Among the replenishable natural resources of the animal world, which constitute the state hunting fund of the Russian Federation, upland game is of great importance:

• grouse,
• wood grouse
• grouse,
• white and tundra partridges.

These species have long been the objects of sports and commercial hunting. In the field of boron game Russia takes the leading place in the world.

Borovoy game - grouse

Upland game  gives a person valuable dietary meat, which has a peculiar taste and high nutritional value, as well as down and feather.

Borovoy game is in high demand in the domestic and foreign markets. Its value is not limited to the value of the product itself. Numerous amateur hunters get aesthetic satisfaction, the possibility of a pleasant stay and exciting bird hunting.

Game reserves are not stable. They are everywhere subject to periodic changes. The years of abundant "harvest" of certain species of boron game are replaced by lean crops, and in the northern habitats the range of population fluctuations is much greater than in the southern ones. As a result of ups and downs, the number of hazel grouse, wood-grouse and black grouse can vary by 3-5, and the number of partridges by 10 or more times. Variations in the number of individual species are caused by different reasons. In the northern taiga regions, the success of reproduction of the bovine game is often due to weather phenomena, in the central regions of the country - by anthropogenic factors. All this complicates the work of defining resources and planning their use.

Autumn reserves of grouse birds in our country are approximately 100-118 million individuals. The hazel grouse reserves are estimated at 32-37 million, of the white partridge at 30-35 million, of common and stone grouse at 8-10 million. Boron game stocks are large in the taiga regions of the European North, Urals, Western Siberia, especially in areas with low density population, remote from the main highways and large industrial centers. In the southern and central regions of the country, game reserves have declined slightly. A similar phenomenon is observed in areas of intensive industrial and agricultural development in the European North and in Siberia. Local species of boron game are preserved in Ukraine, in the Baltic republics, in Belarus, where effective measures are taken to protect them.

The main supplier of game game is northern areas of the country. A significant part of the boron game is supplied by the field farms of consumer cooperation.

Powerful impact factor on the numbers of boron game - industrial felling. Cuttings of mature and overmature forests, creating a wide variety of plantations, marginal lands, contribute to the growth of shrubs and berries, significantly improve the conditions for the existence of upland game.

The main task for all habitats of boron game is preservation and improvement of the living conditions of birds. For wood grouses, it is necessary to preserve primarily pine forests, for hazel grouse - spruce-birch and alder forests, for black grouses - ripe birch stands, for white partridges - wetlands with willow thickets. It is also necessary to streamline the use of pesticides, not to cut down floodplain forests and shrubs, to eliminate disturbance in game breeding areas, to eradicate poaching in all its forms.

The problem of increasing the resources of boron game cannot be considered in isolation from the problem of their proper development. In the development of reserves it is necessary to adhere to the principle of alternate use of land. Game cannot be destroyed if any part of the land is annually banned for hunting.

In farms where the counting of numbers is well established, the norms for the exploitation of the livestock of game must be calculated on the basis of the level of annual growth.

To increase the harvesting of boron game in the coming years, attention should be paid to forest (dark) game, especially grouse. This species lives in the whole forest zone, everywhere is numerous. Of all the birds the hazel grouse is distinguished by its particularly tasty meat..

Borovoy game is hunted mainly by guns. This method is unproductive and is justified only in the years of abundance of game. The self-feeding, highly productive method of harvesting boron game is used in small sizes, mainly for capturing the white partridge.

Upland game

Grouse. Grouse meat is considered very tasty and tender. The average weight of the carcass - 300-400 g.

The quality of meat grouse ranks first among chicken breeds of boron game. The meat is white with a pinkish tinge. Darkening is a sign of improper storage. Grouse meat is usually not marinated. To make the dish more juicy, put the carcass in cold milk, bring it almost to the boil and immediately remove the carcass.

Very tasty fried, stewed and baked grouse meat. In field conditions, grouse is used to cook soup, bake on a spit or in clay.

Grouse is a rather large bird, the mass of rooster-kosachs reaches 1.5 kg. The feathers of the kosachs are black, under the wings are white armpits. The tail feathers are bent in the shape of a lyre. Females are smaller, their plumage is reddish-gray, modest.

Black grouse meat is never particularly fat. The breast consists of two layers: the top one is dark meat, the bottom one is white-pink like that of a hazel grouse.

The meat of young black grouses is juicy and tender. The meat of old rooster cocks is tougher. It is recommended to roast and bake the meat of young black grouses, stew meat and stew it.

In field conditions, the grouse meat is boiled, baked on a skewer or in clay.

The white partridge changes plumage depending on the season. In spring, it is darker, chestnut, in summer the color brightens and becomes more yellow, in the autumn white spots begin to appear on a light reddish background. Only in winter the plumage of the white partridge is pure white, on which the black beak, eyes and a few black feathers in the tail stand out.

The mass of white partridges - 500-800 g. Males in winter do not differ in appearance from females, only slightly larger. Meat females more tender.

Meat of a white partridge can be prepared by all the above methods.

The wood grouse is the hunter's valuable booty. Roosters have a dark plumage, a powerful tail (fan), a “beard” grows under its beak. Their weight reaches 6 kg. Females are “dressed” in red-brown plumage, their weight is 2-3 kg.

Grouse meat is dense, dark in color, but juicy and tasty. The taste of the capercaillie is improved if the uncultivated and ungried capercaillie is hung by the head and kept in a cool place for 2-3 days. Experienced hunters believe that the wood-grouse is ready for cooking when the head of a suspended bird comes off under the weight of a carcass.

Grouse carcass, which was stored in frozen form, it is desirable to marinate.

Grouse meat usually has a bitter taste of needles, which can be weakened by adding red dry wine to the roaster. Meat is recommended shpigovat lard.

In traveling conditions wood grouse are extinguished.

The largest of the wild pigeons, the wood pigeon, has ashen plumage, the weight of the carcass is about 600 g. The average wild pigeon in size is a clintuch - it has a dark plumage and looks similar to a city pigeon. The weight of a clintuk carcass is about 400 g. The smallest wild pigeon is the turtle-dove. Mass - about 250 g

Compared to other species of game birds, wild pigeon meat is especially tasty when cooked.

Woodcock (forest Kulik) - a small bird in size, the weight of the carcass - about 300 g. Plumage reddish, colorful. Woodcocks have a long straight nose and large dark eyes. Woodcock, like snipe and snipe, refer to the "red game" and prepare neotroshennym. It is recommended to cook woodcocks in roast.

Grouse soup with fresh mushrooms.

The carcass is cut into 4-6 pieces and put in cold water, cook for about 30 minutes. Mushrooms (white, champignons, boletus) are finely chopped and stewed for 8-10 minutes in butter, at the end of stewing add 1-2 tablespoons of broth and a little spasserovanna flour. Spread stewed mushrooms in boiling broth and boil for about 10 minutes. Ready soup can be filled with finely chopped greens.

On 1 hazel grouse: 1-1,5 l of water, 1 glass of chopped mushrooms, 1 tablespoon of butter, 1 teaspoon of flour.

So you can cook the soup of grouse, partridge, quail and pheasant.

Fried grouse

A grouse carcass for greater juiciness can be stuffed with fresh pork lard, chopped into cubes. In this case, the carcass must first be put into boiling water for one minute. Salted poultry salt and fry with pork fat. Then close the dishes with a lid and bring the game to readiness on low heat. After that, drain the fat; in a bowl in which hazel grouse was fried, add a little brown game broth and boil. Place the bird in the same pot, watering with oil. Separately, grouse is served with salad, pickled fruit or jam.

So you can cook and partridge.

1 hazel grouse, 10 g pork fat, 5 g butter, 60 g salad or fruit, salt to taste.

Hazel grouse in sour cream

If grouse was bought at a store, then, having plucked and gutted them, it should be soaked in cold water for two hours, and then folded into a saucepan, pour cold milk and bring the milk to a boil. Only after that grouse can be fried.

Fresh bird enough to soak in water for an hour. Cut off the head and wings, leave the legs intact, removing only the claws. Singe a grouse carcass.

Prepared game for juiciness nashpigovat fresh pork lard, chopped into cubes. To do this, first scald the game in boiling water, make punctures in the carcasses with a knife or a pointed stick and insert the sticks of lard into them. Cut the carcasses in half lengthwise, salt and pepper and fry in lard in a pan until crusting, then add 2 cups of broth to the pan, cover and simmer over low heat until ready. On the broth in which the game was doused, it is necessary to prepare sour cream sauce, pour grouse over it and boil it for 1-2 minutes.

Fry the potato slices. Put the game on a dish, place the potatoes around, sprinkle with sour cream sauce, sprinkle with herbs.

2 hazel grouse, 50-70 g of fresh bacon, 20 g of pork lard, 1 cup sour cream, salt and pepper to taste.

Grouse, stewed in sauce, with a side dish and croutons

Fry grouse almost until ready, then chop into two parts, again put in a skillet, from which you first need to drain the fat, add brown game broth (10-15 g), decoction of mushrooms (10-15 g), small champignon heads, pitted olives and stewed cock scallops. Then pour the hazel grouse with Madera sauce, cover and simmer for 8-10 minutes on low heat. When serving grouse put in a deep dish with a side dish, pour strained sauce. Around the croutons, toasted in butter and greased with roasted liver of venison or poultry.

So you can cook a partridge and other larger game.

1 hazel grouse, 10 g of pork fat, 20 g of champignons, 20 g of olives, 30 g of roasted scallops, 75 g of sauce, 40 g of wheat bread, 10 g of butter, 40 g of chicken liver.

Moscow solyanka in a pan

Fry grouse, separate meat from bones and boil broth from bones. Squeeze the cabbage, add the broth and simmer until soft together with pieces of smoked bacon and 1-2 tablespoons of tomato paste. When everything is ready, take a deep cast-iron form or frying pan, put an even layer of cabbage on the bottom, pieces of meat on it, mix them with chopped sausages, and put cabbage on top. Align the top layer, pour it with a thick cream sauce with tomato, cooked in game broth. In a hodgepodge make some deep punctures, so that it is well soaked with sauce. When the sauce is absorbed, sprinkle the saltwort with grated cheese, sprinkle with butter and place in a preheated oven. As soon as the cheese is baked, remove the pan from the oven and decorate the hodgepodge with marinated fruits, olives and mushrooms.

2-3 grouse, 100 g smoked bacon, 5 sausages, 500 g sauerkraut, 4 tablespoons of tomato paste, 1 onion, 2 cups of broth, 100 g of any marinades, salt, pepper to taste, 1/2 cup of grated cheese.

Grouse fillet with vegetables

Fry the grouse fillet in the form of cutlets with butter. When serving, put croutons of wheat bread, fried with butter, and fillets on it. Garnish the dish with fried heads of small onions, carrots stewed in oil, boiled bean pods, green peas, and asparagus, seasoned with butter. Fillet pour sauce with Madeira.

On 1 hazel grouse: 20 g butter, 30 g wheat bread, 20 g onions, 25 g carrots, beans, peas, asparagus, 75 g sauce, salt to taste.

Grouse fillet stuffed in bread crumbs

Fry the grouse fillet into a thin layer, with a sharp end of the layer put a bare stone from the leg. Lay the layer of cnelite mass in the middle of the layer, then the layer of paste mass and again the layer of cnelite mass. Close the minced meat with small fillets and flatten the cutlet, salt, breaded white bread in breadcrumbs, moisten in an egg and again breaded white bread in crumbs. Fry the fillet in a skillet with oil until cooked.

When serving fillets put on a dish and garnish with potatoes, fried julienne, separately serve sauce with Madeira, decorate the dish with greens.

On 1 hazel grouse: 15 g butter, 40 g cottage mass, 20 g pate, 1 egg, 25 g wheat bread, 75 g sauce, 100 g garnish, greens, mole to taste.

White partridge, stewed in sour cream

The carcass is cut into halves or 4 pieces. Fry the meat for 1-2 minutes in warmed butter, then remove the meat and fry in the same oil finely chopped onion and carrot for 5-6 minutes. Again put in the roaster pieces of meat and pour sour cream. For the thickness of the sour cream add a little sprouted flour. From spices you can put crushed cumin. Stew on low heat for about 1 h.

Per 1 partridge: 1-2 onions, 1-2 carrots, 1 cup sour cream, 1 teaspoon flour, salt and spices to taste.

