Top 4 All-Time Best Tasting Ducks

Print Recipe

Most waterfowl hunters tend to target mallards, teal, wood ducks, and canvasback when hunting for the table, but we’re here to say that if you’re scrapping the sea ducks, divers, and mergansers, you are sorely missing out on some of the best tasting wild game you’re ever going to find. You may think that because of their diets, these ducks would taste terrible, but properly processed, cooked, and seasoned, these birds will blow your taste buds apart!

Here is a short list of our four all-time best tasting ducks complete with carefully curated, no-fail recipes to test out with your friends and families at your next meal. Bon Appetit!

---

Scoter Stir-Fry

With three appetizing varieties to choose from, the common/black, white-winged, and surf scoter are some of the oceans best kept scarf-it-down secrets. Feeding only on the finest and briniest of seabed clams, snails, and sea worms, these delicious diving ducks are naturally-infused with that fresh fish flavor with a nautical aftertaste that sends you straight to the toilet. Save your sea duck limit of trophy bull eider wall hangers for next year and load up on a set of scrumptious scoter for our salty stir-fry that will surely satiate—or spoil—your craving for sea duck cuisine.

Get the Recipe: Savory Sage and Sea Salt Smoked Scoter Stir-Fry

Goldeneye Gumbo

If you’re a landlocked, inland lake hunter gunning for delectable divers, don’t waste anymore time to start consuming the wonderfully wretched whistlers. The bottom-feeding goldeneye gobbles up fish and invertebrates which gives them their unforgettable terrible taste. Their greasy meat and gamey tang is unlike anything you’ve ever had—or will ever want to choke down again. You’ll have the whole gang guzzling down our gotta-have-it goldeneye gumbo—or jumping into a gangfight—at your next mealtime gathering.

Get the Recipe: Ghost Pepper Goldeneye Gumbo

Merganser Meatloaf

No longer are mergansers saved for feeding the dog or practicing your lawn dart game, the dirty mergie is one of nature’s most impossibly palatable edibles. If you haven’t filled your limit and jammed your gullet with the putrid meat of the punk-rock duck, you are missing out. With a rich and robust, fish-filled flavor that will make your eyes water and nose bleed with disgusting delight, what could you possibly dislike? Make the move to incorporate this marvelous—or malicious—mouthwatering merganser meatloaf into your meal rotation.

Get the Recipe: Maple-Mustard Glazed Merganser Meatloaf

Coot Curry

These fowl-wannabes should be nicknamed “black mallards” due to their exquisite and delicately balanced taste profile that is sure to send your taste buds into overdrive—or shut them down completely. This unsightly scavenger scoops up aquatic vegetation and algae, rendering its meat with a most flagrant foul flavor. Ramp up your appetite and hasten your hunger, our extraordinary coot curry will undoubtedly be the talk of the town after your next dinner party.

Get the Recipe: Cinnamon & Coconut Coot Curry