Jeff-Widgnwhacker-Wallis
12-20-2006, 11:11 AM
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Hunting for the Holiday Spirit? Look No Further Than Hoke.
By Angus Phillips/Washington Post
Sunday, December 10, 2006
In this, the high season for good deeds, it would be an oversight not to tip the hat to Mark Hoke of Laurel, who can't resist sharing his blessings with others. Hoke, a burly marble-and-tile man by trade, is an avid waterfowl, deer and turkey hunter who likes to pass along the benefits of his passions. The more challenging the circumstances, the better he seems to like it.
http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/7711/hoke2iz3.jpg
In September, I tagged along on a dove hunt for some fellows in wheelchairs that Hoke organized in Howard County. It was a big success, as everyone got a limit of birds and my dog Nellie got to retrieve many of them.
In early November, he took a group of young kids goose hunting on National Youth Waterfowl Day, as he does every year. Then, a couple of weeks later, he lined up a duck hunt for three fellows from the Paralyzed Veterans of America at Asquith Island on the Eastern Shore.
Throughout the hunting season, Hoke raffles off guided trips for sportsmen he often does the guiding himself and ships the $400 fee to various charities as a donation through an outfit called Zink Charitable Hunts for the Handicapped. Lately he's been working on another project he dreamed up and set in motion this year to gather venison, waterfowl and other game to donate to needy families for the holidays.
As a part-time, regional pro staffer for Avery Outdoors, which makes hunting blinds and camouflage gear, and for Zink Calls, which makes duck and goose calls, Hoke works with a staff of seven field representatives. He strong-armed his colleagues into joining him in donating some of the game they take in their hunting forays to folks who need it.
"We get it cleaned and processed and then pass it along directly to people who might not have the money to do something special for the holidays. This way, they can use the food money for something else," he said.
Last week, Hoke organized a Canada goose hunt at Cody Kittleman's farm in Howard County, with all the geese the hunters didn't need going to families in Rockville he found who are eager to enjoy a fresh goose dinner on Christmas. With a five-goose-per-day limit on the Western Shore of Maryland, where resident geese are considered a nuisance by farmers and golfers, Hoke found a use for the excess.
None of this is easily done, and it's amazing how much energy he pours into his efforts. At Asquith Island, where the Paralyzed Veterans of America had their hunt last month, he instructed everyone to arrive by 5 a.m., which for me meant leaving home at the ungodly hour of 3:30. The PVA guys -- Andy MacDonald, Alan Earl and Doug Beckley had farther to come and wound up leaving home before 2 a.m.
But it took some of the sting out to find Hoke already bustling around, having been up half the night organizing breakfast and transportation, preparing the blinds and setting out decoys. When Beckley, PVA's associate director of sports and recreation, rolled his wheelchair up the ramp into the specially designed duck blind in the dark before dawn, he all but slapped his head in wonder.
"I couldn't have designed it better myself," he said, settling into place alongside a camouflaged wall built just high enough to permit him to swing and shoot. "It's perfect." Hunting trips with Hoke always seem to start several hours earlier than humans are meant to get up, but he's always there ahead of everyone, with most of the preparations complete. You wonder when, if ever, he sleeps.
"The whole point is to try to make hunters look good," he says of his charitable efforts. Hoke reckons many people who don't hunt have a low opinion of those who do, and he's set as a personal goal to disabuse them of that notion. Kudos to him.
Now, just in case recipients of Hoke's Christmas geese don't know how to fix them, I'm going to bore everybody once again by repeating my time-tested roast goose recipe, which I find a way to get in the newspaper every year whether people want to read it or not.
Wild geese are nothing at all like farm-raised birds, which spend their lives waddling around tiny pens and gorging themselves on steroid-laden kibble. A wild goose or duck has little fat in the flesh, and as a result the meat is dark and stringy from all the work it does. If you roasted a wild Canada goose the way you would a store-bought bird, you could bounce it off the floor like a basketball.
A wild goose should be slow-cooked, with plenty of liquid to keep it moist. To this end, the cook at Harrison's Chesapeake House on Tilghman Island came up with the best goose recipe I've ever encountered, and it's simple beyond belief.
There are just six ingredients: A green pepper, an onion, a few stalks of celery, a few cloves of garlic, some oregano and a jigger or two of bourbon. Put them all in a blender or food processor and run it till you get a pale green slurry. Then coat the goose inside and out with the liquid, put it in a roasting pan, double-cover with tin foil to keep all the juices in and cook it for six hours at 220 degrees. When it's done, the meat all but falls off the bones. Array the meat on a platter, pour some pan drippings over the top and lick your chops. You are about to enter gustatory heaven.
