Nasty birds. I wouldn't feed one to a barn cat. I marinated one in a terriaki/garlic/beer mix and all I did was waste a beer.

Nope! Never did!

Never had a merganser but I have tried to make fish eating ducks taste less like rotten seafood with little success.
Wood ducks are good.

And you expected what, given their diet? LOL

Beautiful bird, though.

Common, Red-breasted, or Hooded?

Shovelers ain't worth a damn either...

Again, consider the diet of a NOSH. Been birding at a sewage pond? Smothered in them.

Mmmm.

Common type.

My kids will eat anything too, but my daughter spit it out on the plate and said it tasted like hand sanitizer.
This from the girl who asked why god only put one liver in a pronghorn.

I used to eat every bird I shot, out of principle. Hooded Mergansers weren't as bad as Red Breasted Mergansers. I had a hard time eating bluebills. It's a great incentive to learn your ducks and stop shooting them. We'd breast them, soak the meat in milk and flour and deep fry. That or the long soak in Texas Pete, flour and deep fry. I must provide a disclaimer to the previous, that I have used a merganser or bluebill as a strategic weapon more than once. A properly placed merganser in the vehicle of the class bully or in the windshield wash bucket at your friend's garage was funny. A bluefish in the toilet tank, bluegills in the hubcaps... yada yada.

If you haven't hidden a bluefish behind your buddies truck seat you really have missed something special. The light bulb just went on with what to do with the other mergansers.

Same as Oldsquaw - marinate yourself in beer for four hours, nail it to a cedar board, in the oven at 400 for 45 min., take it out, throw away the duck, and eat the board.

My neighbor,rest his soul,use to love mergansers.He would nail them to the wall ,and let them hang there WHOLE for a few days in the sun,before cleaning them.True story.

Maybe the rotting gets rid of the merganser taste. God knows a 6pack isn't doing it.

Hell NO! I just finally figured out how to drink Pearl Beer.

PM your address I'll mail you one.

I have. And in his tool box. I got caught by his neighbor belly crawling across his lawn with one I planted under the seat. He was going to call the police until I slid the thing out of the bag and flashed an evil grin. He shook his head and went back in the house. Bluefish in the windshield wash bucket with the tail sticking out is funny too!

If they are the same Bluebills that we get down here then they must improve dramatically. I count it as a big plus when I can take home two BBs. Redheads are good too. Pintails are the best in my opinion.

"Old Smiley" flies late in the morning and high so he's not hard to leave alone. Never shot nor tried to eat a Merganser. Might use one to bait a coyote up to use as buzzard bait and eat the buzzard.

Alan

Merganser??? isnt that whats called a "water turkey?"

Cormorant

I haven't heard that one but I would eat the guts out of a turkey before I would eat another ganzer.

The black ones??? yuck! we avoid them like the plague...never ate one but I hear they are something to behold.

Nother name I've heard was "snake birds"

Next time figure out something easy, like getting limitless energy from fusion.

One at a time....

My son ground one up and made Hoodie jerky. He laughed so hard there were tears in his eyes when I took a bite. Basically smoked, fishy, blood - cool!

If you've had gumbo in South Louisiana in a lot of places you've eaten merganser mixed in. It has a strong taste of fish to it.

Our bluebills are Lesser Scaup. In Texas, you'd have Greater Scaup, which I've never eaten (or seen during hunting season).

Eat ducks which can neither dive nor reach the bottom...vegetarians IOW.

I think we have the lesser scaup too. We call them ringnecks. They have a faint thin ring around their necks and the Bluebills have a faint light colored band across their bills. I don't know what the regs are this year, as I haven't been yet but for some number of years we can only take 2 Bluebills per day.

Alan

That would indeed be a Ringneck duck. Lesser Scaup are smaller than the Greater, look dirty (more gray) on the sides, and have a bit of a peak to their heads. Not as round as a greater. Actually, the head shape is a lot like the Ringneck.