Guga is the dried and salted chick of the gannet. Each year in late August, a group of men from the Ness district in the Isle of Lewis go to Sula Sgeir, 45 miles (70 km) north of Lewis, to hunt the growing gannet chicks. By that time of the year, they have not yet fledged (cannot yet fly) and are still in downy feathers. After killing, the bird is stripped of feathers, singed and salted down. The guga hunt is licensed with a restriction of 2000 birds each year. Each guga, which looks like a bicycle saddle, is allocated to someone, usually from the Ness district. You cannot order guga in a restaurant, but if you're lucky, someone may share it with you if they invite you to a meal in their home. I have not tasted guga myself, but the flavour is, shall we say, an acquired taste.
In case anyone get squeamish about this: most of us eat meat, but very few of us wants to know what happens to that cow in the field before it appears as a steak on your plate.
There is an on-going and lively debate about the guga hunt - check out this article for instance.
It’s a bit like eating frogs legs or snails. A mind thing which I was never able to those. Baby gannets falls into that category for me. Just how I feel.
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