The National Chicken Council estimates 12 billion chicken wings, some 2.6 billion pounds, will be marketed in 2008. And that’s just wings sold as wings, not the wings still attached to the bird.

Yum.

In August 2007 a band of US misfits set out to find the world’s best Buffalo chicken wing (in the Greater NY area only). Seems they group figured they wold tour their great State and find out who had the best in the region and managed to enlist some interesting characters to make it even more fun to watch.

Coming in 2008, The Great Chicken Wing Hunt will tell their story. For now, check out their site and trailer they have posted. Visit www.chickenwinghunt.com.

Now, Clucker and his brood had this same concept some years back, only it was a true coast-to-coast type concept, where we would explore Canada and it’s wing flavors in all their glory and then venture down South to the US to do the same. Maybe is gas prices ever come back done we can give it a shot.

A couple dudes happened to be heading the Czech way and decided to do some research for the masses on how their chicken wing culinary skills hold up.

“In the true sense of the chicken wing fashion, we decided to explore Prague’s restaurant scene and see if the Czechs have mastered the art of the chicken wing. After a short search on the internet we found a few restaurants around the center (Wenceslas Square) which advertised spicy chicken wings on their menu. Equipped with empty stomachs, carefully selected chicken wing criteria (1.spice-level 2.meat 3.dips 4.price 5.service and other factors), the optimism that we will succeed in our mission and a few crowns, we embarked on the Chicken wing tour de Prague.”

Read the full blog post here.

The NFL season opened Thursday with the New York Giants meeting the Washington Redskins at the Meadowlands which means it’s officially football season. It’s the time of year again when bars across the nation become havens for some of the most devoted fans on earth, who also just happen to love their hot wings.

As die-hard fans watch their beloved teams on ever-wider screens while drinking beer and eating hot wings for the next five months, tavern owners keep an eye on what it means to their bottom lines. The football season has an enormous positive impact on bars throughout the country. Wing prices generally go up as we get closer to SuperBowl time, and during the season many establishments go through thousands and thousands of wings, sometime even at a loss, just to help draw patrons in and provide the greatest sports side dish to compliment the many beers that flow down with it.

The HotWings.ca dev crew is heading to Edmonton on Sept 12-13, 08 to devour and explore as many wings as the river valley city has to offer. If you kow of any good wing spots that Clucker and the gang should visit, then let us know.

And if you think you’re pub, bar or restaurant has what it takes to impress the HotWings taste buds, drop us a line and we’ll be sure to stop in and provide a thorough review. The best wings will be posted on the homepage of the Edmonton website for the next few weeks, giving you bragging rights.

To help people figure out just how up to date the wing information is on each location, effective today we’re adding a new ‘Last Verified’ field on each listings detail page. Many users don’t realize how often we actually contact and update each vendor, so this will let everyone know when we called, emailed, or received updates form other users.

We’ve also started coming across some listings that are now ‘Closed’. Rather than just delete the listing, we figured we would just mark them with a huge red ‘closed’ graphic so that people can reminisce about just how good, or bad, the wings at your old haunts used to be.

There are some more big updates coming for next week as well, so get ready for a bigger and better wing resource. And as always, if you have any feedback or ideas you think would benefit the site and the hordes of wing patrons out there, let us know.

Clucker out.

Well mother cluckers, it look like after months of preening, scratching our heads, hard work and late nights, the revamped HotWings.ca website is finally upon us. It’s being rolled out slow here at first, initially just replacing the way-to-old original site we’ve had up for quite some time now. We’ll be testing, tweaking and then molding this new site into a fun little resource that we’re hoping will gain some attention and momentum as we build our community of wing connoisseurs.

With the main hen house based in Calgary, we’re focusing on the local market to work out the finer nuances of the site before we roll across the land, seeing just how many true wing-lovin’ pubs, bars, restaurants and hole-in-the-wall roadside snack stops have what it takes to make the map.

Clucker’s pumped to roll out a long list of tools and site enhancements that are sure to be a hit. We’ve watched the traffic continue to grow and viral buzz gain some traction, so stay tuned as we dive into the deep end of the hot sauce bottle.

Out.