The most accessible mountain game — and boodog, an ancient dish cooked right inside the skin on white-hot stones. On marmot, a clean shot, and an evening by the fire.
When the summer heat arrives, you long to escape the bustle for the mountains and the cool meadows. Marmot is one of the most accessible yet exciting kinds of mountain hunting: this wary little member of the squirrel family is one a hunter waits for all summer, counting the days to the opening of the season.
Marmot is valued for more than the trophy. Its meat and especially its medicinal fat are highly prized by Mongolian and Altai hunters. The signature dish is boodog, a traditional food of the peoples of Mongolia and Altai, which needs neither a pot nor any cookware.
It is cooked right inside the animal's own skin. The skin is taken off from the head, the carcass cleaned, the meat cut into pieces. Stones the size of a hen's egg are heated white-hot in the fire. Then, alternating salt, meat and hot stones, all of it is packed tightly back into the skin, turned fur-side out, and tied firmly at the neck.
«Shoot only the vital spot, and leave no wounded game.»
The bundle is held over the fire, the fur singed and the soot scraped off, until the skin takes on a red crust. In that time the meat bakes through from within. Then the skin is opened, the stones and meat removed, and the juices — essentially concentrated fat — are poured out and passed around. A single sip is enough to keep you going all day, and one adult marmot can feed five or six people well.
The Mongols are extremely particular about the shot: a hit by shot or bullet anywhere but the head makes boodog impossible to prepare. So they aim not “into the head” but “at the head”, trying to drop the animal cleanly. Our gunsmith, a champion of precision shooting, advises against long shots at marmot altogether: shoot only the vital spot, leave no wounded game, and treat nature with care.
And what could be better than an evening by the fire — beside a babbling creek of clean water, amid the scent of mountain herbs, with a kuyrdak of fresh game in an Afghan cauldron? That is what you come to the mountains for.