doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com How long can you freeze a spruce grouse?

Mildly OT here but...today is preparatory for a "Grind Party" this coming weekend with some fellow elk hunters. My freezer(s) are overflowing with delayed projects (delayed by broken ankles and an ongoing bad attitude). The ankle is healed now and my attitude has improved significantly in the past year (it had to as we have no freezer space left anywhere).

I dragged the monster Husqvarna snowblower out of the garage (just rebuilt the carb and starter on this thing, hope to get to use it someday this winter?) and lined up two 60 quart maritime freezers to receive the disgorged contents of the primary upright. Upon first entry into the "bird" section I'm discovering several species I had completely forgotten about, primarily being several several spruce grouse (newer and older) but also quail, pheasants, ducks, & some very old Canada geese breasts. There were even some shrink-wrapped salmon filets that my brother-in-law had laid-upon us over a decade ago now. Lordy! (and I'm not even including the walleye & sauger filets, thankfully most of those are current). Yet another example of a 1st world problem, right?

The primary mission here is the elk and deer grind that has gone unprocessed for 2-3 years now. Ninety percent of it is in freezer zip locks with no air exposure so... the venison should be just fine, what has me questioning the use of it are these older gamebirds and then the salmon...just what is the point of no return?

Historically, my bride and I make a Kentucky Burgoo (from Hank Shaw's Buck, Buck, Moose) in a big gumbo pot that is remarkably forgiving (& darn tasty!) but...I'll be giving everything the "sniff test" first (even the quail).

I can't say about Spruce Grouse, never seen one. But, I CAN say that it is my opinion that how gamebirds are frozen has more to do with how long they last, than anything else I know of. If you vacuum pack them, or freeze them submerged in water, as I do, I've eaten birds three years old and they were great.

Kroger tells you 2 years. I had a Kroger butcher friend tell me that the steaks that are packaged on the shelf are packaged to be frozen for as long as two years in those packages. I have had them frozen that long without any problems many times over the years. I have always learned that poultry lasts longer if it isn't cut in smaller pieces and kept whole. After two years meat tends to lose it's flavor from fresh meat. Even if you don't notice it. I keep frozen fish, beef and poultry for two years all the time. After that- I get it cooked. But I normally cook it before it gets that old. Usually in a few months.

Lloyd,
As brother Stan has pointed out, the ziplock full of water with a bird in the middle will be good to eat for a long time. The deep freeze is your friend, the frost free freezer, not so much.

Best,
Ted

The majority of my birds are encased in ice and Stan is so-right, even after many years in the deep freeze most are just fine.. Some of these birds were gifted however so...only shrink wrapped

Jimmy, Kroger would say that.

This is getting harder for me to do. Not so much the hunting or the prep, it's the IT portion. I finally had to go with a new phone and between it, my old laptop and and Imager...this is quite the exercise now.

Waiting on the rest of the picture to transfer from my phone. There also seems to be something going on between my two email providers (Gmail and Yahoo).

10 years? Good God, you have me temped to go digging in a glacier for a Mastadon ribeye!

Finally...it was the long way around the barn but I got it to work. Jeesh!

Winter has finally arrived here so a day prepping meat and then grinding is a good way to spend it. My helpers this year at work (I was mostly the trim and wrapping guy). We made venison (elk & deer) burger, italian sausage and summer sausage. Our freezer is now much more orderly.

Marks21: Many year ago I read about a big dinner at a very fancy restaurant in New York City where the member of "The Explorers Club" dined on mastodon and other exotics that they had secured from a glacier somewhere. Don't know the particulars now about all of that but the story had been reported in some credible source at that time (back when credibility in the media mattered, 1970s maybe?).

Edit to add: For dinner that night we dined on American Wagyu ribeyes (Costco has some leftover from the holidays). A bit pricy still but the absolutely cheapest way to do it. They were still pretty good (I'd been sampling burger patties made from our grind all day and wasn't very hungry, but both my wife and the other helper said they were absolutely great).

The biggest enemy of frozen meet is freezer burn (especially if your freezer is "frost free" which most women insist on), fortunately it is easy to identify and trim off. Trimming freezer burned ground meat might not be so easy, I just toss it, especially sausage. Vacuum packing is a real blessing, both for ease of prep and length of storage. Pressure canning saves freezer space and avoids the greatest cause of freezer burn; the "I didn't have time to thaw it" problem.
Mike

I totally agree with you about the vacuum sealing. On multi day trips, i pack mine with me an vacuum seal right at the tailgate. Depending on the situation, I may also flash freeze with dry ice on the spot.

