"Māori hunted the takahē, which made a good-sized meal. By the 1840s it was considered rare. Between 1850 and 1898 four birds were killed and mounted as museum specimens, but after that the trail ran cold, despite reported sightings in the Fiordland wilderness....
In 1949 an 80-year-old man who had eaten a takahē remarked that it was good eating but ‘all drumstick’.1 Each leg and thigh of a takahē contains five times more meat than the breast."
http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/large-forest-birds/page-3
Charlie Douglas said kiwis were pretty tough but wekas were better. I've eaten what I was told was weka but it may have been pukeko. It tasted like cod liver oil a bit - not impressed.
Weka can be a bit stringy but if you boil them for an hour or so first, if you have time, then roast them they are nice. I used to eat quite a few Weka until I was informed they were a protected species on the mainland. Eels and possums are good bush tucker!
This post has been edited by the author on 27 August 2015 at 19:20.
A group of us had a wild foods meal once, one of the courses was pukeko soup. It tasted OK but the guy who made it admitted that when making it he had to remove most of the pukeko and add lots of vegetables as at first taste it was pretty unpleasant.
Bwa-ha-ha ! Sounds like the old 'throw away the bird & eat the rock' joke.