Happy holidays!
Hunting for the Holiday Spirit? Look No Further Than Hoke.
By Angus Phillips/Washington Post
Sunday, December 10, 2006
In this, the high season for good deeds, it would be an oversight not to tip the hat to Mark Hoke of Laurel, who can't resist sharing his blessings with others. Hoke, a burly marble-and-tile man by trade, is an avid waterfowl, deer and turkey hunter who likes to pass along the benefits of his passions. The more challenging the circumstances, the better he seems to like it.
http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/7711/hoke2iz3.jpg
In September, I tagged along on a dove hunt for some fellows in wheelchairs that Hoke organized in Howard County. It was a big success, as everyone got a limit of birds and my dog Nellie got to retrieve many of them.
In early November, he took a group of young kids goose hunting on National Youth Waterfowl Day, as he does every year. Then, a couple of weeks later, he lined up a duck hunt for three fellows from the Paralyzed Veterans of America at Asquith Island on the Eastern Shore.
Throughout the hunting season, Hoke raffles off guided trips for sportsmen he often does the guiding himself and ships the $400 fee to various charities as a donation through an outfit called Zink Charitable Hunts for the Handicapped. Lately he's been working on another project he dreamed up and set in motion this year to gather venison, waterfowl and other game to donate to needy families for the holidays.
As a part-time, regional pro staffer for Avery Outdoors, which makes hunting blinds and camouflage gear, and for Zink Calls, which makes duck and goose calls, Hoke works with a staff of seven field representatives. He strong-armed his colleagues into joining him in donating some of the game they take in their hunting forays to folks who need it.
"We get it cleaned and processed and then pass it along directly to people who might not have the money to do something special for the holidays. This way, they can use the food money for something else," he said.
Last week, Hoke organized a Canada goose hunt at Cody Kittleman's farm in Howard County, with all the geese the hunters didn't need going to families in Rockville he found who are eager to enjoy a fresh goose dinner on Christmas. With a five-goose-per-day limit on the Western Shore of Maryland, where resident geese are considered a nuisance by farmers and golfers, Hoke found a use for the excess.
None of this is easily done, and it's amazing how much energy he pours into his efforts. At Asquith Island, where the Paralyzed Veterans of America had their hunt last month, he instructed everyone to arrive by 5 a.m., which for me meant leaving home at the ungodly hour of 3:30. The PVA guys -- Andy MacDonald, Alan Earl and Doug Beckley had farther to come and wound up leaving home before 2 a.m.
But it took some of the sting out to find Hoke already bustling around, having been up half the night organizing breakfast and transportation, preparing the blinds and setting out decoys. When Beckley, PVA's associate director of sports and recreation, rolled his wheelchair up the ramp into the specially designed duck blind in the dark before dawn, he all but slapped his head in wonder.
"I couldn't have designed it better myself," he said, settling into place alongside a camouflaged wall built just high enough to permit him to swing and shoot. "It's perfect." Hunting trips with Hoke always seem to start several hours earlier than humans are meant to get up, but he's always there ahead of everyone, with most of the preparations complete. You wonder when, if ever, he sleeps.
"The whole point is to try to make hunters look good," he says of his charitable efforts. Hoke reckons many people who don't hunt have a low opinion of those who do, and he's set as a personal goal to disabuse them of that notion. Kudos to him.
Now, just in case recipients of Hoke's Christmas geese don't know how to fix them, I'm going to bore everybody once again by repeating my time-tested roast goose recipe, which I find a way to get in the newspaper every year whether people want to read it or not.
Wild geese are nothing at all like farm-raised birds, which spend their lives waddling around tiny pens and gorging themselves on steroid-laden kibble. A wild goose or duck has little fat in the flesh, and as a result the meat is dark and stringy from all the work it does. If you roasted a wild Canada goose the way you would a store-bought bird, you could bounce it off the floor like a basketball.
A wild goose should be slow-cooked, with plenty of liquid to keep it moist. To this end, the cook at Harrison's Chesapeake House on Tilghman Island came up with the best goose recipe I've ever encountered, and it's simple beyond belief.
There are just six ingredients: A green pepper, an onion, a few stalks of celery, a few cloves of garlic, some oregano and a jigger or two of bourbon. Put them all in a blender or food processor and run it till you get a pale green slurry. Then coat the goose inside and out with the liquid, put it in a roasting pan, double-cover with tin foil to keep all the juices in and cook it for six hours at 220 degrees. When it's done, the meat all but falls off the bones. Array the meat on a platter, pour some pan drippings over the top and lick your chops. You are about to enter gustatory heaven.
Happy holidays!