When serving elk to your guests, should you open that bottle of pinot noir or is a more full-bodied red more appropriate? How about all those times when bison is the main course?

At an event next week, some of the city’s finest chefs will attempt to answer those questions, and at the same time help raise money for the Iowa Great Outdoors Fund.

It’s called the Buck Naked Need Dough Fundraiser Event, and this year’s theme is “let your taste buds go wild.”

“We will have chefs from Centro, the Embassy Club, Flying Mango, Splash and several others making appetizers with game meat, such as bison, duck, buffalo, elk and boar,” said Pat Boddy, director of the Polk County Conservation Board. “We will also have a beer and wine tasting and an auction.”

This is the event’s second year, Boddy said, and the hope is to bring in more than $25,000 for the Great Outdoors Fund. The money goes toward helping conservation organizations preserve and protect fishing spots, playgrounds, trails, prairies, woodlands and wetlands, as well as to setting aside more land to improve water quality, manage storm water and provide wildlife habitat.

But one of the big projects the agency is working on, Boddy said, is the Chichaqua Bottom Green Belt, 7,000 acres of wildlife habitat and public hunting areas along the Skunk River in eastern Polk County. She said the conservation board hopes to make the land more user-friendly by installing interpretive signs to help visitors understand the area’s environmental significance.

“Our main goal has always been that we want to restore the land to its pre-settlement condition,” she said. “But we also want people to be able to enjoy it. Right now, only the truly adventurous are able to take advantage of the land.”

Boddy said with the increasing cost of land in Polk County, events like this are important, not just because of the funds they raise, but also because they help get the word out about the need to preserve and protect the land.

“This is a rapidly urbanizing county,” she said. “We must work to preserve it and protect the landscape for future generations. We have a lot of work to do.”

One of the chefs participating in this year’s event is Mike Wedeking of Flying Mango, 4345 Hickman Road. He will be providing one of his restaurant’s most popular appetizers, the “bass-ackwards” chicken wings. Wedeking will smoke chicken drumsticks for around three hours, and unlike most local chefs, he uses cherry wood to smoke all of its meat. Cherry gives meat a more subtle smoke flavor rather than the pungent taste that comes from the popular hickory chip, he said.

After smoking the meat, he will apply an Asian sauce consisting of soy, lime and ginger.

“I can’t tell you everything that’s in the sauce, though,” he said. “We have to have some secrets.”

Wedeking said he is always happy to be a part of events like this, and is once again excited to be able to contribute to the betterment of the community.

Boddy said she hopes the food, wine and beer will be enough to draw people to the event, which she said will be a lot of fun.

“No one is going to walk away hungry or thirsty,” she said. “Last year was really a lot of fun and we didn’t even know what we were doing. So this year promises to be even better.”

Along with the food and drink, there will also be an auction for items such as a whitewater rafting trip, a hot-air balloon ride and a South Dakota pheasant hunt.

“But for those out there who might not be so adventurous, we also have several dinner packages we are auctioning off, including a dinner for six with Jim Hubbell,” Boddy said.

At the end of the day, however, Boddy hopes people leave the event with a realization of how important the preservation of Iowa’s land is.

“The term ‘nature deficit disorder’ has been coined of late,” she said. “It’s a condition we’re trying to prevent.”

Tickets for the event are $50, or $400 for a table of eight. Call 323-5300 to reserve your seats, or register online at www.greatoutdoorsfund.org/RegistrationChoices.htm.

For Your Information:

Buck Naked Need Dough Fundraiser Event

Friday, Nov. 3

5:30 to 9 p.m.

Val Air Ballroom, 301 Ashworth Road, West Des Moines