Wood grouse, stewed with lingonberries (in marching)

The carcass is cut into 6 large pieces, the meat is stuffed with lard bars. Each piece is dipped in vegetable oil and fried over coal for 2-3 minutes to form a crust. Vegetable oil is heated in a pot and onions are fried in it for 5-6 minutes. Onions put fried pieces of meat, pour 1 liter of broth, cooked in advance from the neck, paws and wings of the capercaillie, and stew about 1 h. thickening sauce.

On 1 wood-grouse: 2-3 onions, 2-3 glasses of berries, 1-2 tablespoons of flour, 100-150 g of vegetable oil.

Black Grouse Roasted with Hazelnuts

A black grouse is stuffed with peeled hazelnuts, put inside small pieces of lard or butter, sugar. Instead of nuts, you can use fresh or pickled lingonberries or cranberries.

From above, the carcass is wrapped in thin slices of lard, placed in a brazier and placed in an oven. Young black grouses roast for 40-45 minutes, old ones up to 1.5 hours.

On 1 grouse: 2-3 glasses of nuts or other stuffing, 150-200 g of fat, 2-3 pieces of sugar.

Grouse, fried with lingonberries

The carcass is filled with soaked or fresh lingonberries, cream and sugar are placed inside. You can do without the filling.

After smearing the carcass with sour cream, fry it in a strongly heated roasting pan until a golden brown crust is formed. Then add sour cream to the roaster and fry over low heat for 15-20 minutes.

On 1 hazel grouse: 1-1.5 cups of lingonberries, 1 tablespoon of butter, 1-2 pieces of sugar, 1 cup of sour cream.

Woodcock fried with red wine

Carefully move the skin from the carcass to the neck, without removing it completely. The meat is rubbed with salt, crushed juniper berries, lined with very thin slices of lard, re-tightened the skin and wrapped around the carcass with thick threads. Roast for 20 minutes by adding red dry wine to the roaster.

On 1 woodcock: 50-60 g of fat, 1 teaspoon of juniper berries, 1/2 cup of red dry wine.

Filler grouse

A grouse carcass is boiled for about 1-1.5 hours, the meat is separated from the bones and the skin is removed. Meat is passed through a meat grinder twice and rubbed through a sieve. Gelatin is dissolved in broth or hot water. Pour the minced gelatin solution, add cream, salt and crushed nutmeg. The mass is stirred, laid out in metal molds and put in the refrigerator (but not in the freezer).

Before serving, place the molds with the cooked dish for a few seconds in hot water, then turn them over on plates - the jellied drops out of the molds.

For 1 hazel grouse: 1/2 cup of cream, 1 tablespoon of gelatin for 1 cup of liquid. Salt, nutmeg to taste.

Pigeons monastic

Cut the prepared pigeons into halves, salt and sprinkle with black pepper. Put in a shallow pot and fry in oil until golden brown. Then attach and fry the peeled onion heads. Separately, fry the finely chopped mushrooms in fat and put in a pan with pigeons. Pour with 1 glass of hot water, tightly close the lid and simmer on low heat.

Serve hot with rice, seasoned with butter.

2 carcasses of pigeons, 5-6 tablespoons of butter, 300 g of small onions, 300 g of mushrooms, 2 tablespoons of fat, salt, black pepper.

Steppe and mountain game

Quail - a small bird with a motley light brown plumage weighing about 100 g. Autumn quail carcasses contain 30-35% fat. Quail meat has excellent taste and high calorie content.

Fresh and frozen quails grown on special quail farms are on sale. Quail meat can be cooked by all the above methods.

Corncrakes are mined on the quail hunting. Its plumage is light chestnut. The weight of the carcass is about 150 g. The meat is tender, white. Crake is recommended to fry. In field conditions can be baked in foil.

The gray partridge on the gray-blue plumage on the chest clearly stands out a brown horseshoe. The weight of the carcass is about 400 g. The meat is dark pink in color. It can be prepared using all the methods listed above.

The mountain partridge is a medium-sized bird, the weight of the carcass is about 400 g, the plumage is colorful, white with black, the paws and beak are red. There are species of keklik with less variegated plumage. Meat of keklik of dark pink color, gentle. The taste is not inferior to the meat of other partridges and is prepared in the same ways.

The pheasant is a large beautiful bird weighing about 2 kg. Males have bright plumage, a long pointed tail and strong legs with spurs. Females are smaller, their plumage is more modest, sandy-brown. Pheasant meat is dark, but juicy and of very good quality. Prepared by all the above methods.

Quail soup

Quail carcasses boiled for about 30 minutes. Millet is washed, changing the water several times, poured into the broth and boiled for about 20 minutes. Pork fat is finely chopped, overcooked with finely chopped onions and added to soup. You can put some sliced ​​potatoes in the soup.

On 4 quails or 1 partridge: 1-1.5 liters of water, 1/4 cup of millet, 1 onion, 40-50 g of fat.

Quail fried with mushrooms

Cut the prepared quail along the back, remove all bones. Spread carcasses and put on skewers, sprinkle with salt and pepper and fry in a saucepan. Finished quail put on a dish, garnish with white mushrooms, fried with butter. From the skillet pour the fat, pour brandy and strong brown broth (40-50 g), boil, strain. Quails pour this juice and sprinkle with chopped greens.

2 quails, 5 g of pork fat, 100 g of white mushrooms, 10 g of brandy, greens, pepper and salt to taste.

Quail with cherries

Fry quails (see above). 3-5 minutes before readiness to drain the fat, add cherries (seedless), brown broth (juice), brandy and bring the quail to readiness in a sealed container. When serving, put quails with cherries and juice in a deep dish.

2 quails, 50 g cherries, 20 g broth, 5 g brandy, 5 g pork fat, pepper and salt to taste.

Quail stewed with rice

Fry quails (see above). Chop the fried quails in half lengthwise, put them into the skillet in which they were fried, pour over the sauce with Madeira, add sliced ​​porcini mushrooms, cover the dishes with a lid and simmer for 5-7 minutes at low boiling.

When serving, crumbly rice porridge, boiled in meat broth, and grated cheese mixed, put in a greased ring-shaped metal form, then put the porridge from the mold on a plate or dish. In the middle of the ring thus obtained lay the quails together with mushrooms and sauce, and sprinkle with finely chopped greens on top.

2 quails, 20 g butter, 20 g white fresh mushrooms, 100 g rice porridge, 10 g cheese, 75 g sauce, greens, pepper and salt to taste.

Quail in sour cream with cheese dumplings

Peeled, gutted and well-washed quail salt, fry in a pan in oil, browned on all sides. Put in a saucepan, add broth and simmer on low heat until ready. In the pan, where the quails were fried, add flour, salt, mix well with the rest of the roasting fat, pour 2 cups of broth, boil the mixture until thick, add sour cream, salt to taste and pour this quail sauce.

Garnish with cheese dumplings.

Cooking dumplings. Grind the yolks, mix with grated cheese and semolina, salt and let stand for 2-3 hours. Then mix with whipped proteins and put on a wet napkin, giving the mass the shape of a roller. Wrap tightly in a napkin, tie the ends tightly and, fixing the thread, put the roll in boiling salted water. When the roll comes up, carefully remove it, unfold the napkin. Cut the roll into round pieces, spread out around the dish with quails and pour over the sauce.

On 20 quails: 200 g of oil for frying, 3 tablespoons of flour, 500 g of sour cream.

For dumplings: 250 g cheese, 100 g semolina, 4 eggs.

Quail with tomato sauce

Carcasses quail gutting, rinse, salt and pepper. Fry in fat, evenly browned on all sides. Then quail put on a dish, and in the remaining fat, fry finely chopped onion. Add tomatoes, peeled and cut into small pieces. When the tomato juice has evaporated, add hot water and put quails in the resulting sauce. Cover the pan tightly and simmer over low heat. Remove the finished quail, cut along the breast into 2 parts and serve with the sauce, adding butter and greens.

3 quail carcasses, 1/2 vegetable oil, 1 onion head, 5-6 tomatoes, 1 tablespoon of butter, parsley, ground black pepper, salt.

Quail baked in eggplant

Wash the eggplants, cut off the tops of the stalk, remove the core with a notch so that the walls are 1 cm thick. Salt the prepared eggplants, stand for 1 / 2-1 hours and wash again. Prepared quail carcasses with salt, sprinkle with pepper and put 1 quail in eggplant. Then put the eggplants on a baking sheet, cut the tops up, cover each with half a tomato and pour over the fat. Bake in a moderately heated oven.

4 eggplant, 4 quail carcasses, 2 tomatoes, 2 spoons of fat.

Quail stuffed with liver

From the liver of poultry to cook the stuffing for pate. Add minced chicken meat, game or veal meat (20-25%) to cream, and fill with salt and pepper; pour wine (madeira) or brandy and add spices. Spread the prepared quail carcasses on the board, put mince (40-50 g) on ​​each carcass and, giving it the appearance of an entire carcass, salt, wrap in a clean writing paper strip, put in a saucepan, pour meat juice (20 g) and put in roast wardrobe for 20 minutes. When the paper is slightly reddened, cover the saucepan with a lid and let the bird sit until ready.

When serving quails, put on croutons, toasted with butter, and pour over the sauce with Madeira.

You can serve green salad, fruit and vegetable salad or fruit salad as a garnish.

2 quails, 10 g of poultry, game or veal meat, 40 g of minced liver, 5 g of cream, 5 g of wine (Madeira) or brandy, 50 g of wheat bread, 10 g of butter, 50 g of sauce, pepper and salt to taste .

Quail, fried in grape leaves

Carcasses of quails are salted, coated with butter, wrapped in washed grape leaves and wrapped with thick threads. Cover the prepared carcass with a towel and leave for 30-40 minutes. Then they fry in a massive broiler in a large amount of fat for 15–20 minutes.

On 1 quail 20-ZO g butter.

Quail baked in pumpkin

Ripe pumpkin weighing 2-3 kg washed, cut off the top. Spoon remove the seeds and some pulp. Prepared quails are cut into halves, salted and fried in hot fat for 1-2 minutes until crusting.

Cook rice until half cooked, for which immersed rice is dipped in salted boiling water for 9-10 minutes, and then thrown back in a colander.

Fry onion in butter until pink. Prepare fresh or dried fruit. You can use fresh apples, peeled and cut into small pieces, peeled and cut into small cubes of quince, dried fruit, dried apricots and raisins. Dried fruits are thoroughly washed and soaked in warm water.

In the prepared pumpkin lay the rice, mixed with fried onions, then the roasted pieces of meat, put the sliced ​​fruit on top. Close the pumpkin with the cut off top and strengthen the top with sharp spikes.

Outside they grease the pumpkin with fat and bake it in the Russian oven, in the oven or in the oven for 2-3 hours, placing wooden sticks under the pumpkin. The finished pumpkin is placed on a dish, peel off and cut from top to bottom into chunks. For each portion put a slice of baked pumpkin, half a quail and rice with fruit.

On 1 pumpkin weighing 2 kg: 4 quail, 1 cup of rice, 2 cups of sliced ​​fruit, 2-3 onions, 2-3 tablespoons of butter.

Plov with game

Plov with game is characterized by excellent taste, combining the specific bitter-sweet taste of game with the aroma of toasted onions, carrots and spices. You can use any game to cook pilau, but the best are quail, keklika, pheasant.

Prepared carcass cut into pieces. Quails can be cooked with a whole carcass, stuffing them with minced lamb meat with the addition of finely chopped onion, garlic and parsley and cilantro.

The base of the pilaf is zirvak, which is cooked by frying onions, meat and carrots in hot vegetable oil. Vegetable oil (cotton, olive, sunflower) is poured into a heated cast iron pot (cauldron) or in a saucepan, with a thick bottom. Onions, sliced ​​in half rings, fried in oil. Then pieces of game or stuffed quails are placed in the boiler.

The meat is fried with onions until the onions turn light brown. After that, lay carrots cut into thin straws, which are fried for 5-10 minutes.

Then boiling water is poured into the boiler in such a way that its contents are covered with water, and the beer is left on a low heat for 40-50 minutes. At the end of cooking, add salt and spices (red pepper, zira, barberry, garlic cloves, etc.).

In ready zirvak lay carefully washed in several waters of rice. The liquid should cover a layer of rice by 1-2cm. Then strengthen the fire to a uniform and vigorous boiling.

After complete evaporation of moisture, the fire is turned down and the pilaf is covered with a lid to bring the rice to readiness and give it a friability.

