HUNTING Game provided excuse for a party

With her husband hunting and her freezer full of game, she had only one option: party.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
The proverbial golf widow -- or any spouse whose mate gets involved in a time-sapping pursuit -- has nothing on the hunt widow. But unlike other avocations, this one has a pretty good payoff: a game-filled freezer.
Sometimes that can amount to too much game for one family, and coupled with too little time with a spouse during hunt season, it can inspire culinary creativity. Susan Harris, a marketing consultant who is married to avid hunter Mac Harris, is case in point.
"One November in the early '90s, I was going stir crazy because I couldn't go hunting with Mac anymore. Our kids were just too little. Hunt season starts the first week in October, and by then I had a freezer filled with more game than we could possibly eat and was totally bored being home all alone with the babies on weekends," she explains.
The result: "I had a game party."
Easy guest list
The guest list was easy since Harris already knew a handful of other local hunt widows. Their husbands all belong to the same Wisconsin 1,000-acre hunt club complete with a game preserve, farmhouse and lodge started by 15 Milwaukee and Chicago men, including her husband, in 1982. Though some of the women went there on weekends as Harris had, most with small children stayed home.
With the other hunt widows who lived in Chicago as the core, Harris supplemented the guest list with friends from other facets of her life -- colleagues, business acquaintances, neighbors and college buddies. More than two dozen women showed up. Flash forward more than a decade, and the party has become an annual Friday night November rite for Harris and 25 to 30 of her friends.
"The people come from all these different parts of my life, and even out of town. But over the years they've become friends on their own, and they all look forward to coming to this party every year to catch up," she explains.
To allow for that, Harris sets up four tables and lets everyone choose their own seating. Everyone arrives around 7 p.m. toting a favorite wine (the sampling is also a ritual at the party). After appetizers and wine, the guests then migrate to their tables for the sit-down buffet dinner.
More exotic
Since the farm is now stocked with pheasant, quail, chucker, Hungarian partridge, deer, squirrel, rabbit and doves, the fare has also become more exotic. "I make lots of different meats because this is all about experimenting and letting people have a taste of everything. But I always do something tame too ... for the unadventurous," she says, laughing.
She starts cooking about three weeks in advance, using only wild game that she grills, bakes, stews or smokes. She also makes all the side dishes, repeating successful ones from prior years and eliminating the duds.