Lloyd - If the birds are frozen in water (completely submerged), I would say they last several years in the deep freeze. Case in point: At Thanksgiving last year, I found a wild turkey breast at the bottom of the chest freezer which had been frozen in water. I believe the date on the bag was 4/2016. My wife is a huge fan of wild turkey meat so I thawed it out and it was perfectly fine and tasted great. In the past, I have had a few birds (mainly pheasants) that did not get completely submerged in water and ended up with some freezer burned areas. After removing the freezer burned areas, they ate just fine as well. If your grouse are not freezer burned, I would think you are good to go. Yes, I need to do a better job of freezer inventory management

Yeah, keeping them tidy can be a chore.

The next big deal here will either be duck gumbo or that burgoo I mentioned earlier. The gumbo will deal with the waterfowl, the burgoo will address those sprucies.

FWIW, a wide roll of masking tape and a sharpie marker goes a long way toward making game a regular part of the diet.

Well marked packages don’t seem to get forgotten.

We eat fish and game several times a week.
Not due to economics, but out of respect for the game.

CZ: can't argue that.

The stuff I bag gets sharpie markings as to date, type and prep (aged and/or type of cut). The stuff I used to get as "gifts" occasionally would be mostly devoid of all that, thus my present challenges.

The sleddog lady by me relies on the fact that people like to shoot deer, but wives don’t like to cook deer.

She feeds 50+ dogs on the venison and other game that people just never get around to eating before they give it to her.
(Discard it)

Can't say because I stopped putting dates on my stuff. Then nobody worries about how old it might be. I like a tight layer of saran wrap and then freezer paper. Then it goes in large zip lock bags.

I would question whether spruce grouse from around here are edible even in the week they are shot.
The last couple I ate tasted strongly like turpentine. So the last one I shot I had mounted for the man cave without the benefit of a meal.

I'm still searching for that turpentine spruce grouse. I've shot a lot of them over the last few years. And while they are not the most delectable, they certainly don't taste like turpentine. They are beautiful birds and would make an awesome mount. I shot a huge male, three years ago that I wish I had mounted.

Sprucies aren't bad, they just aren't as good as ruffed grouse for table fare. I studiously try to avoid them but occasionally a hen will launch and I think it's a ruff. The males are actually quite handsome but are easy to identify and I almost never mistake them.

This year I also have some sharptails to try out, so the jury is out on them for me. I've not heard many great reports but there are a few good stories about them. Time will tell.

There are 9 species of grouse native to the US.
I’ve eaten them all.
Since I like light meat and dark meat, I rate blues and sharp tails approximately equivalently.

Blues, get the slight edge over a ruffed grouse because they’re bigger. Meat’s about the same though.

Of the sharptails, of which there are six sub species, the Columbia’s (west slope) are probably the best. Though the plains variety is pretty good too. Rule of thumb is just cooked them like a piece of steak, get the grill super hot, oil them, lay them on the grate for 1 minute, and flip. and when a little bit of blood starts coming out the top they are done. You can cook them on the tailgate in less than two minutes.

Like any bird that flies a lot, the dark meat gets an irony flavor if you overcook it. Liver if you will. Don’t do that.

As you move down through the ranks, sooner or later, you hit end of season male Spruce grouse and bomber Sage grouse.

The ptarmigan and the prairie chickens are all dark and are in the middle. Though I have to say I killed a buck greater one time and it was the darkest meat I’ve ever seen in my life. Almost black. Very strong.

Potted some Sprucies that had been on needles in a drought year that about got me kicked out of the cabin.

CZ: I would normally defer to your greater experience here but...I have eaten both blue grouse and ruffed grouse and while I do enjoy the white meat of the blues, ruffies are head and shoulders above them for table fare IMHO.

Blues are bigger birds, no question, and while they aren't bad they are a much-firmer meat and they aren't nearly as savory as the ruffed. Where blues (now called "dusky" by the State here) have a white meat, the ruffed grouse tissue is almost translucent. When cooked, that translucence becomes snow white (blue grouse meat when cooked has an almost grey cast to it). Ruffed grouse is much-more tender and juicy and... it has an almost "sweet" flavor (when properly prepared) that the blues do not.

