I’ve always been reluctant to take a partner along when I hunt the singing windmill arroyo, whose loveliness and loneliness seem to demand solitude. Still, sometimes I relent and feel I have to share it.

In desert country during quail season, the sun is warm and the air is moist and smells sweet and tart. The cheerful call of the gambel’s quail—con-chi-ta, con-chi-ta, con-chita— is a characteristic sound reminiscent of many soundtracks in western b-movies. This native bird’s popularity in desert country is equal to the bobwhite’s in the Midwest and the Southeast. Sportsmen travel hundreds of miles specifically to hunt the gambel’s quail, and thousands of acres of public land in the Southwest make this resource available to all.

Chef Kipp Bourdeau
Pine Creek Sporting Club
Okeechobee, FL

Ingredients for Venison
1 pound venison tenderloin, trimmed, cut into medallions
1 tablespoon A1 steak sauce
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 tablespoons red wine
4 juniper berries, crushed
1 tablespoon coarse ground pepper
1 tablespoon olive oil
A sprig of fresh rosemary
Directions for Venison
1 In large ziploc bag, add steak sauce, soy sauce, red wine, juniper berries, cracked pepper, olive oil, and rosemary. Mix well.
2 Place venison medallions in bag, let marinate for 1 hour.
3 Remove venison from the marinade and pat dry with a paper towel.
4 In a large sauté pan over high heat, add 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Place venison in the sauté pan and cook for about 3 minutes on each side until medium rare.
Ingredients for Risotto
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons minced shallots
1 cup Arborio rice
½ cup white wine
2 ½ cups chicken stock
2 cups crimini mushrooms, sliced
¼ cup fresh grated parmesan cheese
Directions for Risotto
1 In a medium saucepan over low heat, bring chicken stock to a low simmer.
2 In a large sauté pan, bring to medium heat, add butter, shallots, and Arborio rice; sweat for 3 to 5 minutes. Add white wine, cook for 3 more minutes.
3 Add a third of the hot chicken stock and stir until rice absorbs the stock; repeat until all stock is used and rice is almost fully cooked.
4 In a medium sauté pan, cook mushrooms in a little olive oil or butter. Fold mushrooms and parmesan
5 cheese into cooked risotto.
Ingredients for Sweet Pepper Coulis
2 red peppers; roasted, peeled, seeds removed
½ cup chicken stock
1 tablespoon corn starch dissolved with 2 tablespoons of chicken stock
Directions for Sweet Pepper Coulis
1 In a medium sauce pan over medium heat, add roasted peppers and chicken stock. Simmer for 5 minutes, then add cornstarch and simmer for 5 more minutes.
2 Next, puree in a blender until smooth.
3 Keep warm.
To serve, on four warm serving plates, divide the risotto evenly and place on center of each plate. Place three medallions of venison on each plate, drizzle with pepper coulis, garnish with herbs and onion sprouts; serve immediately.

Epiphanies are confounding. You never know you’re going to have one, right up until the moment you do. They can’t be summoned, predicted, or carefully constructed from the sturdy building blocks of logic, reason, or common sense. The sprites of true inspiration are mercurial, and they hit you at the time and place of their choosing. For Mike Stewart, that moment came in the middle of a Mississippi farm pasture sometime in the early 1990s, standing next to a guy dressed like Colonel Sanders.

Back then, Stewart wasn’t the owner of one of the most famous gun-dog kennels in the nation, with three different training facilities, a six-figure revenue stream, a year-long waiting list for one of his dogs, a slew of endorsement deals with groups like Ducks Unlimited, a training book, DVDs, a long list of millionaire clients, and profiles in magazines like Forbes. He was just a guy who had some radical ideas about training dogs and loved applying those ideas in a small side business to his day job as the police chief of the nearby University of Mississippi. And that’s exactly what he was doing when an epiphany walloped him.