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By Danielle Prewett

When I say every meal has a story to tell, I mean something like this one.

I've been fortunate to hunt alongside my husband, Travis, for many years, but one autumn, I decided I wanted to go it alone. I hatched a plan to drive from Texas to the North Dakota Badlands for five days of sharptail grouse hunting and camping with Zissou, my incredible Deutsch Drahthaar, as my only companion. There's so much to learn when you're forced to make decisions all by yourself, and I also wanted to experience the bond between bird dog and handler, the unspoken language of trust Zissou and I developed as we learned to work together. My friends and family didn't quite understand the allure of my vacation plans, and my dad in particular was concerned about me being alone, but I was determined. Zissou and I piled into the car and hit the road.

Sharptail grouse are incredibly resilient native upland game birds with dark red meat that's utterly delicious when cooked like duck. They live in wholly undeveloped landscapes under incredibly harsh conditions (I still wonder how anything survives when it's -30°F); these are extremely wild birds, and if you're hunting grouse, you really have to work for it. I knew I'd be hiking long, windy miles across the Badlands, and that the calories I burned would far exceed what I'd gain if the hunt was successful.

This story originally appeared in the Fall 2024 issue of Quail Forever Journal compliments of Danielle Prewett. Danielle's Wild + Whole cookbook is available at MeatEater.

Cold and wind and long miles aside, I started the trip excited, but three days in, I hadn't seen a bird within shotgun range. To make matters worse, the temperature had dropped into the teens and a heavy snow was falling. I was born with a hard-ass attitude, and I like to think I've got a little grit, but that night I felt utterly defeated.

After dinner — rabbit and potato soup I brought from home, reheated and eaten straight out of the Jetboil — I got ready for bed, placing my water bottle and contacts case in my sleeping bag with me so they wouldn't freeze overnight. Zissou laid down next to me, shaking uncontrollably. That got me wondering what it would feel like to lose my nose to frostbite or, worse, freeze to death. I unzipped my sleeping bag and pulled him in to keep us both warm. I was questioning my life choices, but there was nothing to be done at that point. I just needed to sleep. With Zissou as the little spoon, his head next to mine on the pillow, I drifted off.

Perhaps it was the sun beaming down, or maybe it was Zissou's tail wagging a hundred miles per hour in our sleeping bag, his energy and excitement contagious, but I woke up the next day feeling reinvigorated. We set out to hunt again, and after hiking about five miles, the moment I'd been waiting for finally happened — Zissou locked up on point. We found birds tucked into a grove of buffalo berry shrubs, eating the tart red fruit. In the blink of an eye, a covey flushed. Without hesitation, I shouldered my gun, shot, and watched a bird fold. It was one of those scenes where everything plays out exactly as you hope, and I couldn't have been happier.

I walked away from that memorable hunt with an unbreakable bond with my dog and hard-earned meat. Back at home, I seared the grouse breast in a skillet. Out on the Badlands, I'd had the presence of mind to grab a handful of the buffalo berries the birds had been eating, and I added those to the pan to make a sauce. Spooned over the grouse, the acidity of the fruit was a perfect complement to the robust flavor of the meat.

What I loved most about those five cold days was getting a true sense of the wild. Amid that seemingly untouched expanse of grasslands, I felt small, knowing it had existed almost just as I was seeing it for thousands of years. It was a humbling experience.

In uncomfortable situations out in the wild, like that grouse hunt, it's easy to ask myself, Why am I doing this? But without these experiences, I wouldn't have the same appreciation or understanding of how the natural world and the food we eat are interconnected, knowledge that gives context and meaning to everything I eat—knowledge that gives every meal a story.

The meal I cooked with that sharptail told the story of what it took to bring it home. It's the story of an underappreciated game bird that, like many other native species of wildlife and pollinators, relies on that prairie habitat to survive. It's the story of how these once vast grasslands became the fastest disappearing ecosystem in the United States, losing 53 million acres — two-thirds of their expanse — to agriculture and development in the past decade alone. It's the story of how our food system has damaged one of the greatest carbon sinks and turned microbe and nutrient-rich soil into lifeless dirt.