A country meal consisting of squirrel dumplings (center), squirrel stew (R) and cornbread with sweet potato (L).

  These recipes will appear in the December-January issue of  the on-line magazine, “Hunting Fitness” as part of  the  forthcoming book, “Hunting Fitness Presents: Hovey’s Healthy Recipes for Game and Fish.” 

  The radio broadcast is now available using the following link:

Americana

From coast to coast, Matt Frei presents an insider guide to the people and the stories shaping America today

  My experiences with squirrels outside of North America is in the U.K. and Ireland where the woods and parks may be overrun with gray squirrels, and very often the people do not know what to do about them. My solution is simple, “Kill ‘um and eat ‘um.” Squirrels were a mainstay of early American settlers in the 1700s and later when many a family meal consisted of a half-dozen squirrels in the cook pot.

  I was surprised when I received a call from Jocelyn Frank, a Producer of the BBC radio show  “Americana,” about me appearing on the show and talking about squirrel hunting and cooking. The interview was set up.  Susanna Capelouto of Georgia Public Radio would come from Atlanta and act as “Sound Engineer” to connect me with  Matt Frei, the host of the show.  However, Frei had to returned from Peru where he was covering a story about a group of miners who had been trapped underground for more than a month following a cave-in.  

  I had a week to get ready.  I hunted squirrels with a crossbow, handgun, muzzleloader, .22 pistol and shotgun – for the sake of variety. The morning before Susanna was to arrive, I was up at 2:00 AM to start cooking the stew. The following video takes up the story from that point.  An expanded treatment of  making dumplings is available at “BBC Squirrel Dumplings” that is on YouTube  and can be viewed by clicking on the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOfhw1ZqTIw&layer_token=99a17eaad40d7649.