a Huntington from Koyuk, his son I believe, he was a nice guy with a bunch well put up fur. I enjoyed chatting with him.

The tragic story of the aged frozen whitefish, in the book made me rethink my fish aging policy.

So this thread inspired me to tip one over today while shed hunting.

That's what the tail feathers look like on the ones I got the other day. One odd thing about freshly killed winter-white ptarmigan is their feathers give off a faint pinkish hue. I don't know why that is but its very consistent and then the pink disappears after a while.

Same thing under certain lighting white on a male common merganser (we call them gozzards) give off a pinkish hue on the white throat. Like the white partridges only under certain light conditions. Seen lots of white partridges, and all my life, but have not seen the pinkish hue very often.

I believe its from the cranberries they eat right before freeze up.

In the 1990's there was a fellow that travelled up to Alaska with his dogs to grouse hunt. Back the the season started 15 Aug and he travelled south to his home state of Ohio for the quail opener on 11 Nov. He was on Ohio well-fare, that was 10 oil wells paying his day. I saved old boxes of shells with stamps of low prices on the boxes, so he would not have to pay duty.

Whitetail ptarmigan. Quite a bit smaller than willow ptarmigan.

Thanks for the different species. Only one left is a Rock ptarmigan, the official game bird of Labrador and NFd

Way to go.Great eating

Are they dark meat

^^^^^^
Yes
I was accustomed to eating blue grouse (white meat), when I shot my first ptarmigan many years ago I was a little surprise -and a little disappoint- to find that they were dark meat; good tasting though.

Friendly Amendment North of 50. Official game of bird of NL was actually both willow and rock ptarmigan when declared in 1996." Lagopus sp." was how it was worded as they are both Lagopus genus as you know. Both birds are then mentioned in the declaration.

If we had to pick one then the willow is well over 95% that are shot. Only in extreme northern Labrador are rock ones a bit more common but still the minority in most cases.

I knew how to set the trap to get your response crosspatch.
I did not know there was 2 species with white tails so I guess I have to stroke one off my birder life list, since it was only seen from a chopper in the corner of NWT/BC/Alaska area
having read more there is sure some question about the DNA of the two-three species genetic mix.

Sorry to hi-jack your thread drassett
They are looking for some Hippoboscidae flies or known as keds or louse flies found on all the grouse species trying to do some Dna . Please pm me if you ever get any for sampling methods and where to ship.

Kinda losing me here North of 50. "Did not know there was 2 species with white tails". As you know 3 species ptarmigan North America. Quite familiar with willow and rock here and both have black tail feathers. Saw a couple of white tails once up in mountains of Jasper National Park in 2006 and white tails as per the name for sure.

Lots of rock ptarmigan, here. Some willows.

Willow and white tailed ptarmigan size comparison. I see the white tails are called snow quail by some but I’ve never heard them called that. Rock ptarmigan have a black stripe across the eye.

Nice use to get them on hunting trips in Co at high elevations never seen them in Wy. I think they were introduced to Co. but not sure I dont think they are native to most of lower 48 does anyone know??

Whitetail ptarmigan are native to Washington State.