Anybody have a good recipe for Raccoon?

Awhile back I decided that I would be hard pressed to feed my wife and I if I had to depend on my hunting (or should I say lack of hunting skills). I have never hunted and the thought of being able to consistently put food on the table in this manner seems only distantly possible to me.

Anyway I had read about snaring and trapping and decided to look into this as a means of providing. I was given some good information from Ben in this ng on a trapping school right here in my own state of MD. I went and learned a lot and purchased 9 traps at an auction and started getting my act together to learn to trap. I bought my license, modified my traps, picked my target animal (raccoons), got permission from a friend who has 35 acres to trap and went out and set my traps.

Boy was I surprised when I found two raccoons in my traps the next day. And at a third trap I missed another raccoon by a step 1 inch to the left. One of the raccoons was a medium guy and the other was a monster.

I dispatched them took them to the barn and fumbled my way thru skinning them. the first one was a little awkward since I had never done one before, but had seen it done. the second one was about 300% easier and faster.

I then gutted the animals and butchered them. Two days later I roasted up a few pieces with some potatoes and was pleasantly surprised that they tasted okay. Of course this areas coons are corn fed and maybe that has something to do with them tasting good.

I wouldn't really know. Anyway I am not professing to be any great trapper, but just wanted to share my personal testimony that trapping might be the answer to a more consistent supply of provisions if the times were to turn bad on us. Hell we could probably eat pretty good if we learned to garden and trapped all the varmints that consistently come in and help themselves to our crops.

Joseph

Here in Maryland many of the raccoons have or may have rabies - anyone know if you can still eat the cooked meat of a rabid animal. LCC

From: "Aubrey"
Newsgroups: misc.survivalism
Subject: Re: Raccoons And Baked Potatoes
Date: 18 Dec 1996 05:36:53 GMT

Dog? Took my wife to a party one time hosted by some Korean friends of mine. She loved one of the meat dishes and kept prying me for the answer to what it was. Needless to say I did not tell her until much later that in fact it was dog. Have eaten it several times and it is good.

Well, some useless info. When migrant labor started to appear on the South African mines, towns that took labor in from Swaziland had a marked decline in the cat population. Much later it became clear that the traditional Swazi person believes a cat to be very tasty morsel....... tastes like rabbit I believe !!!

My 2 cents worth......

From: steve griff
Newsgroups: misc.survivalism
Subject: Re: Raccoons And Baked Potatoes
Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 18:29:00 -0800

I have several recipes for Raccoon from the book "Dressing and Cooking Wild Game" from the Hunting and Fishing Library. If you let me know what format you want them in I will type them up on Word and e-mail them to you (they are rather long)

If enough people are interested I guess I will have to figure how to do attachments on Netscape and post them to the NG.

BTW ISBN # for the book is 0-86573-020-0 (hardback) 0-86573-021-0 (paperback) and is distributed by Prentice Hall Press if anyone is interested.

lccarte@ibm.net wrote:

Here in Maryland many of the raccoons have or may have rabies - anyone know if you can still eat the cooked meat of a rabid animal.

Cooking will kill rabies, like most any other virus. Getting the animal to the table is a different matter though.

Funny thing about coons and rabies- They are responsible for more rabies cases than any other animal, yet typically only 15-20 states will report raccoon rabies. I remember in one year's numbers, coons were the carrier in 80% of the cases in GA, FL, and AL (over a hundred cases per state), yet Mississippi got not a single case of raccoon rabies.

From: Mike S. Medintz
Newsgroups: misc.survivalism
Subject: Re: Raccoons And Baked Potatoes
Date: 13 Dec 1996 15:35:46 GMT

What the quarry eats has a LOT to do with taste, not to mention how safe the animal is to eat. If an animal has been living primarily out of the garbage can or as a scavenger or predator, it'll taste pretty rank and might have a lot of parasites in it. (Coyote for instance, compared to domestic dog which is supposedly a delicacy but I've never tried it and my Golden will kill me if I even dream of it).

Anyway I am not professing to be any great trapper, but just wanted to share my personal testimony that trapping might be the answer to a more consistent supply of provisions if the times were to turn bad on us. 

I wouldn't bet TOO much on that-once the grocery stores stop functioning, everybody and their cousin is going to be putting out traplines and such, and there won't be nearly as many to go around, never mind your livestock (I'll take my beef poached, thank you;-) )

From: Bob Gilbert
Subject: Re: Raccoons And Baked Potatoes
Message-ID: 32b85299.4538782@news.pclink.com
Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1996 01:29:22 GMT

Just keep in mind that after one of the French revolutions, on the streets of Paris it was common to find vendors selling dog, cat, rat, squirrel, etc. Every animal in the zoo was slaughtered and ate.

Many vermin must be cooked WELL done to ensure that all the little buggies are destroyed. But virtually all warm blooded animals are edible, most of the cold blooded one and most insects. Taste is another matter altogether.

Dog? Took my wife to a party one time hosted by some Korean friends of mine. She loved one of the meat dishes and kept prying me for the answer to what it was. Needless to say I did not tell her until much later that in fact it was dog. Have eaten it several times and it is good.

I have owned dogs all my life and currently have three. I suppose that if things went bad I would wat dog meat again. But I would start with the neighbors' dogs. I would really hate to have to eat my own.

Bob

From: Mike S. Medintz
Newsgroups: misc.survivalism
Subject: Re: Raccoons And Baked Potatoes
Date: 16 Dec 1996 07:58:56 GMT

I don't know about cooking - but there is a major danger in cleaning and skinning the critter - preparatory to cooking it.

last I heard, they ought to be fine so long as you cook the hell out of them.

Also, the real deal with rabies is (supposedly) that you should be okay so long as you wear a pair of trauma gloves while skinning them and burn the gloves afterwards. You mainly want to avoid saliva-blood contact.

You also want to avoid blood-blood contact, etc. Trauma gloves do a good job as long as they are not perforated. Sharp and pointed instruments are commonly used in skinning/cleaning, not to mention the various sharp points on claws, bone fragments, etc. All of these do a good job of perforating gloves and skin. Also gloves develop rips on their own - which is why it is common to "double glove" during many hazardous medical and laboratory procedures.
----henry schaffer

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