Before covering the pilaf, rice is harvested from the edges to the middle of the cauldron and sprinkled with crushed zira. Under a lid on a low heat, pilaf hold 20-25 minutes.

Before serving, the pilaf is thoroughly mixed and laid on a dish. Pieces of game or stuffed quail are put on top and sprinkled with finely chopped green onions.

For one serving of pilaf: 200 g of rice, 150-200 g of game, 60-70 g of vegetable oil, 1-2 carrots, 1-2 bulbs; For stuffing: 50 g mutton, 5 g onion. Garlic, parsley and cilantro, salt and spices to taste.

Crake baked in foil (hiking)

The carcass of the corncrake is laid on its side and slightly beaten off to give it a more flat shape. Then salt, rub with garlic, pepper and cover with thin slices of lard, so that the bones of the cut wings, legs and neck do not stick out. Wrap in several layers of foil, put in the ashes and rake coals on top. Bake about 15 minutes.

Partridge in rural

Fry the partridge cooked with butter and, when it is almost ready, put around it smoked pork belly, cut into cubes, pre-scalded and fried, and potatoes, fried in oil. All this bring to readiness in a sealed container. Before serving, pour a little strong brown game broth (20 g), boil and serve in a deep dish or on a plate, sprinkled with chopped greens.

On 1 partridge: 20 g butter, 15 g smoked pork belly, 100 g potatoes, greens.

Partridge in cream with raisins

Cut the prepared partridge into two parts, slightly flatten with a hoe, sprinkle with salt, pepper, breaded in flour and fry in a saucepan with butter. Then pour pieces of partridge with brandy, cover the dishes with a lid and add brown broth (20-30 g), cream, raisins and stew in a closed container over low heat for 5-6 minutes in a minute.

When serving partridge put on a dish or plate. Garnish with croutons of wheat bread, toasted in butter; pour sauce with raisins.

On 1 partridge: 5 g of flour, 12 g of butter, 5 g of brandy, 30 g of cream or sour cream, 20 g of raisins, 30 g of wheat bread, pepper and salt to taste.

Partridge with oranges

Salt the prepared partridge, fry and put in a deep dish. Cut off the orange zest, cut it into strips and scald, cut the orange into slices and remove the seeds from it. Around the partridge put orange slices and grapes, pour the juice remaining after roasting the partridge, sprinkle with dried peel, cover the dishes with a lid and bring to readiness in the oven for 5-6 minutes.

Serve the dish, watering juice and butter.

On 1 partridge: 10 g pork fat, 5 g butter, 1 orange, 25 g grapes.

Partridge with vegetables

Fry the partridge with butter, place a turnip around it, carrots, sliced, celery leaves, potatoes in cubes, small onion heads, pre-fried in oil. Add brown game broth (40-50 g) and, having covered the dishes with a lid, bring the dish to readiness in the oven.

When serving, put the partridge on a dish or plate with a side dish and juice and sprinkle with herbs.

On 1 partridge: 20 g butter, 40 g carrots, 40 g turnip, 10 g celery, 20 g onion, 60 g potatoes, greens, salt to taste.

Partridge, grilled, with champignons

Cut along the back of the partridge, incise the joints of the legs and wings, breast bone, flatten slightly with a hoe, sprinkle with salt, pepper, smear with melted butter and fry on a wire rack. When serving, put the partridge on a dish, overlap the heads of champignons, roasted on the rack, pour strong brown meat broth (40 g) mixed with lemon juice around the partridge, sprinkle with chopped greens.

On 1 partridge: 5 g butter, 40 g champignons, 1 lemon, greens, pepper and salt to taste.

Hares

The hare is a forest inhabitant, in winter its fur is completely white, with the exception of the black tips of the ears. In summer, the fur color is dark gray. The weight of the hare carcass is 3-4 kg.

The hare is larger than the hare, the weight of the carcass is 5-6 kg. In the summer, the fur of the brown hare is dark gray, in winter it is lighter, but it is never white like that of the white hare.

The hare meat is dark red, has a high taste and nutritionally. Meat of the hare is considered more tasty than the hare.

Pate and hare roast

For pate meat is not marinated. Front legs, ribs and neck, along with diced pork lard, put in a saucepan, pour in red dry wine, add garlic cloves, bay leaf and boil for about 45 minutes without salt.

Then the meat is cooled, separated from the bones and, together with boiled lard, are passed twice through a meat grinder. Salt, ground black pepper, grated lemon or orange zest, crushed nutmeg and garlic clove, pounded in a mortar or garlic dish, are added to the minced meat.

For the preparation of pate need a "water bath". To do this, pour water into a wide and low saucepan and place a ceramic bowl in it. The volume of the bowl should be sufficient to fit all the stuffing in it.

The bottom of the bowl lay out thin slices of bacon, then put the stuffing, and on top - again slices of bacon. Pour about half of the amount of liquid in which the meat was cooked for pate, cover with foil and put the “water bath” in the hot oven for 1 hour. Remove the foil and the top slices of bacon, pour the melted butter on top and put it in the cold. Chilled pate decorate cranberries and greens.

250–300 g of meat: 100–150 g of pork lard, 1 cup of red dry wine, 1 tablespoon of butter, 3-4 cloves of garlic, 1/3 teaspoon of grated lemon or orange rind, 1/4 teaspoon of crushed nutmeg walnut Salt, pepper - to taste.

For roasts, fleshy pieces of the hare's carcass - the hind legs and saddle marinate for at least a day. Meat is dried, rubbed with salt and pepper and stuffed with thin sticks of bacon. Put the meat in a brazier, add the pork fat and put in a hot oven for 20 minutes.

Roasted pieces are transferred from the brazier to the pan for the pate. The juice remaining in the broiler is cooled, the fat is removed and dry red wine is added there. Pour the juice with wine into the pan, where the meat is already lying, and keep on low heat until ready for another 15-20 minutes.

On 1-1,5 kg of meat: 150-200 g of pork fat, 1 glass of dry red wine.

Hare, fried in breadcrumbs

Back legs and back of a hare, seasoned in marinade, fry in pig fat in the oven. Then put in a skillet, pour broth boiled from meat bones, add marinade (20 g per serving), red wine, browned onions, bay leaf and simmer. Remove the cooked meat from the broth, let it cool a little, chop it into portions and store it until it is cooked in a sealed container.

Broth, in which the meat was stewed, fill with dried flour, as for sauces, with wheat flour, boil for 10-15 minutes and drain. 10-15 minutes before serving, sprinkle pieces of ready-made meat with salt and pepper, breaded in flour, and then moistened with a raw egg in crumbs of wheat bread. Fry in fat.

Served with fried potatoes or fried fresh mushrooms.

Per 1 serving: 110 g hare, 75 g marinade, 4 g pork fat, 75 g broth, 25 g onion, 10 g dry red wine, 1 g bay leaf and cloves, 10 g flour, 8 g egg, 20 g bread wheat, 100-150 g of garnish, 80 g of cucumbers or tomato, pepper and salt to taste.

Hare, fried in sour cream

Separate the back legs and back of the hare and soak in cold water for 3-5 hours. Then drain the water and pour the meat with a marinade, in which the young birds withstand 12 hours, and the old 24 hours in a cold place. Then remove the meat from the marinade, wipe dry with a towel, stuff it with lard, salt, put on a baking sheet and lightly fry with fat in the oven. Then pour the sour cream and continue to fry, periodically pouring sour cream, until the meat is ready, and the sour cream becomes thick like sauce.

Cut the finished meat into portions, put in a saucepan and pour strained sour cream in which the meat was fried.

Served with fried potatoes, boiled beans or stewed beets.

For 1 portion: 110 g of hare, 75 g of marinade, 20 g of spear, 50 g of sour cream, 150 g of garnish.

Hare stewed in a pot

Cut the prepared carcass of a young hare into pieces (3-4 per serving), salt and put in portion pots. Add whole heads of fried onion with small fat, black and allspice peas, pour sour cream and heat on the stove until sour cream boils. After that, close the pots with lids, cover the grooves with fresh dough and put in the oven for about an hour and a half.

Serve with any crumbly porridge or fried potatoes. You can also cook a hare in a pot without sour cream, pour it before stewing with red meat sauce with the addition of dry grape wine (75 g of sauce and 40 g of wine for one portion).

Per 1 serving: 150 g of hare, 25 g of onion, 5 g of lard, 100 g of sour cream, 10 g of rye flour (for dough), 150 g of garnish, black pepper and sweet peas, salt to taste.

Hare stewed in sour cream

Back legs and back of the hare, seasoned in marinade, stuffed with lard, sprinkle with salt and pepper, brush with sour cream and fry in the oven until half cooked. Then cut them into portions, put in a saucepan and pour broth cooked from the roasted bones, add sour cream, meat juice, obtained during roasting, and simmer. When the meat is ready, pour the broth into another dish, add the fried wheat flour as for sauces, boil, strain and pour the meat over the sauce.

Serve the hare with fried potatoes, stewed beets, boiled beans or dumplings from semolina.

Per 1 serving: 110 g of hare, 75 g of marinade, 20 g of spear, 40 g of sour cream, 75 g of broth, 5 g of flour, 4 g of lard, 150 g of garnish, pepper and salt to taste.

Ragout

Prepare the hare in the marinade for 12-24 hours and fry in large chunks in the oven with pork fat until ready. Then cool slightly, chop into pieces of 30-40 g, put in a saucepan, add sliced ​​carrots, turnips, parsley, potatoes and whole onion heads sliced ​​and fried in fat. All pour red sauce with wine and simmer until cooked vegetables.

Serve together with the sauce and vegetables, sprinkled with parsley.

Per 1 serving: 150 g of hare, 75 g of marinade, 15 g of pork fat, 20 g of carrots, 15 g of turnip, 10 g of parsley, 100 g of potatoes, 25 g of onion, 100 g of sauce, parsley, salt.

Greek hare

Cut the prepared hare carcass into large pieces, add peeled and spiced tomatoes, cut into 4 parts orange, vegetable oil, salt, pepper, vinegar, spices (do not remove the skin from the cloves of garlic) and stew under tightly closed lid over low heat. After about an hour, add the peeled onions and stew again for about an hour. Then remove peas, bay leaves, garlic and cinnamon from the finished dish and serve, placing meat on one side of the dish and on the other hand onions (take them out carefully so that they do not fall apart).

On 1 kg of hare: 1 kg of small onions, 800 g of tomatoes, 5 cloves of garlic, 8 tbsp. l olive oil, 2 tablespoons of vinegar, salt, black pepper (ground and peas), 2 bay leaves, 0.5 tbsp. l ground coriander, 2 feathers of uncrushed cinnamon, 1 orange, salt.

Hare liver sauce

The hare liver is boiled and rubbed through a sieve. Fry the flour (1 tablespoon) with butter (2 tablespoons), dilute the flour with white dry wine. Mix the wiped liver with the browned flour, add crushed walnuts, pound well, add salt, pepper and bring to a boil.

The sauce is served to the hare roast in a separate bowl.

On 1 hare liver: 1 tablespoon of flour, 1 tablespoon of crushed walnuts, 1/2 cup of white dry wine, 2 tablespoons of butter. Salt and pepper to taste.

Wild ungulates

Elk is a large animal. Elk height - up to 2 m, weight - 400-500 kg. The most delicious meat in elk is 1.5-3 years old. The meat of old elk is more rigid and fibrous. The females meat is more tender than the males. Elk meat is made from the same dishes as beef. Before cooking it is recommended to marinate.

In the northern regions inhabited by wild reindeer, which is somewhat larger than the northern domestic deer. The mass of wild reindeer reaches 150-200 kg.

Red deer - the inhabitant of forests. It is larger than a reindeer, its weight is about 300 kg. Noble deer females are hornless. The meat is tasty, high quality, but in old animals harsh.

Maral - looks like a red deer, but larger than him. The mass of the deer reaches 350-400 kg. In the Far East, a species of red deer is found - red deer. Deer and red deer meat has high palatability, it is somewhat more tender in red deer.

There are two types of roe deer - European and Siberian. The Siberian roe deer is larger than the European: the average mass of the European roe deer is 20-30 kg, and the Siberian roe deer is 50-60. By taste, roe deer meat is valued above deer and elk meat. It is more tender, it contains less refractory fat.

