Make Upland Bird Meat Sticks for an Easy, Wild Snack

Preserve your upland bird meat into these delicious, easy-to-carry snack strips or sticks

This recipe is perfect for whatever birds are currently in your freezer, regardless of the species or their condition. Did you put a few too many pellets into the last bird of the season? No problem, it’ll be perfect for this recipe. Believe it or not, this even includes your training pigeons. Aside from the versatility of this recipe, the next best thing is that you can bring the kids in on the fun. My 4-year-old daughter—while a few years shy of being able to join us afield—loves shouldering our jerky gun and making snack sticks.

For this particular recipe, I used chukar mixed with pork shoulder, with all meat being ground fresh. You can use any upland bird (or waterfowl, for that matter), including your darker-meat prairie chickens and sharp-tailed grouse. I recommend using 30% pork shoulder for purposes of adding fat to the blend. Should you use 100% bird (no pork shoulder), your snack sticks may come out tasting a little dry.

The process for this recipe is incredibly simple but will require a jerky gun, a meat grinder, and either a dehydrator, smoker, or pellet grill. It is possible to make these in your oven if your oven will go as a low as 160F (or perhaps 180F with shorter cooking time), but you’ll still want to use stainless-steel mesh trays (also recommended for smokers and pellet grill) while also leaving your oven door slightly ajar while dehydrating.

If you’re not a fan of nitrites in the form of curing salts, you can use celery juice powder in the same amounts for naturally-occurring nitrites and nitrates. However, according to USDA, meat cured with celery juice powder cannot technically be called “cured” since the level of nitrites and nitrates in celery juice powder varies. Nevertheless, if you’re concerned about synthetic nitrites and still want that cured flavor, try using celery juice powder.