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The hunter's breakfast was at four in the morning, at the Knights of Columbus hall in Gardiner. Baked beans, bacon, ham or steak, enough to carry you through most of the morning, and plenty of coffee. Even at twelve, I was allowed coffee. I sat there with my father and my cousins, and then we went hunting.
Then wool, Bean boots, blaze orange, and out into the dark. We hit the woods at first light. Most of those mornings it was in the teens or the twenties, and in the seventies there was usually a fresh coat of snow on the ground. Snow that cold squeaks under your boots, so you learn to walk slow. You find your spot and you sit still. We always carried a thermos, coffee or hot chocolate.
The snow didn't hold. In the later decades, those mornings brought rain more often than snow. I noticed it before I'd ever heard anybody call it climate change.
I went on plenty of deer hunts and moose hunts, and I hunted rabbits when I was a kid. Some of the best memories I have with my father and my cousins started in that hall at four in the morning.
Hunting season is on now. These are the wild game and wine pairings I'd pour when the meat from those mornings makes it to the table.
Venison
My first hunt was the year I was fourteen, the first year I was old enough to go. My dad decided to keep it simple. We walked out to the back pasture of my grandfather's farm in West Gardiner. At first light we came up onto a knoll, and on the next knoll over, about 200 yards out, a doe was grazing. I was carrying my father's .300 Savage.
My father was a quiet man. He rarely spoke unless it was important, probably something that came home with him from the Battle of the Bulge, where he was a prisoner of war. That morning he said three words: take the shot. I did, and I was back in time for the opening bell at school.
"That morning he said three words: take the shot."
Deer meat is lean and dark, with a little iron to it. Most of it went into the freezer as backstrap, steaks, stew meat and burger. The backstrap goes in a hot cast iron pan and comes out rare.
The pour
Pour a Syrah from the northern Rhône, a Crozes-Hermitage or a Saint-Joseph. The wine has a peppery, black-olive side that sits right next to the iron in the meat, and the tannin is moderate, so it won't dry out a cut with no fat on it. Skip the big oaky Cabernet here. Lean meat and heavy tannin leave your mouth dry.
For venison stew or chili, a Côtes du Rhône does the job for less money.
At the wine shop, ask for a northern Rhône Syrah with a peppery side.
Moose
I went on moose hunts and never got one. I never even saw a moose while I was hunting.
Moose eats more like lean beef than like deer. It's milder, with a coarser grain, and most of it ends up as roasts.
The pour
For a pot roast, pour a Saint-Émilion, a Bordeaux built mostly on Merlot. It has enough body for the meat, and the tannin stays soft through a long, slow cook. If the steaks or the burgers are going on the grill instead, open a Malbec from Mendoza.
At the counter, tell them you want a Right Bank Bordeaux, mostly Merlot, nothing too tannic.
The moose never showed for me. The Saint-Émilion is for whoever had better luck.
Bear
I never went bear hunting. That usually took dogs, and we didn't have hunting dogs. What I had were the bear stories my dad and my grandparents told, and I couldn't get enough of them. That's probably where a lot of my own storytelling started.
The one I remember best is my father's. He was deer hunting with his Uncle Wendell in the western Maine woods near Rangeley when they stumbled on a mother bear and her cubs. It would have been a good bear to take. They let her go. My family had a rule, and so did most of the old-timers: you don't take an animal that has cubs or fawns with her. Later that same season, they brought home a 300-pound bruin.
Black bear is rich and fatty, closer to pork shoulder than to venison. What the bear ate shows up in the meat. A fall bear that fattened up on beechnuts and berries tastes sweet. Bear has to be cooked all the way through, to 160°F, because of trichinosis, so it gets braised or slow-roasted, never served rare.
The pour
Pour a Barbera from Piedmont. It has high acid to cut through the fat and low tannin, which matters with meat that has to be cooked well done. If it's pulled bear with barbecue sauce, an old-vine Zinfandel from Amador or Lodi can handle the sweet sauce.
Ask the shop for a Barbera d'Alba or d'Asti. Any decent one will have the acid you need.
Rabbit
Rabbit hunting meant the gully below my parents' house. The best time was when the snow came before the hares had changed color, and a brown hare on white snow is easy to spot. Rabbit stew was a staple in our house most of the winter, at least once a month.
Those were snowshoe hares. Hare is darker and stronger than a farm-raised rabbit, and so lean it needs a long braise. The old way is a red wine stew with bacon and onions.
The pour
Pour a Chianti Classico. Sangiovese has the acid and the sour-cherry edge to stand up to a dark, gamey braise, and it's usually easy on the wallet. A Cru Beaujolais or a Côtes du Rhône works too.
Look for the black rooster on the neck of the bottle. That's how you know it's Chianti Classico.
Taste it first
Wild meat changes from animal to animal. A buck that fed on beechnuts tastes different from one that fed in a cornfield, and a yearling is milder than an old animal. Before you settle on a bottle, cook a small piece and taste it. If it's stronger than you expected, go a step bigger on the wine. If it's milder, go a step lighter.
What was on the table at your family's hunting breakfast? Tell me in the comments.
Recipes
Most of my Maine cooking starts with Marjorie Standish's Cooking Down East. My copy came from my mother, and her notes are still in the margin beside each recipe, in her handwriting. I use it as the starting point and adapt from there. These four are my own. If you cook Maine food, find a copy.