Wild boar is a common prey for hunters. Wild boars develop very quickly: piglets, which appeared in April, reach 30–40 kg in autumn by good feeding conditions. There are instances of adult boars weighing up to 300-400 kg. The meat of young wild boars, especially females, has a high taste and is mainly used for the preparation of main dishes. Methods of cooking boar meat are the same as for pork. The meat of old cleavers is tough and during the rut period has an unpleasant smell, which can be weakened by placing the meat for 4-5 days in a tart marinade.

The saiga (steppe antelope) has a characteristic head structure: the saiga's nose is mobile, divided by transverse folds, and resembles a short trunk. The average carcass weight of the male is 20–30 kg, the females — 15–16 kg.

The quality of saiga meat, in addition to age and fatness, depends on the method of extraction. Meat obtained on the hunt with a long pursuit of animals, has the worst qualities and an unpleasant smell.

Saiga meat is made from the same dishes as lamb. Unlike other ungulates, broth and boiled saiga meat have a more pleasant taste and flavor.

Spit roe fillet

Separate the spine from the dorsal and renal parts of the carcass of the spine, chop off the ribs, so that there are no more than 4 cm long ends of the meat, cut off the coarse tendons and cut the meat into portions. Maintain meat in marinade for 12-15 hours. Before roasting, remove the meat from the marinade, dry it with a cloth, stuff it with lard, salt and grease with olive or butter, strengthen on a spit and fry until ready, periodically lubricating the meat with butter. Put ready-made fillet on a dish, decorate with parsley, celery or green salad leaves, onions. Next to the fillet put fried potatoes in fat in the form of straw, chips, cubes or balls. Separately, in a saucepan, serve fillet blackcurrant sauce or one of the hot soy sauces.

Per 1 serving: 200 g of meat, 100 g of marinade, 20 g of spear, 5 g of butter, 100 g of garnish, 50 g of sauce or 30 g of hot sauce, greens.

Fillet of roe stewed with wine and apples

Prepare the fillet (see above), marinate, then stuff the lard and fry with the lard, adding finely chopped carrots, parsley, celery and onions. When a crust forms on the surface of the fillet, drain the fat, add apples (without seeds), sliced ​​oranges (without skin and seeds), cut into slices, pour in Madeira or sherry and simmer for 30 minutes. To the sauce is not burnt, you can pour a little beef broth. Remove the finished meat. In a bowl with roots and apples, add as much strong meat broth as needed to prepare gravy for meat, boil, strain, vegetables and apples rubbed through a sieve.

When serving fillets put on a dish and pour the oil. Garnish - green peas, bean pods, cauliflower or Brussels sprouts or other vegetable garnish. Sauce served separately in sauceboat.

Per serving: 200 g of meat, 100 g of marinade, 20 g of spear, 10 g of lard, 5 g of butter, 15 g of roots and onions, 30 g of Antonov apples, 30 g of orange, 15 g of wine, 75 g of broth, 150 g side dish.

Venison Roast with Sour Cream

First, prepare the marinade. Boil water with onions and spices, cool and add vinegar. Put the prepared meat in a suitable-sized dish, pour cold marinade and put in a cold place for 5 days, turning it over every day. Remove the meat from the marinade, remove tendons, dry with a towel, stuff with lard, salt, sprinkle with flour and fry in fat on all sides, then shift the meat to the pan. Pour 1 cup of water into a frying pan, where the meat was roasting, let boil and pour into a saucepan; add the onions and spices from the marinade, close the lid and simmer the meat on low heat until ready, often pouring juice.

Cut the finished meat across the fibers, put on a dish, giving the shape of a whole piece. In the rest of the sauce, add 1 tablespoon of dried flour, boil, add sour cream, boil again, strain through a colander and pour chopped meat with this sauce.

Per 1 kg of venison: 150 g of fresh pork fat, 400 g of sour cream, 1 tablespoon of butter, 2 tablespoons of flour, 1 cup of vinegar, 1 l. water, 2 large onions, 3 bay leaves, 8-10 peppercorns, salt to taste.

Roasted venison and elk

Back and large pieces of ham or shoulder, seasoned in marinade, stuffed with lard and fry in the oven. Ready meat cut into wide slices of 1-2 per serving, pour meat juice.

Serve with fried potatoes, boiled beans, pickled grapes, plums or red cabbage salad. Meat can also be served with pepper sauce with vinegar, sweet and sour with nuts, spicy with tarragon, lingonberry or black currant jam.

Per 1 serving: 150 g of meat, 75 g of marinade, 20 g of spear, 5 g of lard, 150 g of garnish, 75 g of berries, 50 g of sauce or 30 g of jam.

Hunting Chowder

The brisket with rib bones is chopped into pieces, washed, put in a saucepan, poured with cold water and boiled without salt for about 1 hour over low heat, removing the foam.

Washed and poured pearl barley. Cook for about 1 hour. Then stew the salt and boil for another 5-6 minutes.

For 1 kg of meat with bones: 1.5-2 liters of water, 1/4 cup of pearl barley.

The most delicious chowder is obtained from the meat of deer, roe deer and elk.

Saiga meat broth with dumplings

To make broth, meat and bones are cooked for 1.5-2 hours on low heat, removing the foam. Raw meat is cooked minced. Add black ground pepper and finely chopped garlic. For juiciness, you can add fat or fatty pork. Minced meat can be made from boiled saiga meat. For cooking dumplings knead and roll out the dough. They make dumplings, boil them in broth for 5-6 minutes and serve them in a plate with hot broth.

For broth: for 1 kg of meat with bones, 1.5-2 liters of water.

For minced meat: 1 kg of meat 150-200 g fat, 1 head of garlic. Salt, pepper to taste.

For the test: for 1 cup of flour 1 raw egg, half a cup of cold water.

Elk meat stewed with dried apricots

From pulp cut flat pieces weighing 100-150 g, 1-1.5 cm thick. Beat off meat with a wooden hammer. In a saucepan with a thick bottom, heat the vegetable oil (preferably olive oil) and fry the meat pieces in it for 1-2 minutes until a crust forms. Fold the fried meat in a separate bowl. In butter, fry the chopped onion and put the meat pieces on the onion. Carrots are cut into strips or rubbed on a coarse grater and put on top of the meat. Then pour boiling water or hot broth at the rate of 1 cup of liquid per 1 kg of meat and stew under the lid for 1.5-2 hours. 15–20 minutes until ready, salt, put washed apricots, tomato paste, add pepper and bay leaf to taste pounded nutmeg. In the absence of dried apricots, you can put finely chopped and peeled Antonov apples. For the thickness of the sauce, add a little spasomed flour.

Per 1 kg of meat: 80-100 g of vegetable oil, 2-3 onions, 3-4 carrots, 1/2 cup dried apricots or sliced ​​apples, 1 tablespoon of tomato paste or 3-4 ripe tomatoes, 1 tablespoon of flour. Salt and spices to taste.

Fishing cuisine

By its nutritional value, fish is almost not different from meat. Its proteins and fats are well absorbed by the human body.

Live fish for cooking should be well-fed, mobile, scales - intact and free of stains. A benign fish has a smooth, shiny scales, tight to the body, transparent and bulging eyes, bright red gills and an abdominal belly. The meat should be firmly connected to the bones and slightly springy when pressed.

Obviously, the condition of the fish depends largely on how the fisherman saves his catch. We give some important tips.

You can not keep asleep fish in the cage - in the water it quickly deteriorates. If the fish has turned upside down, it must be removed from the cage and killed by making a knife in the back of the head with a knife or by pressing the back of the head strongly. Acne pinched tail. Especially large fish is killed by cutting the gill vein. In no case can not be left caught fish on the shore, where it will fight, getting injured - it is faster sports, and the taste of such a trophy will deteriorate.

Sleeping fish can be stored in nettles, sedges. It is not bad to dry the fish carcass in the shade slightly before forming a protective film that will prevent the penetration of microorganisms.

But the most radical way of preserving the catch is gutting fish, removing the gills and a light sagging. You can gut fish without tearing up the abdomen: cut the gills and the rectum at the anus, then pull out the gills along with the insides. Takuya fish should also be stored in nettles or alder twigs. Vinegar can also be used as a preservative. They are soaked in a rag in which the salted catch is wrapped.

In no case can not be stored and transported fish in a plastic bag, - the container must allow air exchange.

Winter catch also needs attention. Do not allow excessive freezing of fish. It is stored in a fishing box or on the ice, sprinkled with snow. If on the way home the fish has thawed out, it cannot be frozen again, because in this case its tastes will hopelessly fall.

Preparation of fish for culinary processing

Cutting fish. Fish is cut depending on the breed, as well as on what dishes you need to cook from it.

Live fish, before you start cleaning, you need to stab: the sharp end of a small knife make a deep cut of the throat between the head fins and allow blood to drain.

The fish, intended for frying, remove the scales and head, gut. The fish intended for cooking soup, remove the insides and gills, and leave the head and scales.

In perch and perch, you must first cut the dorsal fin. To do this, on both sides of the fin, full-length, shallow cuts are made with a sharp knife. Grabbing the fin with a towel (so as not to inject), pull out the fin from tail to head. After that, a knife or a grater clean the fish from the scales. It is better to clean the scales in a plastic bag, which will prevent the spread of scales. Then proceed to gutting. Making a longitudinal incision on the abdomen from the head to the tailtail fin, carefully remove the liver with the gallbladder. If the gall bladder is damaged, the parts of the fish on which the spilled bile has fallen should be cut out or immediately rubbed with salt. The remaining insides and gills are also taken out, and the film covering the vertebral bone is cut along. After gutting, the fish is thoroughly washed in cold, alternating water several times, and the blood is removed from the vertebral bone.

Washed fish is cut into pieces, starting with the head. First, cut the meat from the top to the bone, then chop the vertebral bone with a light knife and cut the meat of the lower part of the fish.

Fish (weighing 1 1/2 kg and more) must first be cut into two halves. Do it in the following way. Along the back, from head to tail, along the vertebral bone, they cut the meat right up to the ribs, then separate the fillets. Each half of the fish should be cut into pieces across, with some pieces obtained with the bone, the other without the bone.

If the fish fillets need to be cooked with sauce or fish pulp is needed for cutlets, then the rib cuts are cut from the fillets.

To prepare chopped fish products (cutlets, rolls, etc.), the fish is cut a little differently. It is gutted, not cleansing from scales, then both fillets are cut off, from which skin is removed along with scales. Skin covered with scales is easier to remove from the fillet.

Head, tail, fins and bones when cutting fish are used for boiling broth. They must be well washed, and from the heads to remove the gills.

Cutting soma. Soma is cut in the same way as fish covered with scales; in those cases when he goes to chopped dishes, they take off his skin.

Cutting burbot, eel. Incise the skin around the head and remove the entire fish (like a glove from the hand), then cut the abdomen, remove the insides, cut off the head. Rinse the fish in cold water.

Cutting line Put the fish for 15-30 seconds in hot water to get the mucus and remove the scales more easily. Put the fish out of the hot water into the cold one, scrape it thoroughly with the blunt side of the knife, gut it and wash it.

Thawing frozen fish. Frozen fish is pre-thawed. To do this, they are put in cold water for some time, so that the fish thaws faster and does not dry out. It is not recommended to use warm water for this: the fish becomes flabby and tasteless. After thawing the fish is rinsed with clean water.

Soaking salted fish. Salted fish (perch, carp, bream, etc.) are soaked in cold water. Water should be poured so much that it covers the fish, and leave for 30-40 minutes. After that, clean the fish from scales, cut into pieces, wash and re-immerse in clean cold water for soaking for a longer period - from 4 to 6 hours, depending on the degree of salting the fish. Every hour or two the water must be changed.

Fish dishes

Boiled fish

The easiest way to cook fish is to boil it in water. In boiled form, you can cook any fish, however, such as carp, sage, smelt, it is advisable only to fry. The less water is taken for cooking, the tastier the fish is. Therefore, it should be poured into a dish with such a quantity of water that it only covers the fish during cooking.

For boiling fresh fish for every liter of water put 1 teaspoon of salt. To make the fish more delicious, 1/2 boil water should be added to the cooking water. carrots, parsley, 1 onion, 1-2 bay leaves and a little pepper.

The roots and onions are pre-cleaned and cut into small pieces.

When boiling catfish and pike, to discourage the specific smell of these fish, it is recommended, in addition to the roots and onions, to add 1/2 cup cucumber brine to each liter of water.

Fish can be cooked in one large piece or cut into small pieces weighing approximately 75-100 g. Fish cooked in a large piece is more tasty and juicy.

