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I’ve never much enjoyed eating doves. Not because I’m against hunting or anything high-minded like that. It’s mostly because I’ve thought eating doves was about as rewarding as eating coin purses. So much work, fishing bird ribs from your esophagus, nibbling around errant beads of shot, acting grateful that someone schlepped an ill-behaved dog into a field of ticks to provide what could just as easily be bacon-wrapped breasts of gerbil. No thanks.

But that’s all changed after my recent dinner with gourmand photographer, writer and motorcycle enthusiast Slick Lawson, the de facto executive chef of the Buffalo River Ranch.

Buffalo River Ranch is a private hunting club out Highway 13, and I’d heard more than one BRR hunter speak longingly of Slick’s annual feast there on the opening day of dove season. They promised me Slick didn’t soak the doves in milk, he didn’t wrap them in bacon — he didn’t even leave the bones in. So I finagled an invitation to eat doves à la Slick, and he agreed to educate six lukewarm dove eaters in the finer ways of preparing the kill.

Our dove-cooking clinic was held back in town, far from the BRR cabin kitchen. Nonetheless, Slick taught us The Hunter’s Covenant: “It’s not a clean kill ’til the game is prepared with care and skill and shared with friends and a good bottle of wine.” Then he delivered a menu of flash-fried dove breasts, Escoffier hunter sauce, and Moroccan rice. Side dishes included tomatoes filled with artichoke hearts and pesto, plain rice, mashed potatoes, and French bread. (It takes strong people to serve four starches, Slick notes.) Dessert was crêpes with vanilla ice cream and a wild berry flambé flavored with a touch of New Orleans-style coffee.

“I always debone the dove breasts,” Slick says. “It’s improper to have a group of civilized people in captivity growling and gnawing on bones like alley cats.” But beyond that, Slick’s recipe was designed to accentuate the wild flavor of the game, rather than to subdue it. “One of the reasons we hunt game is that everything at the Kroger counter looks and tastes the same,” he says. “But the wild taste has some substance to it.” Slick managed to showcase the wild taste in a most refined manner, without the slightest trace of dogs, ticks or gerbils.