Don't hunt? Farm-raised venison and rabbit are sold by specialty butchers and online. Farm rabbit is milder and cooks faster than snowshoe hare, so start checking the stew after an hour. Moose and bear are harder. Selling wild game meat is illegal in most of the U.S., so you'll need a hunter who's willing to share. Beef chuck stands in for moose in the pot roast, and pork shoulder works in place of bear. The wines stay the same.
Take the recipes with you
The four recipes in this story are a free printable PDF, one card each, with the wine to pour and what to ask for at the wine shop. They print two to a page on regular paper.
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Venison backstrap in cast iron
Serves 4 · Active 15 min · Total 55 min, including resting
- 1½ to 2 pounds venison backstrap, silver skin trimmed off
- Salt and plenty of black pepper
- 2 tablespoons bacon fat or vegetable oil
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 2 garlic cloves, smashed
- A few sprigs of fresh thyme
- Take the meat out of the refrigerator half an hour before you cook it. Pat it dry and season it hard with salt and pepper.
- Get a cast iron skillet hot enough that the fat shimmers, then lay the backstrap in and leave it alone for 3 or 4 minutes. Turn it and brown each side. When it reads 125°F in the thickest part, it's rare.
- Drop in the butter, garlic and thyme for the last minute and spoon the butter over the meat.
- Let it rest 10 minutes on a board, then slice it across the grain.
Suggested pairing: Northern Rhône Syrah, a Crozes-Hermitage or Saint-Joseph
Moose pot roast
Serves 6 to 8 · Active 20 min · Total about 3 hr 20 min
- A 3 to 4 pound moose roast, chuck or round
- Salt and pepper
- 2 tablespoons flour
- 3 tablespoons bacon fat or vegetable oil
- 2 onions, quartered
- 2 cups beef broth
- 1 cup dry red wine
- 2 bay leaves
- 4 carrots, 4 potatoes and half a small turnip, cut in big chunks
- Heat the oven to 300°F. Season the roast, dust it with the flour, and brown it on every side in the fat in a Dutch oven.
- Add the onions, broth, wine and bay leaves, cover, and put it in the oven for 2 hours.
- Add the vegetables around the meat and cook another hour, until a fork slides into the roast without pushing back.
- Lift out the meat and vegetables, simmer the juices on the stove until they thicken a little, and pour them over everything.
Suggested pairing: Saint-Émilion, or a Malbec from Mendoza if the moose is on the grill
Braised bear with cider and onions
Serves 6 · Active 25 min · Total 4 to 4½ hr
- A 3 pound bear roast or shoulder, with the fat trimmed off
- Salt and pepper
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 2 onions, sliced
- 3 garlic cloves, chopped
- 1 cup apple cider
- 1 cup beef broth
- 1 tablespoon cider vinegar
- 1 teaspoon dried thyme and a bay leaf
- Heat the oven to 300°F. Trim off as much fat as you can, since bear fat can taste strong. Season the meat and brown it all over in the oil in a Dutch oven.
- Take it out, soften the onions and garlic in the same pot, then put the meat back with the cider, broth, vinegar, thyme and bay leaf.
- Cover it and braise 3½ to 4 hours, until the meat falls apart. Check that the thickest part reads at least 160°F.
- Serve it sliced with the onions and juices, or shred it and toss it with barbecue sauce for pulled bear.
Suggested pairing: Barbera d'Alba or d'Asti, or an old-vine Zinfandel with pulled bear
Hare stew with bacon and onions
Serves 4 · Active 30 min · Total about 3 hr
- 1 snowshoe hare (or 2 rabbits), cut into pieces
- 4 thick slices of bacon, cut into strips
- ¼ cup flour, seasoned with salt and pepper
- 2 onions, chopped
- 2 carrots, sliced
- 2 garlic cloves, chopped
- 2 cups dry red wine
- 1 cup chicken broth
- A bay leaf and a pinch of dried thyme
- Fry the bacon in a heavy pot until it's crisp, then lift it out and leave the fat.
- Roll the hare pieces in the seasoned flour and brown them in the bacon fat, a few at a time.
- Add the onions, carrots and garlic and cook them a few minutes. Pour in the wine and broth, add the bay leaf, thyme and bacon, and bring it to a simmer.
- Cover and keep it at a low simmer for 2 to 2½ hours, until the meat pulls easily off the bone. Serve it with boiled potatoes or bread to soak up the gravy.
Suggested pairing: Chianti Classico, or a Cru Beaujolais
About the author
Patrick R. Dunn writes Pour Story Society and runs Vianarra, a hospitality storytelling practice based in Sparks, Nevada. He grew up in West Gardiner, Maine. He trained in narrative at the University of Maine under Stephen King and folklorist Edward "Sandy" Ives, spent more than a decade as a National Park Service interpretive ranger, and spent thirty years leading global crisis management and operational resilience teams across four continents. He holds WSET Level 3 and is the author of Stop Leading on Empty (Archway/Simon & Schuster). For names of specific bottles from small producers for any of these pairings, write him at patrick@vianarra.com. Subscribe to Pour Story Society for wine stories from around the world every other Friday.