Welcome back to another episode of the wild table

                    Welcome back to another episode of the wild table

Nowhere in New Zealand, we have a whole bunch of introduced species

that you can hunt year-round and one species that have been many to get my

hands-on for a bloody long time are peacocks so today we have the

invitation to a farm to come hunt some peacocks

all right so um we're here today with Andrew um Andrew works on this farm and

he's he does a whole lot of hunting around here actually so he knows exactly where

the peacocks are so mated oh thanks very much for the

invite for starters um is it much of a hunt from here is it

very fun um well it's about 500 meters up to the top up there um but there

could possibly be peacocks down in the bottom here so we'll just have to take

it is easy and take it slow

yeah just see how we go spot on man let's do it

cool

okay so obviously peacocks are not something that I've hunted before um

I do know this much that big birds you know turkeys pickles etc are

quite intelligent so generally you've got to make sure you sneak up to them

 you can't just charge across the field and hope that they'll stay there

because they won't now Andrew just told me that the

peacocks generally tend to sort of hang up on the edge of the grass just

before the trees so fingers crossed we'll be able to just sneak over this or

rise over here and maybe some birds or just on the village I can't tell you how excited I am to be

here peacock is one game species that I have been itching to go after

and true to Andrew's words it doesn't take as long at all to locate the first

the bird I am fizzing this is the first time I am seeing a true wild peacock

however, due to my own words, this peacock checked us well before we caught on to

 he and he is making a sneaky exit quick smart 

good

 I wouldn't have wanted it any other way this is supposed to be a hunt after all

and Andrew assures me that there will be plenty more chances so spirits remain

high and thankfully this farm also has  an array of other tasty critters on earth

it wasn't a peacock but we still have plenty of chances

for a peacock but at least that's a hair on the table

 so there are a few birds around at the moment there's a peacock just on the

left that's just vocalized and there's another male peacock on the

another side that also just vocalizes this is a couple of turkeys and stuff

but everything at the moment is either hidden in the bush or just out of range

 I'm just gonna play it with a little bit \of patience there's one big hawk right over there

but he's just not coming any closer he knows but there are some other big hooks there

are left that I don't think that they're aware that we're here that people know

 he's just like waiting birds they're just smart smarter

than me anyway, the peacock's just sitting over another side there and he's just not

coming any closer my two to three is running only zero for about 100 meters and he's like twice the

distance so I don't want it up so I think we're just going to sneak

around there's another bird down here that that's melting off so fingers crossed us

get there as I said spirits are high and I'm truly

enjoying these cunning birds knowing ways we're in essence locked in a kind

of a game no you see me no you don't so in a bit to get the upper hand we

sneak up to the same field but from a different angle and here I get a much

a closer look at the same bird he's hit leave those beshoot

man, there's definitely one down hit the other one too but it's

still moving there are those turkeys as well it's just ducking behind a tree

yep let's do that definitely down to one the other one's still alive so I'm going

to try and sneak up them and there's also a bunch of wild turkeys so

let's see how we go hey got the peacock's down it's just over here

but the other one just snuck in behind the tree further towards the fence down

up there

man

chase

fire rod

wow

man that's an incredible look at the plumage on that bird

unbelievable

holy smokes

that is actually unreal

wow

this one was a really clean hit as well

man

that's just unbelievable look at that bed

that has just got to be one of the most

beautiful things I've ever seen in my life it's up close

hey you know I mean

I know they've been on the farm and you know that it's actually really easy

to do but they're still an incredibly intelligent

species and you know you still have to hunt them like you can't just rock up

 and expect to shoot one like it might have just as well turned out that we

walked away from this farm today without shooting one it's not that easy

um and they're introduced in new Zealand you know they don't there's no

regulation for them they're not a game

bird

so it's just up to regular hunters like me to make sure that the population

stays in control and I'm beyond stoked to harvest a couple bits

hopefully, that was the other one put out of its misery

you can hear how many of them they are I just really wish that other than that

the other hit had been a clean hit as well

 so I really hope that Andrew just put the final um touches on him so to speak

I'm actually I really want to get over there to have a look this is

unbelievable

um and I really want to come back to honour this bird in a second but I want

to make sure that that other bit is good a beautiful turkey to boot

damn man just incredible birds-eye to explain what happened here

 I got what I thought was a solid hit on the first peacock then there was a big

a flurry of activity during which I managed to kill two more birds but in

In the meantime, the first peacock scarpered a fact that would haunt me long after

