Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, ?.

Gros Bec Meat Was A Delicacy

There was a time when gros becs were not illegal to take from the wild.

[PICTURE--a gros bec (yellow-crowned night heron) up close and personal]

According to Cecilia resident Fred Huval, the meat of the marsh-dwelling migratory fowl has long been considered a delicacy among locals in Acadiana.

 

"Back before they were illegal, my family depended upon them as a seasonal part of the food chain. We counted on them at the time of the year when corn would ripen," Huval said.

 

When the Huvals harvested corn, they would also begin the hunting of gros becs. "Macque-choux and gros bec go very well together," he said.

 

Huval said the meat is very dark with a lightly wild taste that is preferable to duck or goose.

"It's almost as good as turtle but not quite," he said.

 

Rene Gilbert, a long-time fisherman from the Lafayette, agrees that the bird was a winner when it came to the tastebuds.

 

"It doesn't have the wild taste like duck or goose does. Personally, I liked bec croche better" he said.

A bec croche, also on the illegal list, is the local vernacular for any of the three varieties of ibis, white, white-faced or glossy, that inhabit the area.

 

"The black ones (glossy ibis) tasted bad, like a cormorant, but the white ones were delicious," Gilbert said.

Philip "Flip" Siragusa of US Fish and Wildlife said that gros bec are now hunted while they are still immature.

 

"Apparently the meat is better when they are younger," he said. Siracusa said that poachers will take infant gros becs from the nest and breast (removal of the breast meat only) them on the spot, sometimes decimating an entire rookery.

 

This was not the case in Huval's and Gilbert's day before the birds were protected. Back then they were hunted like any other bird in the basin...with a shotgun.

 

"I do remember one thing about the hunts," Huval said, "when my father and uncles used to go out to get a mess of gros becs, they would only take one shell or less per bird."

 

"You see, if you left with 10 shells and came back with 10 birds, you were forgiven. But if you came back with eight or seven, you were in trouble.