It's winter and not a good time to be a duck. Game bird hunting season is in full swing, but what do you do when hunter hubby comes home with his kill and expects you to cook it? Or worse, pluck it?
For some Canterbury women enough was enough, and it was time to call in a professional - Crown Plaza Executive Chef Tony Smith.
While feathers are part of the problem for hunters' wives, Tony insists that plucking is meditation.
He we should love wild ducks, as they're much leaner than commercial birds.
They're also organic and free range.
Smoked, stir-fried and stuffed with kafir lime and roasted, had Tony won over the Canterbury housewives with his cooked ducks?
"The meat done in the wok was so tender, you'd have never in a million years thought it was a wild animal," says hunter's wife Pam Clements. "I thought it was beautiful."