Now to be fair, when I was eating blues (& it's been a few years) I wasn't in a position to either age or brine them before cooking and perhaps that makes the difference?

The best answer is probably to say “to each their own, everybody’s taster is different”.

I eat things for what they are. I don’t try to make them taste like something else, I don’t do anything out of the ordinary.

I like complementary seasonings, complementary sauces, but I don’t do anything different to the meat.

We eat a lot of game.
Immediate disemboweling and a cavity rinse is probably the most essential act after dispatch.

As long as people eat what they kill, I’m cool with whatever a person likes.

I met a guy that stewed his ruffed grouse in root beer.

I think cock pheasant make a better brat than fricassee.

This one caught me by surprise.

It’s a great way to make space.

I dragged some walleye filets out of the freezer yesterday that had been there for over 2 years. They had been encased in a block of ice as well. They were still quite toothsome with a chardonnay cream sauce, smashed small potatoes and roasted carrots.

It is the gathering time for walleye fillets.

Any vacant space in the freezers around here will be filled with walleyes by the end of the month.

From this string of threads, you are starting Lloyd, it sounds like you need to adopt some freezer management.

It seems as though you are forgetting what’s in there, and that nobody’s cooking what IS in there.

Perhaps you can try the 12 bag approach.

Take 12 plastic shopping bags and put 7 pounds of something in each one of them.

Mix it up. Put a tag on it January through December.

Once a month, when you’re near the freezer, take a bag out and set it on the kitchen counter.

If you are going to make the effort to harvest them, it’s just a small step to make use of them.

Freezers too commonly become electric dumpsters.

You're right about that CZ. Around here we definitely have freezer management!! I own the same house I grew up in. Until I was about 40, we had exactly TWO power outages in my lifetime. TWO. Since global warming has kicked in- now we have about 2-4 PER YEAR. I have two portable generators I can run. So, I don't really worry about food going bad that much. But still, it's a good time to start getting rid of stuff. That's when the "freezer management" kicks in and it's best to start eating and getting rid of everything. I don't have to worry about food getting too old to eat. Everything I eat I know is going to be fresh. As long as meat stays at zero degrees, you're okay. But when it starts creeping up, that means trouble. Freezer management. Good idea.

I learned the 12 bag approach decades ago.
We would split a beef and after the steaks were gone, we ate soup bones and hamburger for the next 9 months.
That’s dumb.
Now the boxes are partitioned, and a week or two weeks worth of material comes out and gets transferred to the using freezer, and then every day or two packages come out of there.

It’s always a disappointment when there’s too much of one thing in the freezer and you can’t secure more of it because you don’t have any more room.

Ocean fish, freshwater fish, waterfowl, venison, upland birds, upland game, vegetables. Beef, pork, chicken, turkey, ham’s, corned beef, Prepared foods, soup.

Lots of choices.
Vacuum bags become essential.

CZ: That is actually a very well reasoned plan.

If I was even a little bit more disciplined I'd do it too (don't let my wife see this, her world is ruled by spreadsheets) but....I'm driven by whims I fear. I'll get hungry for something specific and that is what I'll dig out for the next dinner. I'm finding that I also go through phases as the seasons unfold, heavier stuff in fall and winter (soups, Italian, etc.) lighter in spring and summer (fish, fowl and salads).

We have 3 freezers here, one largish upright and two modern full-sized refrigerator/freezers so we do have some options. It is a crime to waste any game so I do my level best to make sure that doesn't happen, and after much procrastination (several years worth) our freezers are under control for now.

What throws all of that off is extended travel and spontanious buys at Costco. If I could.better manage all of that...

Sometimes it’s just having a selection of recipes that you look forward to near at hand.

I like chili Colorado made with venison.

Air fried walleye with lemon sauce

Pheasant Marsala, pheasant brats, smoked pheasant pea soup.

Irish venison stew, Goulash, Bigosz,

Pan seared duck w/ raspberry sauce,

And sausages. Every kind.

Always something enjoyable showing up.

I just did a nice Pheasant in a garlic, white wine and cremini mushroom sauce, served over orzo with a side of steamed then lightly sautéed green beans and garlic. It was very good.

Hunters truly do set a better table.