Sea Gulls

[imagine2frolic]

You get hungry enough, and you will even eat your crew, or maybe they will eat you!

[Vasco]

Learned how to cook them when I was a kid on a deep sea tug. Recipe was given me by the skipper who'd been with Shakleton in the Antarctic.
1. Pluck and gut the bird.
2. Boil a big pot of water.
3. Place whole bird in the pot.
4. Place small round pebble in pot.
5. When the pebble is soft the bird's done.

[cantxsailor]

During a survival course I managed to down a seagull. I cleaned it and cooked it and attempted to eat it. Having eaten some bloody horrible things during these exercizes I can tell you that seagull was by FAR the worst thing I have ever put in my mouth. If I had boiled it in diesel it couldn't have been worse. Turd flavoured rotten fish guts is close. I should have been suspicious when it stunk so badly when cooking but after three days of water and a few morsels it was an idea we had to try. Shortly after we got several nice fish so life was good. It took hours for the taste to go from my mouth. What that poor thing had been eating was probably going to kill it sooner or later or maybe thats why I was able to kill it........m

[Jentine]

Originally Posted by Vasco

5. When the pebble is soft the bird's done.

Many years ago, sometime around 1968 (well beyond the statute of limitations for shooting a protected bird) I shot a seagull. They don't respond at all to standard bird shot, but a load of buckshot at close range will take one out of the air every time. That was the easy part. Next was the cleaning and defeathering. Too much work so I just skinned the bird and threw it in the pot. The bird spent more than 24 hours simmering and never got tender. A small piece was eaten and it had little flavor whatever after its time in the water but it smelled delicious all the time it cooked.
I expected it to taste like other salt water game birds, kind of fishy, but it wasn't.
As to what they eat, they eat anything that won't eat them first. They are like flying lobsters and those critters eat all manner of dead, dying and rotting stuff that they come across. As far as I am concerned, lobsters and seagulls are in the same culinary category......yucky!

[Zoomie]

Originally Posted by Vasco

5. When the pebble is soft the bird's done.

You forgot the punch line: Toss the seagull and eat the pebble.

[Ex-Calif]

Originally Posted by Vasco

Learned how to cook them when I was a kid on a deep sea tug. Recipe was given me by the skipper who'd been with Shakleton in the Antarctic.
1. Pluck and gut the bird.
2. Boil a big pot of water.
3. Place whole bird in the pot.
4. Place small round pebble in pot.
5. When the pebble is soft the bird's done.

6. Throw away the bird
7. Eat the pebble

[David M]

Driving down the road today and I saw a gull with his head sticking out of a dumpster. It made me think of this thread and that there are people who actually eat these birds? Yuck!

[Wotname]

Originally Posted by sandy daugherty

I suspect seagulls have a negative net caloric factor. You will use more energy catching, cleaning, cooking and stomach-pumping than you will gain by injestion.

Originally Posted by Boomp

That was great but I would love to hear how she got the birds!

Around here they are pretty easy to catch, just slip a fish hook (with line attached) into a potato chip (french fry), toss onto a picnic table nearby and voila, hooked gull in 3 seconds.

[Moki]

Just be nice to the Guls.... they are friendly birds (as long as you feed them)

[Little Otter]

I have been told that I have an iron stomach,(mabye because I eat hotsauce, steak sauce,and honeymustard on my burgers along with normal stuff?) but I don't think that I would even attempt to eat a seagull unless I was dying of starvation, use it for fish bait....ehhh..mabye but eat it ,no. Just think of what you see them eat, jeez yucky

[Randall]

I dont know about the bird but i do know that there is nothing better than a young fried cat fish. the older ones not so good but the younger ones are great.

[Solitude]

Salt water bottom feeders are great. Crab, lobster,eel, flounder..... fresh water bottom feeders tend to taste like mud. Would a seagul at sea, taste better than one eating at the dump? I think mussels and clams as wel as other bivalves, contain the most mercury.

[Maren]

Originally Posted by sandy daugherty

I suspect seagulls have a negative net caloric factor. You will use more energy catching, cleaning, cooking and stomach-pumping than you will gain by injestion.

That's a good one, Sandy.

Catfish are delicious. As for seagulls, I'd rather eat a New York City sewer rat.

[stuartcnz]

Bill Belcher (authority and author on wind vane self-steering) caught and ate a sea gull, when he was stranded in a life raft, on Middleton Reef for 28 days, in 1978.

I've not heard of him trying one since.

[Stranded Mariner]

Killing seagulls brings bad luck, I have always heard. And I understood it was not limited to pumped out stomaches.