Beavers and Gigging Suckers

Just got back from filming a "Dead Meat" show down in Missouri. The show usually involves hunting or fishing for something weird and then eating it. We started this episode by trapping and eating beavers. The local trapper set five traps and we caught three beavers from them. We went back to the house and prepared the beavers for a stew, and then fried up the backstraps like any old steak. Surprisingly, the beaver did not taste gamey. It actually tasted a lot like beef.

At night we went out gigging for suckers. Suckers are bottom feeding fish and gigging is a method of catching them. Gigging is done at night on a clear body of water with no wind. There are powerful lights on the boat that shine down on the water so you can clearly see the fish.  The instrument used is just a 15 foot pole with a sharp fork on the end. To catch a sucker, you sneak up on the fish and stab it. Filming the gigging was pretty boring, but after they caught a handful of suckers they asked us if we wanted to try. It was a lot harder than it looked because you have to judge the refraction of the water. Once I figured that out I was able to catch several fish.

Not many people eat suckers, but for the sake of the show we cooked them up. Sucker fish have a lot of bones, so they said you have to fry them for a long time to dissolve the bones. After the filming was done I tried eating some of the suckers and they didn't taste like anything special...just really fried. I also ate some frog legs, which were surprisingly good. Frog legs taste like really tender chicken wings : )

Now I'm back in Missoula and can focus on selling our TV series and doing some more local work.