HUNTING -- It pays an angler to check the stomach contents of a fish he catches to better match the presentation for subsequent casts.

Similarly, I almost always cut into the crop of game birds and wild turkeys I shoot to gain understanding of what food attracts them.

• A bird’s crop is an expandable pouch near the gullet or throat of all game birds, but not present in all birds.  It is used to store excess food for later digestion.  Essentially an extension of the esophagus, the crop can expand quite large so a bird can load up and then move on for safety. Crop contents eventually are passed as needed into a chamber where enzymes break down the food. Then the food moves into the gizzard where grit the bird has pecked is worked by the forces of powerful muscles to grind the food into digestible matter. If you don't have teeth for chewing, a crop-gizzard combo is a nifty substitute.

I've seen game bird crops with some interesting combinations of grain, bugs, forbs, whole dandelion blossoms, rose hips, and jewelry beads.

Steve Heaps of Spokane Valley knows how to cash in on this student-of-the game practice.

The crop of the ruffed grouse he bagged this weekend included, among the other contents and an unblemished berry -- a nickel!

Makes me wonder what that grouse had been up to.  Panhandling on a nearby stump? Saving for a fall vacation to a country that has no grouse season?

Actually, Heaps says later, confessing to an incomplete initial explanation:

"The nickel was just there to show the size of the Rosehip."