An eclectic compilation of favorite game and fish cookbooks from one avid disciple of wild edibles.

In recent years, Steven Rinella has used the catchy moniker “Meat Eater” as a pathway to a popular television show, a means of conveying an important conservation message and an entrée to interesting and sometimes offbeat approaches to cooking wild game and fish.

I should explain that I’m both a traditionalist and a minimalist who readily recognizes such hype is appealing to audiences a generation or even two generations removed from mine. Yet long before Rinella’s somewhat over-the-top moniker, there were cookbooks almost without number offering guidance to the preparation of almost any game or fish dish you can imagine.

But my exposure to the delectable delights of preparing and eating wild game and fish came long before I ever turned the first page in a cookbook. My boyhood, and it was charmed to a degree that can only be appreciated through the lens of hindsight, was filled with trout and small game on the table, deep appreciation for and utilization of nature’s bounty and an ongoing series of culinary epiphanies regarding edible wonders from the wilds.

Some of these recollections stand out, such as wild trout all decked out in cornbread dinner jackets; springtime backcountry meals featuring fish, ramps, branch lettuce and potatoes; and squirrel and dumplings for supper on a cold winter’s night. Yet no food memory quite matches an experience shared with Aunt Mag, a wonderful old black woman who lived just down the street from my boyhood home.

She regularly worked wonders with an ancient wood-burning stove, and any time I stopped by her ramshackle home, she would offer me a hearty sampling of whatever happened to be the dish of the day. On one such occasion, after having hunted rabbits all day in the cold and snow, I decided to make a short visit while roaming in the gloaming on the way home.

Predictably a wondrous aroma greeted me when I responded to her effusive, “Why howdy, boy, come on in and have a seat. But before you start toasting your toes, get you a bowl of that stew I’ve got going on the back burner.”

I gladly obliged and with great gusto dug into a gravy-laced mixture of carrots, onion, potatoes and some unrecognizable meat. It was so tasty a second bowl soon followed, and only then did I belatedly inquire: “Aunt Mag, what am I eating?”

That was the moment she had been waiting for. Cackling like a hen that had just laid a double-yoked egg, she grinned and said: “Why son, you be eatin’ muskrat.”

She had faithfully paid me ten cents for each muskrat I had trapped and skinned. Somehow, ignore the fact that the evidence was readily obvious, my heedless adolescent brain had never quite made the transition from her purchase of the meat to its use in the kitchen. With that stew though, she laid the luscious end result squarely before me.

Since those halcyon days of youth, I’ve been a part of several such cookbooks as co-author, and a couple of them have been award-winners. Moreover, shelves in one of several rooms in my home where books constitute the primary decorative item are devoted exclusively to works of this type. I haven’t actually counted, but I would conservatively guess that I own upwards of 200 volumes on the culinary arts in the two areas of food that form my greatest interest, Appalachian foods and food-ways along with game and fish. Those works are solidly buttressed by at least as many more general cookbooks.

While the contents of those devoted to game, fish and nature’s abundant bounty vary immensely, there are many that meet my personal criteria for a useful cookbook—simplicity in presentation of the individual recipes and ease of preparation, supporting narrative material that is interesting, logical arrangement and most of all, tasty recipes. If they include some travel down offbeat or unexpected culinary avenues or provide supportive information on key considerations such as dressing game or cleaning fish, so much the better.

There’s no way to do full justice to the many cookbooks that have beguiled me in one way or another, so after pondering the matter a bit, I decided that an approach that left you, the reader, with some legwork might be most appropriate.

Accordingly, the list that follows, in alphabetical order by author, is decidedly eclectic in nature and uneven in terms of content. In the final analysis, it is nothing more than a compilation of favorites from one avid disciple of wild edibles. These works run the gamut from time-tested classics to recently published books, from obscure works to those likely to be found regularly in offerings such as this. Most, though not all, focus primarily on game and fish, but there are some regional volumes along with those devoted to nuts, berries and wild vegetables. Without exception, though, these cookbooks contain recipes that appeal to the outdoorsman’s tastes and are well worthy of your preparation and consumption. They range from cheaply produced paperbacks to sumptuous coffee table tomes, but all share the common ground of worthy recipes.

There is abundant subjectivity in my list, and hopefully, one result of reading it will be that each reader asks himself where a given volume or volumes might be. That’s part of the fun of cookbooks as well as an explanation of why they do so well in the bookselling market. The variety is endless and their appeal enduring.

As for subjectivity, perceptive readers will likely suggest that venison-related works loom overly large, yet on the meat side of the equation, nothing deserves more attention thanks to the great comeback story of the whitetail and the amount of food provided by a single deer.

Likewise, there’s a bit of bias toward the South, but after all, I’m a product of my raising and arguably no section of the country has traditionally placed greater emphasis on bringing the wilds to the kitchen.

Check this list, add your favorites and quite possibly you will be scrambling to add a few selections to your shelves. If so, I can assure you that some hearty eating lies in the offing.

Fish & Game Cookbooks

• Sylvia Bashline, The Bounty of the Earth Cookbook
• Joseph D. Bates, Jr., The Outdoor Cook’s Bible
• James Beard, James Beard’s Fowl & Game Bird Cookery
• Helen Evans Brown and James A. Beard, The Complete Book of Outdoor Cookery
• Rebecca Gray (Compiler), Eat Like a Wild Man: The Ultimate Game and Fish Cookbook
• Jim and Ann Casada, The Complete Venison Cookbook
• Jim and Ann Casada, Wild Bounty
• Eileen Clarke, The Venison Cookbook
• Joan Cone, Fish and Game Cooking
• Joseph E. Dabney, Smokehouse Ham, Spoon Bread, & Scuppernong Wine
• Sidney Saylor Farr, More than Moonshine
• Kate Fiduccia, Cooking Wild in Kate’s Camp
• Louis De Gouy, The Derrydale Book of Fish and Game
• Stacy Lyn Harris, Recipes and Tips for Sustainable Living
• Horace Kephart, Camp Cookery
• Scott Leysath, The Sporting Chef’s Better Venison Cookbook
• Scott Leysath, The Sporting Chef’s Favorite Wild Game Recipes
• Andy Lightbody and Kathy Mattoon, All Things Jerky
• A.D. Livingston, Venison Cookbook
• A.J. McClane, A Taste of the Wild: A Compendium of Modern American Game Cookery
• Teresa Marrone, Abundantly Wild: Collecting and Cooking Wild Edibles
• John Parris, Mountain Cooking
• Willadeene Parton, All-Day Singing & Dinner on the Ground
• Romi Perkins, Game in Season: The Orvis Cookbook
• Romi Perkins, The Orvis Cookbook: Fifty Complete Menus for Fish and Game
• Hank Shaw, Hunt, Gather, Cook: Finding the Forgotten Feast
• Mark F. Sohn, Appalachian Home Cooking
• Jim Zumbo, Amazing Venison Recipes