About The Festival

With the focus often on the hunting, it is easy to overlook the result of the hunt. Putting a good meal on the table is the motivation for many hunters and gamebird meat, is free-range, organic, relatively easy to prepare and delicious.

The Gamebird Food Festival is an initiative of Fish & Game New Zealand to promote responsible, licensed hunting and the value of gamebirds as a natural and desirable food.

As well as providing recipes and advice to those cooking gamebird meat, the festival is an opportunity for New Zealand hunters and their friends to dine on gourmet dishes created by some of country’s most renowned chefs, using their own gamebird catch. The festival runs concurrent with the gamebird hunting season, from 8 May to 3 July 2011.

For hunters it is a chance to celebrate hunting skills while seeing what top chefs do with this delicious meat.

There are over 20 participating restaurants spread across New Zealand. Many of these have been short listed or won Cuisine magazine awards and all are renowned for their innovation and quality.

Restaurants are not allowed, by law, to purchase or sell wild game. The only way to taste it is to harvest it yourself or know a hunter who can harvest it for you. This, along with a restricted hunting season, makes gamebird a relatively rare treat for food lovers.

The website offers ideas and recipes that show hunters the true value of New Zealand’s wild duck, goose, pheasant, pukeko and quail.

By promoting responsible gamebird hunting - from field to family feast – Fish & Game intends to continue the tradition of sustainable hunting for years to come.

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