My wife, Elaine, and I relish living off the land as much as possible, as we feel this lifestyle provides exercise and healthy food from fish, game, and wild edibles. As locavores, we try to maximize the meat from every animal I kill. In my opinion, the most challenging game animal to harvest is the wild turkey. So we especially don’t want to leave any meat unclaimed when I’m butchering these big game birds.
Which leads to this question: What can be eaten from a wild turkey — or any domestic bird, for that matter — besides the breast and legs? A number of years ago, I posed that question to my turkey-hunting mentor, Larry Proffitt, whose family operates the famed Ridgewood Barbecue in Bluff City, Tennessee. Larry knows a thing or two about food preparation. He told me the neck, wings, and giblets are all worth eating. Here’s Larry’s favorite gravy recipe, along with a host of other recipes, to make the most out of your hard-earned turkey.
WILD TURKEY GIBLET GRAVY
“I watched my mother make this gravy every Thanksgiving
