It’s fall sausage season, we’ve got a great set of recipes coming, and a great interview with one of the upper Midwest’s best hunting guides coming up after Thanksgiving. Below you’ll find just s sneak peek at our interview with Brian Klein. Later we’ll post the interview in it’s entirety and Brian will tell us what it was like hunting young, how it is now and share some of his favorite recipes.

Of course we’ll share wild mushroom/wild game sausage recipes with all our readers!

Our friends at Klein Outdoor Adventures – Wisconsin based Outfitters and Hunting Guides have gifted us 20 pounds of Elk Trim, 10 pounds of Wild Goose Breast and 5 pounds of freshly hunted Duck breast for our annual Autumn Sausage making run. Klein Outdoor Adventures takes groups of up to 15 out for waterfowl hunting, though prefer smaller groups that lend themselves to better one on one skill sharing.

The Elk and Goose breast are both new to me in sausage making, and am looking for to the sweetness of the Elk, and the versatility of the Goose. We’ll be making a Swedish Potato Sausage with a slight twist, and Knockwurst Shiso blossom, and a Pineapple Sage Goose sausage.

Brian Klein is the Iowa 2012 Morel Champion, in 2013 he decided to not compete in order to ensure the Iowa Morel Festival would have enough experienced guides to lead forays. He’s not disappointed he didn’t compete, and loved showing his spots to new comers, and explaining who, when and why morels fruited.

I was quite surprised, after knowing him online for a while, and chatting with him fairly regularly and sending a buyers for his freshly picked Wisconsin Morels, that Brian was so soft spoken and easy going. His affable manner belies his years of hunting – it may make some folks gruff – being in the woods so regularly but a lifetime of training bird dogs have given Brian a certain softspokeness and inherent wisdom that comes across in every word he speaks.

Brian has been hunting as long as he can remember, “I’d help my dad train dogs since I was this big. (he gestures to the ground about knee high), There’re pictures of me in diapers with a puppy training, I’ve been hunting steady since I was twelve, Water Fowl is my big passion, I kind of got into that on my own, my dad took me a little bit, he wasn’t a big waterfowler, he was another bird guy, it’s always about the dogs for us. Bird hunting is my forte.”

“Deer hunting, I go to kill a couple deer for fun and to fill the freezer, it’s not my thing, I’m a waterfowler, I hunted 22 states last year, and 21 of them were for waterfowl, I went Elk hunting in New Mexico, which was fun, but nothing to me like the waterfowl. We just got back from North Dakota, I was on the Mississippi River this weekend, I was hunting here this morning, ducks, I’m hunting Wednesday morning – ducks, Friday morning – ducks. Then Saturday I go deer hunting Saturday/Sunday, then I come back Thursday for South Dakota for 9 days for water fowling.”

With Deer Gun Hunting Season opening in tomorrow in Wisconsin and most upper Midwest states, there’s no better time there’s not a better time for our first wild game post, and more are coming: While speaking with Brian I recalled when I lived in Madison, WI – a new FIB immigrant. None of my staff came in for the Friday, 4:00 pm shift at the quick lube center I was managing. All three no-call/no-showed, and the same happened for the three of them on Saturday. When they came into work on Monday I told each of them that they no longer were employed.

“It is like a National Holiday Weekend in Wisconsin,” Brian says, “Everything closes up, except hunting related businesses!”

Five minutes later I got a call from the Regional Manager, explaining to me that what I had witnessed was the first weekend of Deer Season, and if I followed through on terminating the three no-shows I would lead to the collapse of the entire economy of Western Wisconsin – Deer Season, even if it’s not now, it should be, a national holiday he said, and it would be me or deer season.

All three kept their jobs, and of course, each on had gotten their bucks the previous weekend.