Large pieces of fish, weighing 0.5 kg and above, should be placed for cooking in cold water, and small pieces - in boiling water.

From the beginning of boiling water to the end of cooking fish, it is necessary to maintain a weak but continuous boil. Every fish should be well cooked. Pike perch, carp and pike weighing 1-1 1/2 kg are cooked for 50–60 minutes, and in pieces of 100–150 g - 15–20 minutes.

The readiness of the fish during cooking can be determined by piercing it with a thin wooden hairpin: if the fish is ready, the hairpin easily enters the flesh.

From the boiling fish obtained during cooking, a portion is used for preparing the sauce for fish — white or tomato, and the rest of the broth can be cooked for fish soup.

Salting fish after soaking need to fill with fresh cold water and cook, without adding salt, until done.

Boiled fish served hot or cold; hot - with boiled potatoes, and cold - with vinaigrette, potato or cabbage salad, pickled beets, cucumbers or with green salad.

To cold and hot fish, you can apply horseradish with vinegar or sauce.

Boiled fish with potatoes

Prepared fish (perch, pike, catfish, tench, etc.) cut into pieces and cook. Separately cook peeled whole potatoes. At the time of serving, remove the fish with a skimmer from the decoction on the dish, overlay the potatoes and decorate the dish with parsley. To this dish it is good to serve horseradish with vinegar, you can also apply butter, softened to the state of thick sour cream and mixed with chopped parsley.

500 g of fish - 800 g of potatoes.

Pike perch boiled with vegetables

Peel pikeperch and cut into pieces. Peeled and washed carrots, beets, onions cut into thin circles, and potatoes in large slices (in halves and quarters). Put the beets, carrots, onions, and then the potatoes in the pan, add 1 1/2 glasses of water and salt. Pieces of fish with salt and lay on top of vegetables. Add pepper and bay leaf. Cook under a lid on low heat for an hour, without stirring, but by shaking the saucepan every 10 minutes to prevent the vegetables from burning. When the fish and vegetables are almost ready, pour the milk into the pan, put the butter in and cook for another 15-20 minutes. After removing from the heat, place the pan at an angle, carefully scoop the juice from the bottom with a spoon, pour the fish over it and leave under the lid before serving.

1 kg of fish - 1 pc. carrots, beets and onions, 800 g potatoes, 1 tbsp. a spoonful of butter and 1/2 cup of milk.

Fish Boiled in Parchment

Cut bream fillet into pieces, pour salted water for 5 minutes (1 tablespoon of salt per glass of cold water), then remove and let the water drain. Put the fish fillet on the greased parchment paper. Put oil mixed with pepper, grated carrots and onions on top of the fish, sprinkle with lemon juice or diluted acid and sprinkle with finely chopped greens. After that, fold the edges of the paper in the form of a package, tie up with twine, put it into a pan, two-thirds filled with boiling water, and cook for 15-20 minutes on low heat. When serving, take the fish out of the bag and lay it on a heated dish. Boiled potatoes seasoned with butter and fresh salted cucumbers will do for fish.

So you can cook pikeperch, bream and other fish.

For 500 g of fish - 1 pc. carrots and onions, 1 tbsp. a spoonful of lemon juice or diluted citric acid, 2 tbsp. spoons of butter.

Boiled fish with potatoes and bacon

Cut the pork spear into small pieces, fry in a pan together with onions, peeled and cut into slices, put the peeled potatoes, also cut into slices, sprinkle with salt and pepper and add a glass of water. Cover and cook for 5 minutes on low heat. After that, put the prepared and sliced ​​fish on the potatoes and cook until ready.

When serving, put the pieces of fish on a platter, put them around potatoes and sprinkle with finely chopped parsley.

750 g of fish - 800 g of potatoes, 1-2 onions, 100 g of spear.

Canned fish with potatoes

Open a can of natural (in its own juice) canned fish, remove the fish and heat it together with the juice in a saucepan. When serving, lay the fish on a plate, garnish with boiled potatoes and decorate with parsley. Separately submit cucumbers or green salad.

On 1 can of fish (350 g) - 800 g of potatoes.

Steam fish

Steamed fish is boiled in a little water. Fillet of perch, catfish, pike, burbot, salmon is recommended. Instead of boiling water, it is advisable to take the broth, boiled from the bones and sweeps of fish. It is prepared from the head (without gill), tail, fins. Bones should be well washed and boiled in water for 40-50 minutes, adding onions and parsley. Strain the broth through a strainer. From the broth obtained by boiling fish for a couple, you can prepare the sauce.

Prepared pieces of fish put in one row in a shallow pot, salt, sprinkle with pepper and pour broth in such quantity that the fish was immersed in it for 2/3 of the thickness of the piece. Cook the fish with the lid of the pan closed.

Steamed fish is tastier than regular boiled fish, since it preserves much more flavor substances.

Canned pike perch, salmon, nelma in white wine

Remove the fish from the jar, put it in the pan, add boiled mushrooms, cut into slices, pour the juice of canned food and white wine and, covered with a lid, warm for 5-6 minutes.

Put the fish on the dish. Put the broth on the fire, add the flour mixed with a tablespoon of oil after boiling, and stirring until the flour combines with the broth, let the sauce boil for 3-5 minutes. After that, remove the sauce from the heat, add the egg yolk, wiped in a glass with 1 1/2 - 2 tbsp. with spoons of oil, stir, add salt and strain through a sieve.

When serving, pour the fish over cooked sauce. You can also submit boiled potatoes.

For 1 can (350 g) of zander, salmon or nelma, canned in its own juice, - 1 glass of white table wine, 200 g of fresh mushrooms, 1 tbsp. a spoonful of flour, 200 g of white bread, 1 egg and 4 tbsp. spoons of butter.

Pike perch in red wine

Put peeled, washed and chopped parsley and onions in the bottom of the pan, add 4 pcs. cloves, a bit of pepper and bay leaf. Place the fish prepared and cut into pieces on top of the roots, salt and pour red table wine and a glass of broth or water. Cover the pan with a lid and cook for 15-20 minutes. When the fish is ready, pour the broth into another pan and, if possible, prepare the sauce. When serving, put the pieces of fish in the dish, garnish with boiled whole potatoes and pour over the sauce.

In the same way you can cook pike, eel. For 500-750 g of fish - 1 tbsp. red table wine, 1 tbsp. a spoonful of flour, 800 g of potatoes, 1 pc. parsley and onions, 2 tbsp. spoons of butter.

Eel on a spit

Eel cleanse, remove skin from it and cut into pieces of 2 cm each. Cucumbers are cleaned, cut in half, freed from seeds, also divided into 2 cm long pieces and poured with hot broth. Alternating, they put on a spit pieces of eel and cucumber, salt, pepper, roll in flour and fry in strongly heated fat. Served with potatoes (straws) and butter, mashed with greens.

Eel - 200 g, cucumbers - 100 g, butter - 5 g, broth - 100 g, vegetable oil - 10 g, flour - 5 g, greens, salt, ground black pepper.

Potato vinaigrette with herring (cold)

Cook the potatoes in their skins, cool, peel and cut into slices. Chop the fillet with onions. Grind the yolk of hard-boiled eggs with vegetable oil and mustard. Add capers, black pepper, salt, vinegar to the dressing. Egg white chopped. All mix, sprinkle with finely chopped parsley or dill.

Potato - 100 g, herring (fillet) - 30 g, onion - 30 g, egg - 1 pc., Vegetable oil - 20 g, mustard - 5 g, capers - 10 g, vinegar 3% - ny - 5 g, parsley or dill, ground black pepper, salt.

Herring with a side dish

Before cooking herring, if it is very salty, it should be soaked in water or in a weak infusion of tea for 3-4 hours. Fillets can be soaked in cold milk: it gives the herring a delicate flavor.

Clean herring as follows. It is necessary to cut off the edge of the abdomen, the head and tail, gut, make an incision along the back and remove the skin on both sides. Separate the meat from the spinal bone by cutting the rib bones from each half with a knife. Herring halves put together and chopped. After that, shift the pieces of herring from the board to a plate or tray, attach the washed head (without gill) and tail.

Prepared herring can be garnished with fresh cucumbers, tomatoes, gherkins, pickled mushrooms (mushrooms or mushrooms), boiled beets, potatoes, carrots, green onions or onions, capers and boiled eggs. All side dishes should be neatly and beautifully cut into slices, slices, cubes, or finely chopped. Lay the side dish should be symmetrical on both sides of the herring. Onions put on top of herring rings. Before serving, pour herring and side dish dressing.

Refueling oil and vinegar: 2-W Art. spoon vinegar mixed with salt, sugar and pepper (to taste), add 1 - 1 1/2 tbsp. spoons of vegetable oil.

Mustard dressing: Pound egg yolk in a bowl with a teaspoon of mustard, a teaspoon of sugar, add a tablespoon of vegetable oil, 2-3 tbsp. spoons of vinegar and salt to taste. All this mix.

Herring in sour cream with apples and onions

Herring fillets are cut and put in a tray, chopped onions and peeled chopped apple are put on top. Pour sour cream, seasoned with sugar, sprinkled with paprika. Garnish with slices of pickled cucumber.

Herring - 160 g, sour cream - 50 g, onion - 40 g, apples - 70 g, sugar - 5 g, salted cucumbers - 25 g, red pepper.

Bleach Sprats

The easiest way to prepare this delicacy dish is as follows. The bleak is cleaned of scales, gills and viscera, then boiled for 5-7 minutes in boiling sunflower oil, in which spices and salt are put. It remains to extract the fish from the oil and cool it down - a wonderful snack is ready.

Canned food "Sprats in oil", which is on sale, is prepared differently.

Sprats in oil are prepared from Baltic herring and sprat, from the Caspian sprat and less often from other small herring.

The word "sprats" is a distorted Latin name for the Baltic sprat. Thus, both sprats and sprat are two names for the same fish. Both of these names have long become the designation of not only the breed, but also the method and recipe of cooking. There is a way of cooking small fish (such as sprat, sprat, White Sea herring, etc.) in the form of “sprats”, just like there is a keen ambassador, anchovy ambassador, various herring salting, etc.

For “Sprat in oil,” the fish is thoroughly washed, immersed briefly in a weak salt solution (tuzluk), then rinsed with fresh water, then strung (through the mouth and gill opening) on ​​a metal twig; a twig with a small fish is inserted into a frame and placed in a smoke oven. After smoking, the fish are removed, the head and tail fin are placed in cans, filled with refined sunflower and mustard oil, the jar is rolled (hermetically sealed), sterilized, cooled and put into a warehouse where the sprats must remain for several months to mature; During this time, the oil gets the aroma of fish, and the fish is impregnated with oil, which gives a special delicious taste to sprats, like other canned fish in oil.

Ear ordinary, double ...

Ear ordinary

In a pot of water put 1-2 tbsp. spoons of millet or rice, 2-3 potatoes, onion, pepper, bay leaf and put on fire. When the potatoes are cooked to half-cooked, the prepared fish is dipped in boiling water - small, whole, and large, cut into pieces. (The preparation of small fish consists in gutting and removing the gills, the scales are not peeled off, the swim bladder also sinks into the pan. The heads, fins, and fatty films of large fish are also not thrown away — I put them in the pan.)

Cooked ear about 15 minutes. When the fish's eyes turn white and harden, and the meat is easily poked with a match, the ear is ready.

Double ear

In a saucepan of boiling water, half of small fish prepared for fish soup, heads and fins of coarse groats, 1-2 tbsp, are dipped in a gauze bag. spoons of cereal and boiled for half an hour. Then the fish in a gauze bag squeeze into the pan, and the husks are thrown away. Put 2-3 potatoes, 1-2 onions, peppers, bay leaves, the other half of the fish - it is larger, and cook until ready.

Triple ear

The procedure for cooking triple soup, as you might guess, differs from the procedure for cooking double soup in that the process of cooking small fish in a gauze bag is repeated twice and both times the change in gauze is pressed and thrown away. In the future, the dish is prepared as an ordinary ear.

Ear clear

At the first stage, this dish is prepared like a double ear: small fish is boiled, squeezed through gauze and discarded. Then the broth is done. 1-2 eggs are squeezed into the pan, which collects all the dregs and sinks to the bottom. The clear broth is poured into another pan and, using conventional technology, is boiled into the ear with chunks of large fish.

