What if a Toronto chef so loved his customers that he felt obliged to climb into his SUV after work one Saturday night and drive 12 hours in search of a single ingredient? And what if that hypothetical ingredient should be something so deliciously decadent that its very presence in a Canadian restaurant is forbidden by federal law? Imagine it was a wild Scottish grouse, for example, shot on the moors near Loch Rannoch and hung so long in the feather that the meaty aroma made dogs a mile away maunder and fret on the leash. Now picture it plucked, cleaned, vacuum packed and flown across the ocean to a Scottish game dealer in New Jersey who passed it into the hands of that supremely dedicated chef, who then turned and headed home to Toronto.

I tasted such grouse quite recently—two thick crosscuts of the bird’s plump breast, folded around foie gras and set over wild mushrooms, soft almond purée and a dark reduced sauce spiked with slivers of fresh date. The ripe, blood-purple meat was indescribably delicious, its gamy perfume filling the head like the scent of a truffle, the flesh so raw and tender it was like eating a bruise.

Marc Thuet, who happened to be present, asked me if I had enjoyed it. I could only answer that the flavour reminded me of what game could be, what it should be, a single mouthful wiping out a decade or two of mostly dutiful acceptance of the Canadian status quo. We live in a vast and forested country fairly teeming with game, but we bow to a system of forced mediocrity. We have grown used to the fact that our farm-raised venison tastes like beef. Ordering pheasant, we expect the meat will have the blandness and prison pallor of battery hen.

Two things give game its proper savour—a wild, natural diet and a decent time hanging in feather or fur. But federal law insists all game sold to the public must be born and raised on a farm, and too often that means they eat feed more suited to cattle or poultry.

As for hanging, it comes as no surprise that a government terrified of raw-milk cheese and unfrozen sushi might overreact. The slow process of beneficial decay that gives game its delectable gaminess has yet to wipe out the gourmets of Europe, but it raises visions of plague in our ministries. Leaving a Canadian pheasant unplucked for more than an hour or two is strictly verboten.

So the meat that reaches our restaurants is already off to a disappointing start. More pitfalls lie ahead. Perhaps because it isn’t an everyday product, game tends to bring out the traditionalist side of a chef’s personality. Old European cookbooks may be consulted (chefs do read cook-books) and note taken of sweet-tart compotes of obscure berries and tortured fruit or richly spiced sauces sharpened with juniper. The trouble is, those recipes were intended for well-hung meats with high flavours, and they simply overwhelm our relatively insipid versions. “I would put more game on the menu,” sighs one chef, “but so few people order it.” No wonder, my friend. No wonder.

And yet, there is always hope. So, as fall chills into winter, the optimistic carnivore pulls on his snowshoes and sets out to stalk the exceptions to the rule. Gamy they ain’t, but some of the meats that reach our restaurants are nonetheless delicious, and some of our chefs do know how to flatter them most seductively. Really cunning kitchens work out ways to replace that missing gaminess with other flavours. At Senses, Claudio Aprile has been known to smoke his venison tenderloin with tea—a subtly exotic effect. At Rain, Guy Rubino slices raw venison translucently thin and gives it a Japanese shabu-shabu presentation: customers are invited to dip each petal of meat in lapsang souchong tea, then poach the pieces for a moment in a seething cauldron of broth. At Splendido, David Lee roasts Nunavut caribou loin with spruce tips, lending the monarch of the tundra something of the arboreal flavour of its southern cousin, the woodland caribou.

That barren-ground caribou is the only truly wild game most of us ever taste. Wildlife biologists inspect the herd annually and decide a sustainable quota—this year, 4,000 animals for all of Canada. When the weather is cold enough (well under minus 10 Celsius), Inuit marksmen begin the supervised cull, cleaning the caribou with the help of a mobile processing plant set up on the ice. The carcasses freeze naturally in those bleak conditions and are then sent to a meat-cutting plant in Rankin Inlet before distribution to such renowned and reputable suppliers as Jean-Marc and Nadine Ridel of La Ferme in Pefferlaw, Ontario.