R U a Road-Kill Griller?

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Considering the agendas of certain conniving politicians that would like

nothing better than to (attempt) to take my guns away, or at very least, close all

hunting seasons, I sometimes plan in my mind what I’ll do if the day ever arrives

when the only LEGAL way for me to continue eating wild game will be to harvest

road-kill.  I would become a “Road-Kill Griller” in the purest sense of the phrase,

and I’m bettin’ there are bunches more of you out there that are afraid to come

forward.

Most things would be different in the life of a road-kill griller; for starters,

the grilling utensils. Your spatula would become a flat ended shovel, preferably

the short handled kind with the “D” shaped handle, allowing you to put maximum

power behind your spatula when scraping meals from the asphalt. The fork

normally used to turn steaks on the grill would become a pitchfork or potato fork,

anything capable of holding your find while removing gravel with the

shovel/spatula. Timing for harvesting road- killed meals would be an important

issue. The five second rule would become the five day rule. You would want to

either get to a kill while it’s fresh, or wait until it became jerky or pemmican.

Cooking road-kill would be a whole new learning experience in itself and should

definitely be done outside; the hotter the fire the better to quickly burn off hair

and sterilize your meal.

Concerning recipes, you might as well plan to toss all your favorites and

start anew. I’ll list a few examples: The rare find of a chicken that could once have

become chicken tetrazzini, would now be chicken flattened by machinery. The

closest you’d ever get to potatoes au’gratin would be opossum smells rotten. The

internet fairly teems with road-kill recipes free for the reading. A few of my

favorite main dishes were skunk skillet stew, shake’n bake snake, rack of raccoon,

pavement possum and too-slow doe. Side dishes included square of hare, fork of

stork and bowl of mole.

If you were to suddenly become unemployed, I’m quite sure a good living

could be had by fixing up your old camping trailer and following the state fair or

carnival circuit peddling road-kill on a stick. It wouldn’t matter what species it

was; just cut it into chunks, skewer it with a stick, slather it in some sort of batter

and fry it up in old french-fry grease. It you didn’t tell customers what it was, I’m

sure they’d think it tasted just like chicken.

The driving habits of a true road-kill griller would be changed forever. While

we’d once have avoided hitting critters on the roadway at all costs, especially

deer, we now would strive to hit every critter possible, especially deer. No

Hunting signs would become No Gleaning signs, and turf wars might break out as

we all tried to protect our favorite back roads, swamps and river bridges where

road-kill often abounds.

Now, in the style of Jeff Foxworthy, allow me to offer some criteria to help

you decide whether or not you have the propensity to become a true road-kill

griller.

If you have taught your kids to count road-killed raccoons rather than

Volkswagen “slug-bugs” on a trip, you could easily become a road-kill griller.

If, after failing to fill your deer tag for the season, you drive your pickup off

the road, across the ditch, and through a field of standing corn attempting to run

down a deer, you probably have the makin’s of a road-kill griller.

And finally, if you smell only the savory essence of skunk skillet stew each

time a skunk sprays your favorite coon hound, you’re probably already a true

road-kill griller!

*Note* no animals were actually road-killed for the writing of this story.

Steve can be contacted by email at [email protected]

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