All in a day’s work for chef-turned-hunter

Two days into her first hunting trip, Rikki Folger sat still in a blind near a creek in Nebraska, preparing as the first turkey of the day started running toward a decoy.

Folger, 30, didn’t rush the shot. She took a deep breath while her blind-mate, Mike Johnson of Fort Collins, plugged his ears, and the turkey went down quickly and cleanly. “Time seemed to slow down in that moment,” she said.

Folger brought her first catch back to the campsite and cooked some turkey leg carnitas tacos on a two-burner propane stove for three friends. Then she saved the breast for Thanksgiving and made stock out of the bones.

It was all in a day’s work.

“Doing it in a field like that when you don’t have a kitchen at your disposal really spoke volumes about her comfort level preparing food,” Johnson said.

The chef-turned-hunter has combined two of her favorite passions since that first trip in 2021, and she’s created an online and social media brand, dubbed Wild and Foraged, where she shares wild game recipes, tips on how to utilize every part of an animal, and educational resources on this eat-what-you-kill lifestyle. She offers catering services and camp cooks for hunters, and currently manages and leads the kitchen at Budge’s Wilderness Lodge in the Flat Tops Wilderness Area north of Glenwood Springs during hunting season (June through November).

Over the past couple of years, the California native has been experimenting with wild game and surprising fellow hunters and foodies with her creations, like a bobcat Thai curry (from an animal caught by a fur trapper in Washington state); venison gyoza; fried bullfrog legs; and pork green chile (from a wild pig she shot in Texas).

“It’s important for me to be self-sufficient,” Folger said. “It’s amazing to be able to harvest an animal, break it down and serve it, and it’s just a great conversation starter as well. My main goal is to have these conversations with people who have never hunted before or want to, and educate them.”

Folger has worked in restaurants, usually front-of-the-house, since she was 15, including the Culinary Institute of America’s restaurant in Napa Valley and three Michelin-starred French Laundry locations. She eventually moved to Denver in 2019 after some time on the East Coast, and started working at Tavernetta near Denver’s Union Station up until COVID.

When the pandemic hit, Folger took a break from the restaurant industry to get her degree in nutrition from Johnson & Wales University in Denver. She spent the first part of her schooling working through the university’s culinary program before it closed and was sold in the summer of 2021.

The basic skills she learned at Johnson & Wales — coupled with the fear that COVID instilled in everyone when grocery shelves were emptied as quickly as you could say “toilet paper” — made Folger want to be more self-sufficient. “I wanted to know how to survive and support myself if something like this were to ever happen again,” she said.

Before her first hunting trip in 2021, Folger began experimenting with wild game that her friends and family had caught, making dishes like General Tsao’s pheasant.

“I love the feeling of earning what you eat,” she said. “Now I hate going to the store and buying those styrofoam plates of meat.”

But making wild game taste good takes some practice, Folger said. She said she’s used Google and tips from other hunters and chefs to avoid its usual gaminess, like harvesting and putting it on ice as quickly as you can and soaking it overnight in a marinade.

Folger had never hunted growing up in northern California, but her dad taught her how to handle a firearm through some visits to the gun range. She met some friends through Clubhouse, a social audio app where users can discuss certain topics in chat rooms. That’s how she was invited on her first hunting trip to Nebraska.

The chef later met Ryan McSparran, owner of the Budge’s Wilderness Lodge, through the conservation organization Backcountry Hunters & Anglers. And when McSparran said he needed help at the lodge, she quickly jumped on the opportunity.

The hunting lodge is nearly 40 miles from the nearest paved road and surrounded by wilderness. Guests can visit for fishing expeditions, hunting trips, or horseback rides and are provided meals by the restaurant, which is not open to the general public for dining.

Wild game species that can be legally hunted under federal or state regulatory authority, cannot be sold, but can be harvested for personal consumption, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. (If you see elk for sale at Costco or other stores, it’s farm-raised.) So, Folger’s menu at the lodge is focused on the usual cuts of chicken, pork and beef.

But if a hunting group brings back a catch and requests her to chef it up, she happily will.

“One of the most memorable dishes she’s made was after a hunt last year when she cooked some elk loin medium rare and topped it with an awesome chimichurri sauce,” McSparran said. “It was so simple, but it came off the mountain the day before, and it was such a cool experience to be a part of.”

Folger has only been able to go hunting a handful of times since she started in 2021, mainly due to the soaring interest in Colorado’s hunting seasons outpacing the number of licenses that the state wildlife officials have to offer.

“There’s so much that goes into hunting besides just pointing a gun and shooting, especially when you’re first getting started, and you have to apply for tags,” Folger said. “You have to know the area; you have to go scouting;  you have to know the animals’ routines and habits; you have to practice shooting because you don’t want to miss or hit the wrong part of the animal.”

“Hunters love the animals they hunt. It’s not a killing spree. It’s people who put a lot of money, time and effort into environmental conservation and care about wildlife,” she added.

But this year, she’s scored bear and deer hunting licenses in Colorado and hopes to spend the fall cooking up some new wild game dishes, like a bear roast. “My dream hunt would eventually be a moose, using a shooting compound bow,” Folger said.