Eaten any field mice lately? I’m guessing you haven’t. Humans are probably the only meat eaters whose diet doesn’t include field mice, also known as voles. Foxes, wolves, coyotes, owls, hawks, felines and snakes are among the many creatures that eat these tiny-eared mice. Could we be missing something?
Voles are herbivores, which is a good thing if you’re a carnivore trying to eat as low on the food chain as possible. They eat a lot of grass, pretty much their weight’s worth daily. Ounce for ounce, there’s more protein in vole meat than beef, though you’d probably have to eat several voles to get a decent serving. The good thing about eating voles is that you don’t have to de-bone them. You’re actually better off eating them whole for optimum nutrition.
Years ago I came across a recipe for Souris Cordon Bleu that recommended using Deer Mice. However, due to their association with the Hanta Virus I think I’d alter that recipe and use voles instead. Though they are a bit smaller and you’d likely have to catch quite a number of them (especially if you’re cooking for guests), it’s better to be safe than sorry. That recipe involved skinning, gutting and stuffing the mice with Swiss cheese and ham prior to frying them in butter and serving them with a cream sauce.
If you don’t have time to fuss, you could simply skin them, dredge them in flour and fry in butter. Frying them in bacon fat might improve the flavour as they taste fairly bland on their own.
The Meadow Vole pictured above lives under a birch tree near my bird feeding station. I see him regularly dart around, usually when the birds aren’t present. Yesterday was the first time I managed to capture him in a photo. He’s very sensitive to sound and quickly runs into his hole if he hears me coming. He has quite a few of these little holes in the area, so there always seems to be one nearby where he can escape. In the winter he creates long tunnels under the snow.
Voles only live for about a year, though they can reproduce at an astounding rate. However, their populations are not consistent but cyclical, likely affecting the populations of their predators as well. I wonder: Could this be why they never caught on as a staple of the human diet?
I see that ” . . . they taste fairly bland on their own,” which begs the question, How do you know?
You WOULD have to ask that question wouldn’t you Gerry?
In his book ‘Never Cry Wolf,’ Farley Mowat described the taste of mouse as ‘pleasing, if rather bland.’ He seemed to think that they tasted best with lots of cream sauce.
However, taste is subjective, so do let me know if you think differently after a meal of them.
I haven’t read the book, but I seem to remeber seeing the “Never Cry Wolf” movie. It has been a long time and my memory ain’t good, but I always remember him eating the mice and I have some vague memory of him running naked through a herd of caribou or some such animal.
MDW
Ha ha forestrat, yes, both those things happen in the movie. Only nudity I think I’ve ever seen in a Disney film. That scene with him eating the mice while they’re scurrying all over his tent was really funny.
By eating them, he was trying to prove that a large carnivore could survive (and thrive)on a diet of just mice. He realized that this was indeed possible, once he started eating them whole, just like the wolves did.
“Could we be missing something?”
Uhm…..I would guess not.
Interesting prospect, though!
I, too, was going to ask how you know what they taste like. ;D
“…gutting and stuffing the mice with Swiss cheese and ham prior to frying them in butter and serving them with a cream sauce.” Sounds like there would be ‘way more cheese, ham, butter and cream sauce than vole! How would you even taste the vole that way???
Hilarious and again so informative, Amy!
I think that perhaps vole is one of those foods, like tofu, that takes on the flavours of the foods it is cooked with
Glad you enjoyed it Joan 
[...] appeared to have a lighter underbelly. I’ve seen them before. It didn’t look like a vole, which is darker with a shorter [...]
My cats bring me up to 8 voles a day – i jokingly asked for recipes, and a friend found this site. By the by, voles and mice are not the same.
Sally, I can see you wondering if you should do something with all those voles! Since the voles are smaller, you’ll have to use more than what the mouse recipe calls for. I don’t think you’ll have a problem finding enough of them!
[...] woods are full of creatures at the bottom of the food chain and these are reproducing as well. A vole scurried ahead of me as I was walking in the woods yesterday. This hare also leapt across my [...]
[...] If you’re a foodie who’s keen on wild edibles and you’ve noticed some of these tunnels in your backyard, you might be inspired to try something new by reading my previous post on Vole Holes and Recipes. [...]
UM! Okay–yes, this is pretty darn close to ‘voles on a spit’–a very very tiny spit I suspect! Ahhhhh, yes, so bison are great sources of low fat protein because of their free range diet so I guess the same would apply to little critters who feed on free range greenery too.
Hmm…vole fondue?
47whitebuffalo, if you used toothpicks for spits you could also use them to pick your teeth afterwards
Vole fondue sounds even more delicious 
Eating free range herbivores is definitely the way to go if you’re a carnivore, as long as the grass isn’t sprayed with chemicals.
My only problem is, I have no experience skinning and wouldn’t know where to begin!
Grace, that is a problem. However, if you ever get the hang of it, I’ll bet there’s an untapped market out there for dollhouse-sized vole rugs
This is a little bolder than my foraging capacity.
Tammy, that is well said
We’ve been seeing a lot of hawks this year and my husband keeps suggesting that perhaps the rodent population is plentiful right now…
Barbara, many animals would likely go hungry in winter if it weren’t for the voles and their kind.
If you have ham and cream sauce, why do you need a vole?
That’s an excellent question Mountain man