ISSUE 88, GRAB BAG, Part 1: Marsh Hen
Marsh Hen and Sora Rail
There are six species of rail that migrate through the coastal South. The King and Clapper Rails are called Marsh Hens and the Sora, the Virginia Rail. These matter most among Georgians who savor game birds. We will discuss the smaller Sora, first. They nest in the North, in the upper reaches of the United States and Canada, and head southward a day or two before the first frost. The Sora possesses an uncanny internal barometer that can anticipate the turn in the weather. In the days of the great rice plantations, they came into the wetlands of the Lowcountry to feast on rice. The fattened Sora was valued just behind the Rice Bird as the most succulent fowl available in autumn. A Lowcountry comentator of 1858 described the culinary preparation of these fattened rail birds: “They are dressed for the table in a peculiar way, like rice birds, seasoned with salt and pepper, sewed in white paper, and placed on a grid iron” (1858).
On the wing the Sora Rail is nine inches long and fourteen inches in extent. Its bill is short and yellow. It is covered with black streaked olive brown feathers. The longest feathers are edged in white. Its feet and legs are yellowish green. Traditionally they were hunted by a pair—a pole man for the skiff or canoe—and a shooter. The birds would rise off the water in front of the skiff and fly awkwardly, their legs dangling down, a few feet off the water. They were an easy kill and in the market gunning era hundreds were harvested in an afternoon.
One of the odder folk beliefs of the old South was the conviction that sometime in the late autumn the Sora turned into frogs and remained in that shape until Spring when they reverted. This is because they would suddenly disappear. In the Chesapeake they arrived sometime in late August and remained until October. In October they suddenly disappeared. They would then appear in the Georgia and the Carolinas and remain until a decided cold spell afflicted the Lowcountry. Then they would wing toward the warm.
Marsh Hens have dull gray-brown fathers and white striped legs and hindquarters. They have famously long toed feet for running along the mud flats and scratching for sustenance. The bill is long and curved for probing mud banks. Secretive birds, Marsh Hens use salt grasses as cover.
When hunting Marsh Hens one made their way in a Jon Boat through the salt marsh at High Tide, so the birds would fly instead of run. Their season began in September. Armed with a lighter gauge shotgun, the hunter causes the boat to flush the hens often by ramming tuffets of marsh grass. The Marsh Hens take wing permitting hunters to have clear shot. Wise hunters carry colored throwing sticks to mark the location of the game in the tan colored grass. One of the great controversies of the 20th century in Georgia hunting concerned hunting Marsh Hen in motorized boats. Hunters traditionally poled their flat bottomed boats through the marsh. But outboard motors in the 1950s became cheap enough that hunters sought their convenience. The Fish and Wildlife service repeatedly insisted on poling; hunters agitated for motoring. The hunters eventually prevailed.
Hunting, like every other human activity, undergoes fashions. Hunting for Marsh Hen, once an avid pursuit of coastal hunters, has waned in the 21st century. The greater ease and sociability of dove hunting has made it by far the most popular form of wingshooting in the state. Of waterfowl, wild duck now captures the imagination of recreational shooters. When we inquired about this among hunters in St. Simons, we got two sorts of response: (1) duck cookery is so much more elaborate than marsh hen cookery, and (2) marsh hen hunting entailed more effort, more discomfort, and more chance of failure than duck hunting. We didn’t know whether to credit this last reason, for the populations of King, Clapper, and Sora rails remain ample along the coast and the habitat has not been degraded to the extent it was during the 3rd quarter of the 20th century.
Marsh Hen tended to be prepared in one of two ways. Cash Kilpatrick of Augusta, and African-American cook, supplied the recipe published in the 1940 Augusta Junior League Cookbook, Old and New Recipes from the South. His recipe would fall under the Old category.
Marsh Hens [Old and New Recipes from the South 1940):
First skin the marsh hens. Soak in salt water with red pepper for about 1 or 2 hours. Drain and wash off. Salt and pepper and flour (like chicken) and fry until two-thirds done. Make a big pan of gravy and let simmer with butter for an hour or until tender. [43]
Marsh hens were soaked in salt water because they could have a rather fishy flavor and odor. The Saltwater Geechee along the coast are quite sensitive to this smell and insist that the salt bath is not enough to eliminate the fishiness. It must be parboiled before being floured and fried (1948). A detailed meditation on prepping Marsh Hens appeared in the Cassina Garden Club’s Coastal Cooking of 1958: “Marsh hens are a choice and delectable game bird, about the size of a broiling chicken. . . . These birds are not picked but are skinned. Cut the legs off at the first joint where the feathers begin. With fingers carefully pull the skin back to the body. Split between the legs just cutting thru the outside skin. Then peel all the skin off, cutting off at wing joints and head. Split down the back and clean saving giblets” [86]. The author detailed a version of the method of frying similar to that practice by Cash Kilpatrick, then suggested a second approach: “These birds may also be sautéed in a little butter, placed in a roasting pan with a little water and roasted in the oven until done.” The meat is dark and rich. Marsh Hen Pie entails putting the Marsh Hens as prepared according to the Cash Kilpatrick method, putting it into a blind-baked crust, adding a dash of mace, and laying a pastry lattice over the top, and setting it into an oven until the top crust in browned.
Sources: “Sora Rail,: Charleston Courier (October 26, 1858), 1. “Good Marsh Hen Tide,” Brunswick Daily News (September 11, 1908), 8. “Cooking Marsh Hens,” Atlanta Journal (November 20, 1938), 92. Charles Elliott, “You Challenge the Tide when you Shoot Marsh Hens, Atlanta Journal (September 12, 1948), 132. Fulton Lovell, “Marsh Hen Hunters Suffer Setback,” Fort Valley Leader-Tribune (July 4, 1957). 3. “To Cook Marsh,” Coastal Cooking (St. Simon’s GA: Cassina Garden Club, 1958), 87. Jerry Meyer, “The Other September Bird,” Houston Home Journal (August 24, 1978), 14-B.