When Carol Cherington wants to make dinner, she doesn’t have to run to the store to buy meat. She just heads to her freezer.

The Federal Hill resident is an avid hunter and an enthusiastic home chef who writes about her experiences on the blog “Hunt Cook Repeat.”

“A lot of people don’t associate wild game with local food, but it really is,” Cherington said. “Here in Maryland, we have all kinds of hunting. You can hunt deer, and you have the Chesapeake Flyway, which is plentiful with geese and ducks and migrating birds.”

Like many food lovers, Cherington is a proponent of cooking with hyper-local ingredients, including meats from animals native to the Baltimore area. Whitetail and sika deer, turkey, goose, quail, pheasant, duck and rabbit are among the game that can be legally hunted nearby, typically in the fall and winter, offering more choices to home cooks and inspiring preparations at local restaurants.

Cherington, who hunts birds as well as larger game, brings home everything she harvests to prepare in her kitchen, making dishes like corned goose breast and quail in a spicy Hungarian butter sauce.

“We made a promise to ourselves that we won’t hunt things we don’t eat. Everything we hunt goes on our table,” she said.

Non-hunters, meanwhile, can sample game dishes in a handful of local restaurants or track down game meats to cook at home, though it’s not as simple as going to the grocery store. It is not legal to sell wild game in Maryland, and deer farming is not allowed.

Brian Eyler, deer project leader for Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources, explained the rationale behind wild game sales restrictions: “When you put a dollar amount on something, it’s very easy with wildlife to overexploit,” he said. “If you look in the past, deer were almost extinct in Maryland from overexploitation and habitat destroying.”

The ban on farming is rooted in concerns about disease risk, Eyler said. “When you commercialize deer and deer farming, people are buying and selling and moving them around, and it’s a good way to introduce disease into new areas.”

Deer farming is legal in other parts of the country, though, including in Pennsylvania. Other types of game, such as duck and quail, are also farmed.

Andrew Weinzirl, head chef at The Brewer’s Art in Midtown-Belvedere, sources his meats from New Jersey-based D’Artagnan Foods and Texas-based Broken Arrow Ranch, both of which sell directly to consumers online. The chef experiments with game on a regular basis, including elk, venison and rabbit.

Some farm-raised game meats, like quail and duck, are sold in area stores such as Harris Teeter and Wegmans. And non-hunters can also buy some game meats from a handful of local farms, including JB Farms in Taneytown.

JB sells live animals, including ducks, rabbits and turkeys, and operates as a processor, so you can purchase an animal and have it processed by the farm at no additional cost.

“You know where your animals are coming from, and there are no additives. We’re not using any hormones,” said owner Joe Blankenship.

In addition to being hormone- and additive-free, game meats can be leaner and offer other health benefits, compared to livestock and poultry. A 2002 study at the University of Wyoming College of Agriculture found that game meats are slightly lower in fat and higher in Omega-3 fatty acids than grain-fed beef.

“If you’re hunting true wild game that hasn’t been feeding on a farm, they’ve never had an unnatural food source,” Cherington said. “They’re the original free-range organic meats.”

But cooking these meats properly requires special care and knowledge, starting with an understanding of the animal. Different meats are at their prime at different ages: while birds can be aged, venison is best a couple weeks after processing.

“Find out how long it’s been since it was processed and when it was killed,” Wit & Wisdom Executive Chef Zack Mills recommended. “The sweet spot is around 14 days for venison, to let the enzymes start to break down, so the proteins are not quite so tough.”

Basic knowledge of anatomy is also useful, says Bryan Voltaggio, the former “Top Chef” competitor and owner of restaurants including downtown’s Aggio.

“Rabbit and venison, they run and jump, so their leg muscles are tougher cuts. Use them for stews or ground,” said Voltaggio, who is also a hunter. “The loin cuts are tender, so you can grill them as steaks or roast. With duck, it’s the same thing: they swim with their legs, so they’re not as tender, so I use in them braises and stews and use the breasts to roast.”

Voltaggio said he works hard to use the whole animal, including cuts that are not often discussed, like the neck of the venison, which he braises, spicing it with za’atar or curry and serving it with pita bread and lettuce for wraps.

“You can make so many different meals out of the animal,” he said.

No matter the cut or the animal, game meat will be lean. “The trick with any waterfowl or wild game is don’t overcook it,” warned Nick Michael, a hunting guide with Black Duck Outfitters who leads waterfowl hunts in northern Baltimore County, Harford County and on the Eastern Shore. “It will taste horrible and gamey.”

Mills agreed. “Venison, if you cook it past rare to medium rare, it’s going to be tough and stringy. Same with quail and a lot of game birds,” he said. “The biggest misconception is that you have to cook it through.”

Mills learned a trick that he put into action in the Wit & Wisdom kitchen last year. “We had a venison dish that went over well. We pretty much treated it like steak, with one difference,” he said. Mills rubbed the venison with duck fat and let it age for a week or two before cooking. “The duck fat adds moisture and fat, and dials down the gaminess a little bit. With a lot of meats, we like to brine or marinate – this is in lieu of that. You can mix the duck fat with any spices you like. This time of year, I like fall baking spices – juniper, cinnamon, clove.”

Warm fall spices are favored bird and venison seasonings for many chefs, who say they complement the meat’s flavors without obliterating its natural gaminess.

“I like to mix gamey meats with big flavors: with venison, I really like cinnamon, cumin, brown sugar and coriander. A lot of people like juniper,” said Chad Wells, the corporate chef for Victoria Restaurant Group, which owns and operates Victoria Gastro Pub, Manor Hill Tavern and soon-to-open Food Plenty in Howard County. He frequently incorporates rabbit, venison and duck into menus.

“Your goal is to keep a little gaminess in there and not kill that flavor – otherwise, you might as well be eating beef,” he said.

Ben Lefenfeld, chef and co-owner of La Cuchara in Woodberry, said cooking with game is “really about concentration of flavor. One thing to be careful about is that it can get extremely concentrated. We work with Scottish wood grouse in the restaurant sometimes, which can be extremely gamey. In some cases, you need to figure out ways to tone that down a bit.”

Lefenfeld tempers the gaminess of the wood grouse by mixing it with local pork to create a pate. “It will tone down the gaminess so people can enjoy it and appreciate the nuances of it,” he said.

Regardless of animal, cut or preparation, home cooks shouldn’t be scared to cook with game, chefs said.

“Don’t overthink it,” Mills said. “The meat of wild game is so tasty and is its own thing and so natural.”