Siberian ear

Heads, tails, fins and swimming bubbles of grayling, trout, or other fish, 1-2 onions, peppers, bay leaves, and boiled for half an hour, are immersed in a pot of boiling water. Then in the broth lay the pieces of this fish and cook until tender.

Ear of ruffs

As in the previous recipes, small fish, in this case ruffs, are not scaly, only gutted, then rinsed, put in a saucepan, poured with water and set on fire. When the fish is almost ready, larger ruffs are removed from the pan on a plate, and the rest are cooked until the carcasses are cooked. Then the pot is removed from the heat, the broth is filtered and the boiled down fish is thrown away. Put in the broth pieces of another, larger fish, and the pulp previously taken out. Add pepper, onion, bay leaf. When the fish is cooked, the ear is ready.

Some tips. Boil the ear should be on low heat, avoiding vigorous boiling, after which the broth loses its taste.

If the ear is salted, you must put a raw potato in it - it will absorb the excess salt.

It happens that the ear is bitter. This happens when bile enters it along with the fish. Connoisseurs are advised in this case to put a walnut-sized piece of charcoal in the ear for 15 minutes, which will improve the situation and save the cook's reputation.

Salting fish

Salt fish in different ways depending on the purpose: long-term storage, further use, the size of the fish. A small fish is salted whole, a large pre-breeding.

Fish for drying before salting is not cleaned and not gutted - only washed.

The process of salting itself looks as follows: fish is placed in glass, enameled ware or plastic bags in layers - first large, then smaller. Each layer is sprinkled with salt. On top of the fish they put a saucer, a plate or something else appropriate, on which you can put a load - say, a jar of water or a stone weighing approximately equal to the weight of the fish.

Depending on the size of the fish, salting lasts from one day to six days, a sure sign of the end is the termination of the juicing. Released juice is periodically drained. If the fish is salted in a box or basket, then the need for draining the juice itself disappears - the juice flows out by itself. It goes without saying that the tank with salted fish should be in a cool place.

Now a very important question - about the amount of salt. It is believed that fish does not absorb excess salt. This rule cannot be considered indisputable for all occasions. For example, herring salted according to this rule will not be taken by mouth. If you want to receive salted herring, the dosage should be as follows: for 1 kg of herring 1 tbsp. spoon of salt. You can add 1 tbsp. a spoonful of sugar - it will turn out very tasty. 2 tbsp. spoons of salt will make 1 kg of herring just salty. Pepper, coriander, other aromatic substances are added to taste.

Smoked fish

Fish is smoked in two ways: cold and hot.

The technology of hot smoking is simple and accessible to almost everyone - it is similar to the technology of cooking steam dishes, with the difference that in one case the product is prepared by exposure to steam, in the other - smoke.

A pan is taken, a grate is inserted or fastened into it at a height of 5-8 cm from the bottom. (It is clear that instead of the pan, you can use any other container with a lid, except for a container made of galvanized metal.)

The fish is gutted, cleaned, washed, rubbed with salt and left for a few hours for sagging and easy wilting in the breeze.

A layer of alder sawdust 1-2 cm high is poured at the bottom of the pan (another container). Pine and birch sawdust is not suitable because of the resin that is released during combustion. To sawdust, you need to add a sprig of juniper without needles (it will give the fish a golden hue) and bay leaf.

Prepared fish is laid on the grid, while you need to try so that the carcasses are not in contact with each other. The pot is covered with a lid and placed on the fire of a campfire or portable gas stove. The process of hot smoking lasts 15-30 minutes, depending on the size of the carcasses of fish. If the fish turns out to be damp, you can again put the pot on the fire and bring it to readiness.

If desired, hot smoked fish can be cooked without a special pan.

Dig a "firebox" half a meter deep and wide in a suitable cliff, 70 centimeters high. At the top of the firebox, reinforce the sticks on which you could put the prepared fish. (The fish can also be hung up by wrapping it with a cap so that it does not fall apart.) When the fish is laid, a fire is built under it, into which alder and aspen rotten cones are thrown, cones so that the fish will be covered with thick hot smoke. This method requires a longer smoking time - 1-3 hours.

The easiest way to smoke - at the campfire. Put the fish on the stick (just not coniferous) and stick it into the ground near the fire on the leeward side so that hot smoke will go on it. In this case, it will be necessary to turn the fish so that it is smoked on the other side.

Cold smoking is more laborious, but the resulting product is of excellent quality. Such processing are subject to larger and more valuable fish - salmon, pike perch, asp, etc.

The fish is gutted and salted, and is smoked before smoking. Smoked in the smokehouse. This may be a shed or even a hut. As with hot smoked, drowned with alder and aspen rotters, add juniper without needles. In the smokehouse must always be thick smoke with a temperature not higher than 40 ° C. The process of smoking lasts two or more days, depending on the size of the fish.

Drying fish

Fish from the carp family should be dried (dried): roach, bream, white bream, rudd, etc. The quality of the finished product will be higher if the fish is not first gutted, but salted whole.

When the fish is salted, it should be washed in cold water and soaked for a few hours to half a day, depending on the size of the fish.

Vyalyat fish in the breeze and always in the shade. At the same time, care must be taken to ensure that flies do not get to the fish. Flies can be protected with gauze canopy, or you can smear the fish with sunflower oil or a solution of potassium permanganate.

For drying, the fish is strung into the eye sockets on a wire or twine, or each fish is individually hung on a hook or nail. At the same time it is necessary to ensure that the carcasses are not in contact.

You can vyalit and gutting fish, but then it turns thin.

Lovers of exotic

For exotic, it is not necessary to go to the thirties kingdoms. Something outlandish can be cooked with us. For example, flat cakes and even bread can be baked from flour obtained by processing some plants: rhizomes of susak, white water lily, rogoza, cane, oak acorns, Icelandic lichen (moss). By the way, the bread from these plants is no less nutritious than from wheat flour. In addition, the "chemistry" in this raw material is incomparably less than in the collective farm grain.

For comparison, consider the composition of bread baked from wheat and plants (%):

The rhizomes of susak, reed mace, reed are washed, cleaned from the ground, cut into small pieces (0.5-1 cm) and dried by the fire. The resulting raw material is ground.

From the rhizomes of the white water lily, first prepare the flour, as from susak and rogoza. Then to remove tannins from flour, giving a bitter taste, it is poured with cold water and twice brought to a boil. Drain the second water, again pour the flour in cold water, mix and allow to stand. Next, the water is drained, and the flour is laid out in a thin layer on a cloth or paper and dried.

Acorns are cleaned, cut into four parts and filled with water. They are soaked for two days, changing the water at least three times a day. After that, the acorns are crushed, poured in a thin layer on the litter and dried first in air and then over the fire. Dried acorns grind or pound into flour.

However, the dough made from acorn flour during baking crumbles heavily. The cake, baked out of it, before turning, it is necessary to cover with something and then, pressing, turn.

In Icelandic lichen, bitter substances are first removed. To do this, it must be soaked in a solution of soda or potash (5 g per 1 liter of water) during the day. After that, the lichen is washed and kept for another day in clean water. Then the resulting mass can only be dried, pounded, and the flour is ready.

It is better to use flour from the listed plants, mixing rye flour to it.

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If in the spring to rise above the ground and see at one glance the whole mass of birds that move from two to three weeks from south to north, perhaps there would not be a spectacle in the world comparable to this. And if you count and put down the kinetic energy of all birds, from a light swallow and a nightingale to swan geese, then I am sure the figure will turn out much higher than the total electropower produced on Earth during these two or three weeks of flight. In order for the finished pessimist to return the joy of life and faith in the miracle that happens every second over our heads, one should look into the spring sky and include at least the most primitive imagination. What kind of supernatural, uncontrollable force drives the birds to the north every year? Is it only because in the south at this time there is not enough food and the sun bakes too much? Somehow I can not believe it. I can not believe just because the energy costs of the flight, the fat accumulated for the long journey would be more than enough to somehow sit out the unfavorable period somewhere on the Amazon, in India or in the not so hot reeds of the Caspian coast. But no, barely warm winds turned to the north, as after them countless swarms of feathered rise on the wing and across the seas, oceans, hot deserts and humid tropics fly to the cold side, where there is still snow, damp and dank, where you can hardly find food and even more so to make a nest. However, the inexorable, cosmic in strength passion drives the birds here and for the sole purpose - to breed. The desert arctic islands, the coasts of all the northern seas and oceans from Chukotka to the Kola Peninsula, from Scandinavia to Canada and Alaska, together with the spring, turn into bird markets, mass nesting places of all kinds of geese, swans, ducks, ottoods, loons, eider and other birds, which we consider the inhabitants of the northern seas, although they live there only two or three months ...

And every fall, most often with the first winch, twice or even tripled  the increased mass of feathered travelers gets up on the wing and goes back to the foreign land in order to wait out the severe frosts. But before leaving the native cold land, the birds arrange a rally, an action that is difficult to see and resembles in its image and likeness veche. One day I woke up in a hunting hut, standing in the forest far enough from the inhabited places, from loud crowded conversation. There was a complete feeling that the crowd gathered something deliberately discussing, that's just words can not make out. When he carefully walked out into the street, he saw an unprecedented sight: the whole rather wide floodplain meadow with overripe and fallen autumn grass moved from cranes. In these places before, I quite often saw these birds, but in small flocks or even in pairs, and then the heads on the long necks covered the meadow from the river to a high terrace, smoky with morning fog, like grass swaying in the wind. There were thousands of them! And the cranes didn’t just spend the night here, but they were talking very seriously about something, and their speech was human, even in their intonations - at some instant it seemed they were arguing. Only the short and blunt consonance of the two sounds was clearly heard. cr, cr, cr, and in different ways. They stood with their heads turned towards the middle of the meadow, a completely empty patch of diameter about thirty meters, as if it were a veche circle. Then their speech changed for a while, from unintelligible polyphony turned into a peculiar chorus, singing one drawling word - chickens. And it seemed to me, the birds pray before the road, especially after this consonant singing they began to take off, and from the periphery to the middle. They took off already with a full-bodied crane cry, a familiar ear and sad - kurla, Kurla, and understood, lined up in wedges, writing out circles above the meadow, must have said goodbye. After a few minutes, the predawn sky turned black from the flocks, and only when all the cranes were in the air did the departure begin. With an incredible sense of order and incomprehensible patterns of sequence, the shoals broke from the circle and went to the south. And the last flock circled over the meadow for about an hour with a cry, the sun did not risethen lay down on the course too.

After this morning, I no longer saw a single crane until spring.

No more living things on Earth have such a passionate feelings of homelandlike migratory birds. They do not make their nests and do not breed where they winter: even the most fertile land for them is a foreign land. Their love for northern latitudes exists at the gene level, as this is clear evidence that migratory during the Valdai glaciation of the continent, birds began to live when all living things, including people, were forced to leave their native lands covered with cold and covered with ice. But barely warmer, barely through the thick ice hummocks, like chicks from eggs, the first bits of earth poked through, like all displaced people began to return home, albeit not for the whole year, but to prolong their clan in homelandso that the children learn to fly over their native spaces and know the way to them.

Even a hard-of-ear person who does not have a musical ear can hear the feelings of a bird, such as a crane, in the spring, when he returns home, and in the fall at the time of departure - there is no sadder bird song!

When in August you fly over the north of the Tomsk or Tyumen region, over the land of hunters and Mansi, it seems that white drifts of snow lie on the blue lakes. And if swan flocks take off from the water, sometimes spread wings spread over a considerable part of the lake. If these royal and royal birds settled on the reservoir, then no one will be allowed into their patrimony. And if, by thoughtlessness, the same place was chosen, for example, ducks or geese, then they will certainly be expelled, and their nests are destroyed - the proud and majestic this bird does not tolerate the neighborhood of foreigners. However, on the flight from south to north and back, that is, on the road, quite peacefully gets along with everyone, and sometimes, caught in mist, flocks of swans, geese, ducks fall on the same lake, and it is rather curious to observe how against white , marble sculptures scurrying about teal. Swans behave in the same way in wintering places in a foreign land, and only at home become themselves and show their royal intolerance.

Despite the desire for a solitary life, the swans are quite tolerant of a person, perhaps they have confidence in him, because sometimes they settle in very small reservoirs near villages and villages. In the Zyryansky district of the Tomsk region a pair of shipuns lived for several years near an asphalt road on a flooded quarry, only a mile from the village of Bogoslovka, although there were many flood plain old women and lakes around, much more secluded and spacious. When the passing people stopped to admire, the swans from the whole family swam out to the net and were shown in all their glory. I don’t know how ornithologists explain this behavior, but the local residents had the impression that the birds needed some kind of communication with the person, as if they came to life when it appeared.