this hunt we never do find this bird and to say I'm gutted doesn't even begin to

describe my feelings however misery and fortune are closely related

yeah

my wife

 really yeah she'll look after him

so he's alive and he'd probably be about the same size as

Georgie oh bring it home

oh I'll give it a go because he seems to be

not quite as lively as johnny he's got

I'll keep them warm and see what happens

eh okay all right

so despite the loss of one bird, I choose to focus on what went right and with a

grateful heart, we end this hunt right Andrew

uh the holy trinity kind of here got a beautiful turkey and

got a just a stunning peacock

um yeah I just want to take the just basically, take the chance to say thanks

very much it's one of those things like

I feel like we're kind of living in a time where hunting is becoming a little

a bit rarer you know and it's a little bit of a struggle to get

young people like it in a sense and like it really takes a good bucket to

say yes come over and do some hunting and show

you the ropes and so thanks very much for the patience

yeah that's all good I think you're coming over and shooting some pests off

the farm because otherwise yeah they just get out of

control and yeah they need to be shot

yep no we did a good job and we've got

some

rescue

rescue babies to take home and try and revive I don't know if the

little magpie will make it but we'll give it a go anyway

so um yeah that would be good thanks man much appreciated there no worries yeah

yeah yeah ah it's been the good peacock thanks, man thank you very much

yeah yeah it's a beautiful time all right welcome back to my garage

again so obviously we've had a nice successful

hunt yesterday with Andrew

um and to say I'm wrapped is really the

At least I'm absolutely stoked to have gotten this bird on board we've been

wanting to hunt peacock for such a long time and to have this bird lying here

 today it's just an honour um I'm really stoked about this and I'm

excited for uh this bird for two reasons I'm really excited to eat it but I'm

also really excited to do something with the feathers because these birds just

have such an incredible plumage so I've put the peacock in the freezer last

night because I mean this is something you need to be aware of if you're going

to be hunting large birds large birds

quite often if not always have something called bird mites

they're little mites a little similar to human head lice so they're quite gross

and they're pretty much under the plumage of the birds wild turkeys have

they and wild peacocks will definitely also, have them

I'm kind of hoping that putting them in the freezer overnight

might have killed a lot of those mites so when we're plucking them they're not

gonna be crawling all over our arms bird mites can't survive in the human body so

it's not something to be super concerned about but it is kind of gross and I'm

hoping that we can minimize it um so we're gonna plug the spirit we're gonna

put all the feathers into individual compartments and then we're gonna take

the naked bird upstairs and we're gonna make something beautiful with it

so just like there's more than one way to skin a cat there's also more than one

way to pluck a bird um you could if you really wanted to just take a knife to it

and basically, skin the bird and then all the feathers would come off

with the skin, you could do that but most of the time we don't want to do that

because one we want the skin on the bird because it becomes nice and crispy and

two we also don't really want the skin left on the feathers right we want to

 remove the feathers from the skin so that we have a nice clean product that

we can work with you later also um so my suggestion would be that

on a peacock, plucking is the way to go and essentially what I would do is i

would start from the tail and work my way up we're

going to pull all the tail feathers up first which comes out the easiest

and then gradually work our way up  all the way to the head

plucking a bird, especially a big birdlike this is not super easy a lot of

those feathers are quite tough so it is a little bit of work and you

definitely are going to have to put that but honestly with something as

beautiful as this has got to be worth gorgeousness okay okay so we're just taking all of

the feathers of which are incredible so we've got these big bunches of tail

feathers and wing feathers and then also like lots of the fine down pretty much

Of all the different parts of the bird, pig cooks are really cool in the aspect

that they just have all of these like totally different feathers and totally

different colours of different parts of their body so we've got all the feathers

to one side we plucked the bird and then I've butterflied it and so basically

just open it up completely and I've just pulled a couple of the key organs out of

so if you don't know this might be quite interesting birds have a crop which

basically sits at the top of their neck which is where which is the where the

food goes once they swallow it and then it goes from the crop down to the

gizzard and the gizzard because birds don't have teeth basically a really

a strong celled organ that has these really strong cell walls and with the

With the help of little rocks and sand that the birds swallow that gizzard organ grinds

the food down to digestible matter which then passes

through the digestive tract so this is the crop, okay so basically

once the birds eat what they eat which you can see is a

a whole lot of vegetation grass leaves um and if you look close enough

I'm sure there'll be bugs and crickets and that kind of stuff

in there as well and then it goes from the crop gets swallowed and gets passed

down into the gizzard now this is the gizzard you'll be forgiven to think that

looks very similar to the heart when we cut that right open

we'll see that has these like really really strong tough cell walls and right

inside of there you basically find like everything that the um the bird's been eating

together with a whole bunch of little rocks and stuff, you can hear it

when I'm dropping in them you know it's literally just gravel

and so with the help of the gravel and these really strong cell walls the

birds basically grinding the food down into a digestible matter

so welcome back to the kitchen we've plucked the bird and put all the

feathers where they needed to be and then I've quartered the bird cutting it

into four somewhat equally large pieces now

a very good thing about what to do with peacock seeing as the peacock is not the

kind of bird that you're gonna get to shoot on a regular basis

and after speaking to some chefs I've decided to make a [ __ ] on

okay so with the cocoa bone which obviously being a french term for a

recipient's actually really not a complicated

recipe at all what we do is first of all we're going to take

bacon or pancetta you're going to fry it until golden brown then we're going to

remove that from the pan we're going to use the bacon grease that's already in

the pan to brown the salted and peppered pieces of peacock in this case chicken normally

and then we're going to remove that once it's

gone brown as well and then we're going to use the same oil

that's still in the pan to also saute the mushrooms and then once all the

ingredients have thoroughly been browned and sauteed basically going to add a

a whole lot to a nice heavy cast iron dish add some dry white wine

and a few seasonings to it alright so this dish has been simmering

on the stove for the last hour or so and it's just unbelievably fragrant and

delicious like that sauce with the bacon and the white wine is just to die for

peacock being a game bird naturally takes a little bit longer to break down

and start becoming sort of nice and fork-tender than regular chicken so like a

regular Kokomo recipe will call for about 40 minutes of simmering these are

probably more like an hour and a half or even two hours if you want to

get it really you know to the point where it's falling

off the bone however, this is just in the right place

right now it's fragrant and delicious I'm just gonna add a little bit of cream

to it we'll simmer it for another 10 minutes

and then we're gonna dig into this bad boy because it is yum

i know that you can smell this but I can and this is so good this is one of those

classic french dishes that are just a winner every single time

there's a big honouring and a big level of respect

towards animals that we've kind of forgotten

about you know I really think that

through this process of capturing wild food bringing it home and making a

a beautiful meal out of interconnecting those roots

the stuff that really makes us tickyeah

if you haven't tried peacock and you get the chance

or i can do it it's really good so

so