You can, you cannot

I LOVE hunting whistlers because they fly best on snotty late season days, decoy like you dream about, and are so handsome. But eating more than a pair is a chore, so I pick my days and limit the shots I take.
 
I can take or leave .
I prefer mallards 🦆 but realistically none of my spots have seen a good push .. I dream of the good ole days . But I am not a purist.
I do love a good woody shoot as well.

Divers I usually go with friends that like to chase them and get my fill one or two times a season.

My home is in flooded timber
 
I love hunting divers on open water.
Bluebills, redheads, and cans in particular.
Given a decent marinade, and not over-cooked, they make GREAT table fare.
In fact, we usually end up cooking a mix of divers and puddle ducks and find them indistinguishable from one another.
Duck dinners are a big deal here. The whole family loves them.
 
Dry age breast fillets from redheads and cans in the fridge for 5 days, then brine for 8 hours and grill like steak (med. rare). Good eats.
Just as good as any gadwall or pintail I shot.
Mergies were the only divers I has a hard time with. I stopped shooting them.
 
Eric Patterson said:
Try cooking next to collard greens to mask the odor.
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As a northern whose only southern exposure was military bases in Alabama and Texas when I was very young and had a bona-fide daughter of New England cooking all my meals, I don't even know what a collard green smells like. (Mom may have the first person ever to make Finnan Haddie in cream sauce a weekly meal in Alabama.) IAre collards something like the cabbage in a New England boiled dinner? Cabbage would mask the odor, and as New England boiled dinner is generally made with corned beef, so would corning the diver breasts before making it. One of my hunting buddies with German roots swears by making hasenpfeffer out of eider breasts and thighs.
 
Yes, something like cabbage. Basically, any vegetable with a high sulphur level will put off a strong odor to overwhelm olfactory senses offended by fishy waterfowl. This conversation is destroying my appetite. :p
 
I cut my teeth on divers in a lot of ways and still get giddy at the thought of them crossing across the long lines in heavy wind and waves!
I have chased them in many locations and I have found a few things in regards to table-fare. Diet can plan a big role. Fresh bluebills feeding on fresh water shrimp in the prairie pot holes or Manitoba cooked medium on a cast iron or grill are as good as steak. Shoot them in my home waters of the UP and they are just okay. Why? I assume the birds I am shooting here are coming down out of the boreal forest of Canada and eating a different diet.
Divers are best eaten fresh, frozen more then a few months they get weird in my opinion. We tend to avoid the skin and fat on the divers and save the plucking for puddle ducks.
When in doubt make them fresh into fajitas or even better fancy taco's.
Seared, sliced across the grain, back into the pan with butter and seasoning to coat quickly and the meat is ready. Pick your toppings, we like pickled red onion, feta, radishes, on corn tortila fried in oil so they puff.
 
Brandon Yuchasz said:
When in doubt make them fresh into fajitas or even better fancy taco's.
Seared, sliced across the grain, back into the pan with butter and seasoning to coat quickly and the meat is ready. Pick your toppings, we like pickled red onion, feta, radishes, on corn tortila fried in oil so they puff.
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Reminds me of a comment a nephew of mine made when he was about 12. (He's in his late 20's and works as a chef these days.) I preprared a duck appetizer--I think it was whistler breast cubes marinated, wrapped in bacon, then grilled with a dipping sauce. "That stuff is great! Of course, if you wrapped dog turds in bacon and dipped them in that sauce, those would taste great, too."
 
A buddy gave me a black scoter he killed along with some redheads and blackheads to make duck bites for a Christmas get together a couple days later. Ok he gave me the redheads and blackheads, I took the scoter and told him we were gonna eat it. I prepared it the same as the other ducks, made sure I got all the skin and fat off the breasts and kept them completely separate. He was pretty skeptical and honestly I was a little myself. I honestly couldn't tell the difference though. Interestingly enough he actually had 2 scoters. The other he took home and through in the field to feed the neighborhood critters. It laid there for a couple days before anything touched it.... I can throw a dead coon or a deer carcass in the same field and the eagles are running the buzzards off of it before it gets cold most of the time.
 
Some of the best and worst ducks I've ever eaten were divers. Redheads, Cans and Ringnecks have been great. Maybe getting them right off of the breeding grounds makes a difference.
I love seeing and hearing Goldeneyes but I think I will pass unless I want to try a really pungent recipe with them. I tried them a bunch of different ways with 2 daily limits once, everything was like eating clam strips that had gone bad. I can't hit Buffies so no worries about eating them.
 
Some people can taste and some can’t. Kind of like artistic ability.

divers that eat plants are a lot better than dabblers that eat minnows and snails.

dabblers are for tourists
 
Love divers.... like all ducks.. they taste like what they eat... hunting the Mississippi... they are delish! Cans are my favorite.... but all are good table fare
 
NickR said:
Some people can taste and some can’t. Kind of like artistic ability.

divers that eat plants are a lot better than dabblers that eat minnows and snails.

dabblers are for tourists
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This. Ringnecks on freshwater ponds are delicious. "Stinky black ducks" on the coast in January are less so.
 
Phil hit it on the head "they taste like what they eat"
Back in the day when there was a lot of celery grass on the Chesapeake, Cans, Redheads and Blackheads were pretty good table fare. Now that all the vegetation has died off in the bay they have a very strong taste...
Back when I hunted a lot of Blackheads on long Island sound we would breast them out and mix onions and bacon with breast meat,not bad.
 
Soak overnight, change water ,soak again. Marinate in Zesty Italian dressing 24 hrs and make duck poppers w/jalapeno, cream cheese and wrapped in bacon. I'll normally slice breast in half length wise so its not as thick. Another alternative is put in a bowl with the cheapest bottle of apple jelly available 24 hrs. and treat the same or cut in small chunks and skewer with pineapple either side and your choice of vegys. Grill medium rare. Acids in either change the flavor . I can feed those to anyone that doesn't like duck at all and convert them.
 
My favorite diver to eat is an eider, by a long shot. Next is buffllehead cooked in the marsh on my portable stove. I used to carry foil,, pepper , apple, butter and bread, with my lunch. A half buff breast wrapped in seeded rye, wow. Now I'm getting hungry. I'm with Carl, up above on mergansers. When I started hunting ducks, I shot a readbrested merganser and when I cooked it it stunk so bad my dog pissed all over it when I offered the meat. That one was shot on purpose. Years later I shot another readbrest by accident in poor light, it was no better than the first.
 

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