From south to north, swans fly gradually, following the outgoing winter, therefore in spring we often see their flocks in the sky and on the ground, because the birds stop to feed, and at the same time wait out bad weather. But in the autumn it is difficult to see them, because after feeding fat on northern, rich fodder, freshwater lakes, the swan overcomes the first part of the return trip in a short time, stopping only for the night, and flies at an altitude of up to five kilometers, where the air temperature is already minus twenty, and where to fly birds is easier than on the ground itself. Swan trails are laid from ancient times to this hole practically do not change. According to the stories of old men, there used to be bird paths in the Urals, and they always pass along the Earth’s magnetic field lines, there were dredges - the people guarding these paths. They met and escorted swan packs from the south to the north and back, and then there was a harmony of earthly and heavenly paths, which was owned by the well-known traveler Athanasius Nikitin ...

In the old days, the swan was an object for falconry, was considered an ornament of the royal table, but no more. The Slavs worshiped this bird and more appreciated not the taste of meat, but the natural perfection and compared the beauty of the woman with the swan. However, judging by the legends, tales and folk material, the swan simultaneously associated with foreign, oriental beauty and an accomplice of evil forces - the swan geese swooped down and carried off their brother Ivanushka ... Besides, the Slavic peoples have a legend about marital fidelity of these birds, de , their love and affection for each other is sacred, and if one dies, the other ends up suicide. Indeed, in swans couples add up before puberty, and it happens that they live together for a long time, but the life of birds, like people, is diverse and ambiguous. The swan is the most praised bird, from the ancient epic to the modern literary poetic and prose works.

On the territory of Russia there are three known types of swans - spines, whoopers and small swans listed in the Red Book. The first are distinguished by a red-black beak, curved, as if always bowing, neck and large size. It nests mainly in the southern part of Russia, on steppe, sometimes saline lakes, overgrown with reeds. They winter in the Black and Caspian Seas, as well as in the Mediterranean and in some warm regions of the Far East. The cliques are common to the north, in the forest waters of Siberia, sometimes with spines, and they also winter in the Black, Azov and Caspian seas and in Central Asia. The small swan breeds in the tundra and is smaller in size than the whooper, its size has long been the target of hunting for northern peoples, therefore its numbers have decreased and are listed in the Red Book. Currently, hunting is forbidden at all, but in the poorly populated North poaching is flourishing, oil workers beat the swans, gas helicopters beat, in general, the people who came, unaware of the fact that they doom their offspring to degeneration: there is an old belief - the one who will kill the swan, the children will be born freaks.

This is the most common object of spring and autumn hunting throughout Russia. The snow has not come down yet, and in the sky there is already the inviting gurgle, and if the swallows carry summer on their wings, then the geese will bring spring, the revival of nature, the expectation of something unusual that must surely be fulfilled. Having overcome more than one thousand miles, the geese, with their throaty cries, seem to wake the dormant north, and now the larks pour over the wet fields, the starlings sing and the first grass suddenly turns green fresh and bright.

Geese fly the same way as the swans, following the retreating winter, stepping on its heels, for the middle zone of Russia is only halfway, and the islands in the Arctic seas are just as long. And already the goose is languishing near the right wing, cackling tenderly, hurries: a flight is a time for the love of birds. Usually this happens at nights, in the native water element, still saturated with broken ice and cold, but the passionate feelings are hotter. Geese prefer a monogamous marriage, and elect a life partner before puberty, and all the time they hold a pair. If you look at them from the ground, they all seem to be the same, as if they emerged from under the same stamp, but at the same time they are as different as people, because nature does not tolerate uniformity and therefore exists.

Official science deprives birds and animals of the ability to love, explaining affection by breeding instincts. But why then do females and males choose each other? If it is an instinct, it can be implemented with any individual of the opposite sex, but no! The young gander is so kindly caring for the goose that attracted him, that it is not a sin to learn from us. But most importantly, after the "wedding", he becomes even more tender and attentive, and only when a friend sits in a nest on eggs, she becomes a fierce knight, ready to fight with any beast. Therefore, foxes, foxes, raccoons at this time stay away and begin to hunt when the chicks leave their nests.

The overnight stays on the flights are usually large, and the ice-covered lakes and daytime feedings of the geese are always the same, so they are hunted in the same place, so hunters use backfits and trenches for several years. From early in the morning the cannonade begins, then before, and in the evening everything repeats. Once I conducted an experiment: I took the soil from one square meter to a depth of five centimeters and washed it in a flat plate, like washing gold. Only there was not gold, and lead shot of various sizes in the amount of 22 pieces. Probably, there were places and more productive, but this is enough for a hundred years, when the mines run out, to extract lead on the goose routes. Therefore, my advice is to always wear a fur hat on the morning and evening dawn, so that you do not get a shot falling on your head.

Several species of geese nest in Russia, of which the largest grey goose. Breeds throughout the north of the Murmansk region to the Pacific Ocean, as well as the southern regions from the Amur to the Caucasus. It winters on the Black and Caspian seas, in the non-freezing delta of the Volga, as well as in India. Humenik  slightly less gray, besides it has a black beak with a yellow edge, nests in the northern regions of Russia, Siberia, from tundra regions to Mongolia. For the winter flies to Asia Minor, India and the south of Europe. Geese  - white-footed, black, red-breasted, nest in the tundra, on the coasts of the northern seas, as well as in the river valleys. Hibernate in southern Europe, China and even in America. The main type of food is algae, young grass, and unmilled grain, rotten potatoes, corn, as well as small insects and larvae are harvested in the fields.

They also belong to the order of Anseriformes and are the main target of hunting in the summer-autumn and spring seasons. In some areas of the forest-steppe south of Siberia, where there are a lot of huge brackish lakes, duck is generally the only game caught by amateur rural hunters, except for hares. For example, in the southern Ishim district of the Tyumen region, near the border with Kazakhstan, there are two huge, up to 25 km in diameter, shallow lakes, heavily overgrown with reeds, where the most different ducks nest and where they go to hunt for them only once, with the opening of the season. After a cannonade lasting two days, the duck is hammered into the reeds and sits there until departure, without sticking out the nose, and you can swim across the lake only by narrow passages on a flat-boat, pushing with a pole. However, local hunters still only two months before the opening say that they are about the upcoming holiday, they pour and roll the shot, charge the cartridges, and then they remember the whole year how they shot, because duck hunting is probably the most exciting sport hunting ever. A young hunter begins with her, and ends with her in extreme old age, when another game is out of the way.

At first glance, this herbivorous bird is not very high organization, but has a stunning, sacrificial  the instinct of motherhood. The duck can not protect the chicks, because it does not possess the necessary strength and weapons; she cannot even pinch the offender, as the goose does. Therefore, it distracts the danger to itself and, pretending to be a weak wounded animal, usually demonstratively runs through the water, and in the meantime the ducklings disappear under water and emerge somewhere in sedge. Just making sure that the chicks are safe, the duck soars into the air and does not hide, but begins to fly in circles, substituting for a shot or under the claws of a bird of prey.

The largest and most common duck is of course mallard. A good old drake is sometimes up to one and a half kilograms, and, like many birds, it is brightly and brightly colored, while the wolf looks gray and nondescript, but this is all for disguise, so that, sitting in a nest arranged in reeds or grass, merge with the colors of the surrounding space. However, in summer the drake sheds and sheds the wedding dress, which is then re-acquired only in the fall. Mallards nest all over the territory of Russia up to the tundra, electing small, overgrown lakes, old-language rivers and even grassy river banks. The duck lays up to 15 eggs and incubates them for 26–28 days, after which the brood, like the geese, leaves the nest to the water and the ducklings immediately begin to feed on their own. Mallards winter in Central Asia, Southern Europe and Transcaucasia.

E. Tikhmenev. Wild duck hunting

But they can stay for the winter in the northern regions on non-freezing water bodies, and due to climate warming in recent years, the mallards are increasingly in cities on small rivers that are not covered by ice due to industrial and sewage discharges. Such a duck is hardly suitable for food, the more so there is a real threat of infection with bird flu, but in the spring urban flocks fly to nesting places, and it’s impossible to recognize yesterday’s begging from a fecal reservoir.

Pintail  or, as it is called, the shrimptail is more thermophilic, therefore it does not remain in the north and flies off for the winter to the Mediterranean Sea, to the Caspian Sea, to Africa and the Crimea. And though nests near rivers, lakes and old ladies, however, sometimes at a considerable distance from them, and often you can see a duck with a brood on the asphalt, rushing to the pond. The pintail is smaller than the mallard, it has a pointed tail, from which it got its name. Gray  the duck is also smaller than the mallard, the drake is brightly colored, only his head is not gray, but dark brown, the tail and part of the back are almost black, and the female is gray and speckled and also homely. Most nesting sites are located in central Russia, but sometimes they are found in more northern regions, wintering in Africa, Central Asia, in the south of Kazakhstan and Transcaucasia. Pupal  even smaller, its name comes from the extended and elongated end of the flat beak, which helps it to shovel dozens of pounds of bottom sludge in order to catch aquatic insects and plant seeds. And the smallest ducks - tealsAnd there are several types of them: whistles, crackers, little blobs. They got their name from the voice they publish. They settle everywhere, and not only at reservoirs, but also in swamps, roadside ditches, quarries and barrels. They winter in the same place as pintail, fly along with other ducks, sometimes joining other flocks of other ducks.

In addition to these very common ducks, there are many divingfrom which can be distinguished gogol, widespread in places of nesting sites of other ducks. It differs sharply from them both in lifestyle and coloring - “fraing” color: the back and head are black (in males with greenish tint, the stomach and cheeks are white, which is why the expression “walk by gogol”, that is, discharged out of place and with a proudly-puffed view). He, like many diving ones, feeds on snails, insects, crustaceans, bloodworms and less often on grass and small fish, arranges nests in the hollows of trees, so hollows, resembling a birdhouse, are installed in the hollows of trees. This is a duck, which should be shot only in flight, because a sitting shot will fly from the edge of the barrel to the target.

These are, above all, sedentary birds that have experienced more than one glaciation in their native lands. The color of the males, their current-like songs and the wedding ceremony of fights, more resembling an animal than bird song, speaks of the antiquity of these inhabitants of the forests. I don’t know what the scientists were guided by when they were, for example, the capercaillie and black grouse to the chicken squad, regardless of them, the soul somehow resisted putting them near the partridge, woodcock or chicken. There must be little physiological similarities. There is still something hidden from our mind, a kind of reflection of the distant past, when dinosaurs and petrodactils lived on Earth - these are the thoughts that come when you listen to the voices of these birds.

Borovaya game at all times was the object of hunting, was considered a delicacy and was certainly supplied to the royal court. And the whole thing is in the specific property of poultry meat not to spoil for a long time without any or minimal preservation. For example, a hazel grouse in a feather, with its entrails removed, can be kept in a purged room for a week at a positive temperature. This is probably due to the sterile properties of the organism of the bird, the main food of which is the needles and birch buds, which contain resinous and, therefore, essential substances.

That is, the pine game is capable of embalming its body to some extent, while saturating it with an antiseptic. The same thing is done by the bees, collecting resin from the kidneys, processing it into propolis and covering the inside of the hive, and then surgical instruments can be stored there. Other qualities of boron game meat, especially taste, to put it mildly, are greatly exaggerated. No matter how much you extinguish and roast grouse, no matter what season you fill it with, and no matter how much wine you drink or pick up pineapples, it will still be a piece of dry, spreading with fir oil, even if it is white meat. The same with the grouse. As a child, when I heard from ignorant people praise and delight in the forest game, all the time I thought that my mother and grandmother did not know how to cook it. But then, having matured and still listening to the stories about delicacy, he undertook to produce a culinary miracle from the grouse. And he did what he did: for four hours he stewed in a Russian stove, stuffed pork lard, laid plates of potatoes, seaweed and baked in foil, stuffed fruits, poured butter, wine, juice and fried in the microwave, it still worked like my mother’s grandmother - something like a piece of old, stale elk meat.

