I hate

I've got a feeling that I read somewhere that the current domestic turkey in the US came from Europe (who got it from Mexico).

A few years ago, when mespilus jr. was still at infant school, we strolled down to Waitrose, just before closing on the 24th. We didn't need anything, but I was susceptible to bargains.
Not needing a whole fresh goose/turkey, even at 1/2 price, we looked further, and found a 'Game meats' package suitably reduced.
I think it was some obvious stuff, pigeon, pheasant, rabbit .... and venison.

I cooked it up for him, and he ate it all.

He returned to school in the New Year, happy to tell one and all he had eaten Bambi for his Xmas meal.

Do not recommend a Jag xfr as a method of killing.

Played by Eric Bana?

I grew up in a family with a lot of connections to First Nations hunters and fishers and was the lucky recipient of many meals that included deer, moose, duck, goose, other birds, and a whole spectrum of freshwater fish.

More turkey history:
https://merl.reading.ac.uk/blog/2022/12/why-do-we-eat-turkey-at-christmas/

Interesting. I didn't realise that turkey was adopted so early on in the UK. I was always told it was more recent.

I really like turkey.

Seconded.

Listen to all these grinches.

Bernard Mathews loves you too

Turkeys ate my lunch. In Turkey. The bastards.

Staying with Turkish friends, took a boat trip to a small island. Friends then prepared the fish they'd caught along the way, and a salad for me and my partner (both vegetarians). We all went for a walk, got back to find turkeys (plenty of them roaming wild in southern Turkey) eating the salad, having cannily removed the covering plate from the bowl.

I suspect the early turkeys in the UK, were prize exhibits in social standing enhancing menageries, and were very few in number.

All UK meat eaters should be eating more venison. There have almost certainly never been more wild deer in the UK than currently.

Sad thing is if people go in to the supermarket to buy venison, it's likely to be farmed new Zealand imports despite there being an abundance of local wild meat

Yep, we have a government willing to fund a cull of badgers, but not to reduce the wild deer population.

Odd coincidence that this got flagged to me today. Prions are the stuff of nightmares.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/chronic-wasting-disease-alberta-deer-1.6849880

We get it from the famers market. There’s an old worzel gummage looking bloke with overpriced roadkill that my son really gets stoked about eating

Anyone ever eaten Moorhen?
Not that I'm advocating anyone starts eating wild birds, but, I guess from the name they used to be considered tasty.

Can you eat badger?

You can eat pretty much anything, sometimes only once though.

You're welcome to eat badger, free at every roadside around here, in various states of decomposition.

Personally, I'll stick with the bountiful supply of venison, duck, partridge, goose and rabbit. The local pub barter system in Sussex is a wonderful thing, but I would rather risk roadkill badger than the ubiquitous pheasant. Given the choice, roe venison is the ultimate.

Most societies choose not to, or have taboos about eating other carnivores.

Local group I'm in has someone who found 100+ dead pheasant dumped in a lane today and more with some mallard yesterday, funny old world where the spectacle of shooting them is worth more than the meat

That perfectly describes the problem with shooting, I have little doubt that it is true. On commercial shoots it costs ludicrous amounts for the rich to shoot what they will never eat. I accept that it provides considerable income and employment to rural areas in winter when there is no other work, but killing without a market for the end product is immoral. The cost of rearing pheasants and managing land for them would make them an incredibly expensive source of protein, but because of annual glut they are only worth pennies.

I live in an area where shooting is a central part of the society and the people who take part would be liked by most who they met in the pub. They are by no means rich and they will not shoot anything they can't eat or can't be given away locally.

Sure, they kill things, but I admit that I'm happy to eat them.

Can you eat badger?

Serious answer warning: yes, but it’s supposed to not taste very nice because it’s a carnivore. Supposed to be the same with foxes.

Over 40 millions pheasants are released into the British countryside every year, purely for rich idiots to shoot. The impact on the ecosystem is catastrophic, it should go the way of fox hunting and be banned.