Crow is not the only thing they eat at a wild game dinner in rural Pennsylvania

PINE GROVE, Pa. (AP) — The buffet line inside the fire hall in rural Pennsylvania was a familiar sight last weekend as a crowd of about 150 people heaped dinner onto their plates before sitting down to eat, hear a little live music and wait for the raffle.

Aside from a couple of vegetable dishes that were largely ignored, the food being served at the Taste of the Wild Outdoors dinner inside the Pine Grove Hose, Hook and Ladder Fire Company was anything but standard fare.

The menu of 14 species that included stingray casserole, bear stew, raccoon andouille and rabbit kielbasa was the centerpiece of a 12-year-old event organized by Larry Primeau, the volunteer rescue captain and a man with the cooking chops and network of sportsmen friends needed to pull it off.

There was roasted grey squirrel, bobcat lo mein, wild boar ham and coyote teriyaki on a stick. And the mystery meat this year, as a boy in the crowd correctly guessed, was alligator. For the less adventurous, there was also venison and salmon. In previous years, dishes have included wood duck, snapping turtle salami, smoked eel, beaver shepherd’s pie, goose in sauerkraut and groundhog chili and chorizo.

Jim Jasterzenski braved the slushy weather and traveled about 74 miles (119 kilometers) from his home in Kingston. He rated the bobcat as very tender.

“Everything was good,” said Jasterzenski, whose companion at one point plucked a tiny shotgun pellet out of a serving of squirrel. “You can’t get it anywhere else.”

The raccoon andouille sausage, served with cheddar mini pierogies, won over Sue Demko, Jasterzenski's wife.

“I normally don't like rabbit,” Demko said. “But it's just, I don't know — it's just good.”

The bear stew “tastes like beef,” said Jack Gentilesco of Mountaintop, Pennsylvania. “Very much like beef.”

Primeau's goals are to encourage anglers, hunters and trappers to consider new species as food, make full use of the animals they kill and raise money for youth outdoor activities.

“In my opinion, any time we can get a kid away from a computer, away from a cellphone and out fishing, hunting — anything in the outdoors — that's a great thing,” Primeau said.

For predators like fox and coyote, smoking helps conceal their musky natural flavor. Coyote has been popular as a smoked ham. A previous year's venison boudin sausage divided diners, Primeau said: “Half the crowd loved it and half the crowd hated it.”

All of the game on the menu Saturday was legally harvested somewhere in the United States, much of it in Pennsylvania.

It is generally prohibited to sell wild game meat in Pennsylvania, a law that Primeau and his crew of relatives and friends comply with by packaging the event as a night of family entertainment and fundraiser. Schuylkill County Wild Outdoors is a registered charity. Primeau's hunting and fishing friends supply the major attraction, a plateful of the kind of meat that money can't buy.

Dave Mease Jr. donated the bobcat, coyote, stingray and salmon and brought along family members to enjoy it.

“The cool thing is you get to try things you’d never get to eat,” Mease said, recalling the crow that was the prior year’s mystery meat. “It was actually really good.”

From Primeau's boyhood outside Pine Grove, he has a fond memory of his grandmother's Shake 'N Bake squirrel and getting a taste of more exotic game, antelope, as a Boy Scout. By his teen years, he had developed an avid interest in survivalism. These days, when he is not working in his construction business, he might be foraging for edible wild plants, fishing or making an annual trek to a spot in South Carolina where spends a week hunting wild boar.

“I like variety,” Primeau said as he oversaw hours of cooking. “Variety — the spice of life.”

Servings of rabbit sausage cook on a fire hall griddle before a wild game dinner in Pine Grove, Pa., on Saturday, Feb. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Tass Vejpongsa)

Event organizer Larry Primeau cuts up alligator, the "mystery meat," to serve at a wild game dinner in Pine Grove, Pa., on Saturday, Feb. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Tass Vejpongsa)

Kindle Dalton thickens bear stew before it was served at a wild game dinner in Pine Grove, Pa., on Saturday, Feb. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Scolforo)

Sam Bohr cuts raw coyote meat before it was cooked and served at a wild game dinner in Pine Grove, Pa., on Saturday, Feb. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Scolforo)

Diners enjoy a wild game dinner that included boar, bobcat and coyote in Pine Grove, Pa.,, on Saturday, Feb. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Scolforo)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado was at the White House on Thursday discussing her country's future with President Donald Trump even after he publicly dismissed her credibility to take over after an audacious U.S. military raid captured then-President Nicolás Maduro.