Therefore, I came to a certain conviction that boron birds, capercaillie, grasshoppers, hazel grouses and others with them exist in the world not so that we eat them, but for something else. It is possible that we, in the early spring morning, on a strong crust, run on eavesdropping  - listen to how they sing a hymn to the sun. After all, once we must wake up from a hungry faint, look at nature with different eyes and go to the current not with a gun, but, for example, on an inexpensive tour, in order to listen to live ancient songs.

And when we understand this, the grouse hunt, for example, will close by itself. Now I am greatly confused by the development of foreign hunting in Russia, and specifically for this, say, a rare bird that lives practically only here. We can be like the Americans, who destroyed their fauna for the sake of temporary economic interests, and squander that very strategic reserve, nationally owned.

Over the past century, no less than a swan has been sung. Poetic thought finally penetrated the mystery of this bird: sing and not to hear own song. His deafness occurs during the performance of the second knee, turning or skirting, when the wood grouse, having opened its beak in a certain position and extracting sound with a throat, blocks the auditory canals with the ends of the lower jaw. This became known not so long ago, maybe fifty years ago, but since childhood I was concerned about the question: how did people in antiquity guess about it and gave the appropriate name? By trial and error, sneaking up to the singing grouse on the current? It is unlikely, since the man of the past harmoniously fit into the natural space, he had the corresponding thinking, and the knowledge of the world on the principle of “cold - hot” belongs to our contemporary, torn from nature. There was a completely different way of knowing, connected with a special attitude, and the grouse, the sacred bird, at the time of its deafness the gods heard. Maybe…

Wood grouse

Relictism of this bird emphasizes the fact that there are only two types of wood grouse - ordinary and stone - slightly different from each other only in size and some difference in the color of the plumage of males. These differences are insignificant and could occur from the climatic conditions of existence, the specificity of the food supply. If we talk about the name “boron game”, then of all its representatives only the capercaillie lives in the high-trunk, pine forests, coniferous forests, flying in the deciduous or in the coniferous low forest and raised bogs only for feeding. Its main food is lingonberries, cranberries, blueberries, leaves of shrubs, young needles. In the summer, wood grouses begin to moult, and they cannot fly for two or three weeks, but since they are excellent runners, it is impossible to catch up with them in the forest. The wood grouse, often referred to as the “deaf grouse” (hence the expression) or “kopalukha”, is a gray-brown speckled color, again for the purpose of disguise. Once I poured a moto saw of a pine tree and cut a tree three steps away from the nest on which the hen was sitting, she did not even move when the tree fell, and did not pay attention to the crash of "Friendship". The nest was set up on the ground in the crown of a long-fallen birch, and the bird merged with a hodgepodge of rotten boughs; it was necessary to sit down and peer to see her. Then I came four more times to catch the time when the cops would not be on the nest, but she sat on the eggs all the time until one day I found the nest empty. One day, my father pulled two eggs out of the nest of the deaf and laid it under the chicken. Grouse made their way out sooner than the chickens, but nobody really had time to look at them, I think that the hen too, immediately fled to the forest.

Nestlings, like all grouse, barely born, go after their mother, live a brood for a long time and start feeding on their own almost immediately. They flee from their enemies, but when this cannot be done, they are amazingly disguised. Several times I tried to catch the chick, to bring home and feed, but did not work. The healers disappeared instantly, and the uterus flew up into a tree and began to cackle anxiously. And then one day he finally saw where the chicks disappear, desperate to run away: at one moment they capture forest floor in their paws - mostly leaves and moss, they turn over on their backs and close them like a camouflage net. And hiding - you will come near, will not move!

By the way, chicks of grouse are masked in the same way.

Like all grouse, on a frosty night, the capercaillie sleeps under the snow, which, in fact, is enjoyed by sable, and all other hunters, too. Burrowing in a loose snowdrift, the bird breaks through the course of about a meter, makes a nest and falls asleep. In the morning he digs out and flies away for feeding, but if he is frightened, he flies out immediately and with great force, raising a snow plume. There were cases when, in an early cold morning, hunters skied on a capercaillie for the night and took it with their bare hands. Birds often winter in small flocks, but not broods, uniting most likely with the aim of communicating with each other. In the spring, with the beginning of the current period, these associations break up.

Not long ago, in the fifties of the last century, the black grouse belonged to the main species of game birds. Hunters mined it by tens and hundreds, including amateurs, most often using for this profile, installed in the crowns of birch trees, or even simpler, from the felt boots. The grouse by nature is a sociable bird, having caught sight of something similar to itself, will certainly fly in and, sitting down, will examine the painted veneer with curiosity. My father and I didn’t even hang a profile, just the mowers flew in and sat on the birch near the bathhouse. If you shoot small caliber through a window and very carefully, starting from the bottom one, you can take two or three at a time until they fly off. And in the spring, as soon as the birds descended from the trees to the current and began to “chuck”, they built a willow-tree nest, grass, and went hunting in the mornings, as if to work. It used to happen that more than a hundred kosachs were gathering on the same current, there were mass, classical fights, sometimes in the excitement they almost didn’t jump in — you don’t know which one to shoot. And it seemed that there would never be an end to this, because in the winter, along mixed forests along collective-farm fields, such flocks flew that it was impossible to count, the birch trees were black from birds.

In fact, it was not realistic to exterminate black grouses until agricultural chemistry appeared. Of course, such an abundance of poultry was due to grain crops on the collective farm fields and wild berries, but when we began to destroy weeds, scattering pesticides and herbicides from airplanes, and then pollinating forests with dust from the Siberian silkworm, for three years the black grouse disappeared. It got to the point that in the spring, on a clear, frosty morning, you will not even hear their muttering! And he began to reappear only today, forty years later, when the collective farms collapsed after perestroika, and the remaining agricultural producers began to use manure again in the fields because of the high cost of chemical fertilizers. However, now it is unlikely to ever be restored to its former number, since in the habitats of the black grouse almost no sowing of zeros, and on one berry, without protein feed, it will always be a very moderate amount.

This small gray-motley, pockmarked bird once belonged to the main commercial and densely inhabited the forest and forest-steppe zone of Russia. Hazel grouse doesn’t feed near a person, so it didn’t suffer so much from agricultural chemistry, but on the other hand, it tasted its fill of other contagion that was thrown from planes into the forest (in the sixties they tried to get rid of deciduous young so that conifers would grow). And nevertheless it survived, although its numbers fell three times, and it is now rarely harvested and mined, at least, the abundance of hazel grouse that was found in the specialized stores “Gifts of Nature” is no longer and never will be. Yes, and the network of the stores themselves are not ... Their plumage is such that the male can be distinguished from the female only by the red, expressive eyebrows, but the prey can be kept without damage to the population of females. In October, when the broods fall apart and the hazel grouses are sorted out in pairs (false rut), only the males fly to the decoy tuned to the whistle of the female, and run on the ground. In winter, birds gather in flocks, sometimes in huge, up to several hundred individuals. Once I watched a false rut, or rather, some kind of mass wedding of a bird, even in early December, when all the mixed forest visible from one point along the river literally whistled and after the shots grouse just flew from tree to tree. It was in the Pervomaisky district of the Tomsk region, and local commercial hunters could not explain why this was happening. Because of the surge in numbers and ease of prey, they could not do the fur trade, until the new one, in 1977, shot grouse, when it was laughed at their lips.

The grouse nests, like all grouse, arranges on the ground, the female lays up to 12–15 eggs, and after three weeks the tiny chickens already escape from the nest after the uterus and begin to feed on their own, mainly mosquitoes, larvae and other insects. The main food of an adult bird is lingonberry, mountain ash, and when there are no or few berries, young needles and birch buds. In winter, it sleeps in the snow and becomes easy prey for the fur-bearing animal, especially the sable, which eats the hazel grouse there, under the snow.

The hunters even came up with a peculiar account of it: in spring, when the snow melts, the approximate number of sable and the area of ​​dispersion can be determined by the number of holes with feathers. It is said that in this way the lured animal does not leave the area and the following winter.

In terms of lifestyle and behavior, the white and tundra partridges are different from other wild fowl in that couples form stable families and keep together until the offspring grow up. When the female sits on the eggs, the male protects the territory, and during feeding the nest itself. In summer, the white partridge changes the color of the plumage and becomes reddish-gray with white spots, and the tundra - gray. And although it is distributed from the Arctic to the forest-steppe belt, its main place of residence is the north, where this bird is abundant and where it is still fishing.

In winter, the partridge gathers in flocks and lives mainly along rivers and streams, where there are shrubs and vegetation, since the main food is willow buds, tundra birch trees and berries, which have to be torn out from under the snow. Still, it remains a mystery to the consciousness of a man who grew up in the nature of the middle lane, as partridges can live for a long, nine months, winter among poor tundra vegetation, and even covered with snowdrifts. How does this bird survive in a fifty-degree frost at such a poor, low-calorie diet? Yes, you can dig up the berry, but after the Taimyr snowstorm, the wind compresses the snow so that you can’t take it with a shovel, the all-terrain vehicle holds it. It would seem that a flock of a dozen birds over the winter should circle all the buds from the liquid bushes along the river, and also there is the main competitor - the polar hare, which cuts off everything that sticks out of the snow and also digs it to get to the branches. It would seem that in the spring the leaves no longer bloom - but no! Do not eat and the greens are dissolved. Amazing

Forest. How many memories are connected by hunters with this short word! The forests of our Motherland are large and extensive. Dense and impassable taiga in the eastern and northern parts of the country; century-old pine forests with such high “mast” pines, that when you try to look at their peaks, as they say, “the hat falls from the head”; transparent spring, bright summer in summer, and birch groves dressed in gold and crimson in autumn; densely overgrown and varied mixed forests by types of trees and bushes; forest rivers and lakes, deaf ravines, fells and moss bogs, lush carpets of rich herbs and bright flowers, an abundance of all kinds of mushrooms and berries - such is the diverse, richest nature of the forests of our country.

And what a variety of trees found in our forests! There is a mighty oak tree, gloomy cedars and spruce trees, curly birch trees, brightly red aspen trees, majestic pine trees, elegant maple and ash trees, sad willow on the banks of forest rivers, beech and fir, poplar and larch, fragrant linden and "bitter" mountain ash and many, many other coniferous and deciduous trees. Juniper bushes stand out with pyramids and balls; thickets of hazel, willow, and whole seas of a fern block the path of man and beast.

The animal world of forests is diverse. Giants moose and bison, slender deer, swift-footed roe deer, heavy bears, gloomy boars, graceful foxes, bloodthirsty wolves, thieving wolverines, shy hare-hares, quick skipjack squirrels, treacherous lynxes - this is not a complete list of mammals; The feathery population of our forest expanses is even more numerous. The oldest and most mysterious bird, the capercaillie, is one of the largest representatives of the hunting birds of our country, which, according to S. T. Aksakov, “can unquestionably be called the first forest game,” inhabiting the most remote areas of the forest and moss swamps; a velvety black grouse with a fancy lyre-like tail; a real wood hermit of a hazel grouse and his closest relative - Siberian grouse white and tundra partridges; forest handsome golden-bay woodcock; brightly and elegantly painted pheasant and turch; musical forest pigeons and a huge army of all kinds of singing, climbing and birds of prey inhabit the forests of the country.

The hunt for boron feathered game is the most interesting, poetic and, perhaps, the most multifaceted of all sport hunting on the pen. What can be compared to a beautiful spring evening in a forest glade, when a wonderful concert of songbirds flew in from the south and frogs awakening from hibernation spread all around, and the distant muttering of grouse, hare callings, “bleating” of a snipe flying over a forest swamp, are woven into it roll call roll, klyntuha kuntkucha and gentle turtle dove cooing! Fascinated by this concert, the hunter stands under the tree and listens keenly, waiting for “over the tops of the birch and pollen to send the woodcock to his flight ...”

Or with a mysterious night in a deep forest, with wood grouses singing on the outskirts of a moss swamp, one of which must be approached by adjusting its steps to the song and freezing, turning into a statue during peresmolchek ...

Spring grouse currents are good and unforgettable with red-browed kosachs fighting in the meadow and motley grouse modestly sitting on the branches. Remarkable is the hunt with a dog with a wood-grouse and grouse broods, with autumn woodcock vyypkam or flocks of white partridges. There is a lot of poetry in the autumn hunt for hazel grouses with decoys, and with stuffed animals on black grouses from a hut or on holes, and in impassable thickets on a candle to rising pheasants, and in all the other hunts for wild fowl.

Truly wild game is the first feathered game, and hunting for it is the best and most interesting bird hunting game. With it we begin the description of the sport hunting on the pen.