Anyone who cooks regularly knows the importance of a good rich stock to begin a dish.
Starting with a flavor rich liquid base, rather than simply using water, sets good dishes apart from great ones.

Gumbo makes it's own stock really, you needn't prepare a stock to cook a pot of gumbo.
However, in one of the many variations possible with gumbo,
starting with a good stock rather than water will produce yet another version of if that
may have you cooking stock before you ever start a pot of gumbo.

You can use almost anything to cook a stock, vegetable scraps, bones from chickens, shrimp shells, crab shells, fish bones, pork bones, fat back, smoked hocks, etc etc etc.
A stock is a liquid that has been cooked and usually strained of its solid ingredients that gave it the flavor.

One twist to gumbo that I have used and enjoy, it to take old chicken or duck bones, and to roast the bones in a very hot over, until they are well browned. You can also put some onions and garlic on the pan late in the process. Roasted fowl bones have a flavor all their own, it is distinct, and it adds yet another twist to the mystery in Gumbo.
Take the roasted bones and add them to your stock ingredients.

You can also use spent turkey bones, or anything your wife has left over from a good meal preparation to make stock.
Once it is prepared, you can let it cool in the frig, and then scoop the oils from the top to make a freezable ready to go flavor packed starter for gumbo that will last for years. Many people continue to cook down stock to a condensed form,
then adding water to it later at cooking time, to save freezer space.
You can also use canned stocks, but they are heavily laden with salt and do not have as good a flavor as home made stocks.

Generally, stock is cooked for a LONG time. This completely breaks down the solid ingredients, and brings out the flavor of them that only comes from a LONG cooking period.
The best italian spaghetti sauce is slowly cooked and constantly stirred for a LONG time.
These flavors are very different from a quick cook job, and they add to overall richness and versatility on the palette.

Usually, I skip a real stock by cooking my ducks in the pot with aromatics that are finely chopped as the first step.
The veggies cook to almost nothing producing a stock, the meat comes out and the second layer of veggies goes in the pot.
If I have them, I will use shrimp shells including the heads, wrapped in cheese cloth, to add a rich creamy flavor to stock.
Dont overdo them, shrimp have a powerful aroma, only use the shells from perhaps a pound or so of shrimp.
You may also use crab shells to do this, or crawfish shells, they both add their own distinctive flavor to the pot.

As most of you who kill many ducks already know, ducks do not last very well in the freezer.
Their fat goes rank and in a year, they just dont taste the same. I never hold ducks that long anymore,
but I DO know a man who has now had a duck in his freezer for 18 years.
His plan is to cook it at 20, to see what it tastes like. (YUK!!!)

To stop the freezer from ruining the flavor of your ducks, if you are going to use them for gumbo, you can simply cut a lot of aromatics up and cook the ducks well, then pull them out and debone/defat them, and then freeze them in a little of the stock.
I have done this in our BIG crawfish pots that we use down here to cook mudbugs, cooking 15 ducks at a shot.
Then you continue to cook the stock to let it condense. This method allows you to get the dirty work of deboning ducks and preparing a rich stock out of the way in one shot, and allows you to simply reach in the freezer for the ready to go fixins of duck gumbo.

When you do this, before you put up the stock, you MUST allow the fat to rise to the top to be skimmed off.
This will go a long way to preventing your hard work from going rank on you.
It also removes the oils that will later surface on a good pot of Gumbo.
And finally it takes up a lot less space than ducks "on the bone".
I highly suggest this method of storage for wild ducks.

I want to tell you that this method will not prudoce as rich a gumbo as from scratch with fresh ducks.
Fresh ducks have a flavor all their own, you just cant duplicate it.
This however is the next best thing.

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