Trump has raised doubts about his stated commitment to backing democratic rule in Venezuela. His administration has signaled its willingness to work with acting President Delcy Rodríguez, who was Maduro’s vice president and, along with others in the deposed leader’s inner circle, remains in charge of day-to-day governmental operations.

In endorsing Rodríguez so far, Trump has sidelined Machado, who has long been a face of resistance in Venezuela and sought to cultivate relationships with Trump and key administration voices like Secretary of State Marco Rubio among the American right wing in a gamble to ally herself with the U.S. government.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump was expecting a positive discussion during the lunchtime meeting and called Machado “a remarkable and brave voice” for the people of Venezuela.

The White House said Machado sought the face-to-face meeting without setting expectations for what would occur. Her party is widely believed to have won 2024 elections rejected by Maduro. Machado previously offered to share with Trump the Nobel Peace Prize she won last year, an honor he has coveted.

Leavitt said Trump is committed to seeing Venezuela hold elections “one day,” but wouldn’t say when that might happen.

Machado plans to have a meeting at the Senate later Thursday. Trump has called her “a nice woman” while indicating they might not touch on major issues in their talks Thursday.

Her Washington swing began after U.S. forces in the Caribbean Sea seized another sanctioned oil tanker that the Trump administration says had ties to Venezuela. It is part of a broader U.S. effort to take control of the South American country’s oil after U.S. forces seized Maduro and his wife at a heavily guarded compound in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas and brought them to New York to stand trial on drug trafficking charges.

The White House says Venezuela has been fully cooperating with the Trump administration since Maduro’s ouster.

Rodríguez, the acting president, herself has adopted a less strident position toward Trump and his “America First” policies toward the Western Hemisphere, saying she plans to continue releasing prisoners detained under Maduro — a move thought to have been made at the behest of the Trump administration. Venezuela released several Americans this week.

Trump, a Republican, said Wednesday that he had a “great conversation” with Rodríguez, their first since Maduro was ousted.

“We had a call, a long call. We discussed a lot of things,” Trump said during an Oval Office bill signing. “And I think we’re getting along very well with Venezuela.”

Even before indicating the willingness to work with Venezuela's interim government, Trump was quick to snub Machado. Just hours after Maduro's capture, Trump said of Machado that “it would be very tough for her to be the leader. She doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country.”

Machado has steered a careful course to avoid offending Trump, notably after winning last year’s Nobel Peace Prize, which Trump wanted to win himself. She has since thanked Trump. Her offer to share the peace prize with him was rejected by the Nobel Institute.

Machado’s whereabouts have been largely unknown since she went into hiding early last year after being briefly detained in Caracas. She briefly reappeared in Oslo, Norway, in December after her daughter received the Nobel Peace Prize on her behalf.

The industrial engineer and daughter of a steel magnate began challenging the ruling party in 2004, when the nongovernmental organization she co-founded, Súmate, promoted a referendum to recall then-President Hugo Chávez. The initiative failed, and Machado and other Súmate executives were charged with conspiracy.

A year later, she drew the anger of Chávez and his allies again for traveling to Washington to meet President George W. Bush. A photo showing her shaking hands with Bush in the Oval Office lives in the collective memory. Chávez considered Bush an adversary.

Almost two decades later, she marshaled millions of Venezuelans to reject Chávez’s successor, Maduro, for another term in the 2024 election. But ruling party-loyal electoral authorities declared him the winner despite ample credible evidence to the contrary. Ensuing anti-government protests ended in a brutal crackdown by state security forces.

Garcia Cano reported from Caracas, Venezuela, and Janetsky from Mexico City. AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.

FILE - U.S. President George Bush, right, meets with Maria Corina Machado, executive director of Sumate, a non-governmental organization that defends Venezuelan citizens' political rights, in the Oval Office of the White House, Washington, May 31, 2005. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

FILE - Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado gestures to supporters during a protest against President Nicolas Maduro the day before his inauguration for a third term, in Caracas, Venezuela, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos, file)