Can you eat raccoon year round?

frogfurr said:

There was a time in Ohio that deer were non existent. Wiped out. Until about 1980.

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Now I know what happened! You took our rabbits and quail and gave us your deer and coyotes! I'll keep the deer, but you can have the coyotes back!

ColtPythonElite said:

I believe that hard freeze story is an old wives tale.

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somethingbenign said:

I did some reading on that and there was some validity to the tale. Basically they can carry some mites and diseases that are an issue.

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I've shot them in early season on a warm year and had thousands of fleas and mites on them. Id buy that story.

Patocazador said:

I was going to eat a hooded merganser once but the meat cooked up gray instead of reddish-brown so I vetoed that idea.

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Local Native Americans call mergansers "Pukes". It's not their native language, but English. It's what they taste like.

crestoncowboy said:

I've shot them in early season on a warm year and had thousands of fleas and mites on them. Id buy that story.

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Don't eat the fleas and mites and you'll probably be fine...lol

What do people do where there is never a hard freeze? Never eat small game?

I always heard that freeze tale was due to warbles. I have raised domestic rabbits. Warbles on them were common. They may look disgusting, but dont taint the meat.

Barbaroja said:

I think people are quick to judge without tasting things.
Food is my profession, culinary degree and about 20years of experience with many different facets of the industry. To put it bluntly most people are terrible cooks.

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Some famous chefs are now touting their cooking of cicadas. I don't care how well they're prepared, I'm not eating them.

Of course, the NY Times followed up that article with another warning you not to eat them if you have a seafood allergy.

BillWM said:

I have not even seen a buzzard eat a coon and I've seen them eat skunk.. Coyotes won't eat them. Nothing eats opossum that I've seen and they have a similar diet to coons.

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here in west MI by buzzards we call them turkey vultures. they eat anything I stick out in the field. I trapped and killed over a dozen coons last summer and the turkey vultures devoured them.

The term “warbles” has been used several times in this thread. Had to Google it to discover it’s the larvae of the BotFly. I’ve never seen it in New England on game or domestic cats or dogs.
Cattle on our Ohio farm would have the same condition but I’d always thought it was from horseflies.

We’ve ran hounds and trap lines for coon most of my life, and frankly, after harvesting literally thousands of them, there’s not much which can convince me they should be considered as feedstock. Trichnosis was probably the most disturbing for me, when you slice around the wrist of a coon and worms spew out like spaghetti from a ziploc bag, embedded among the muscle tissue, what little appetizing appeal might have existed does evaporate pretty quickly.

Many years ago now, a friend of a friend paid us to hunt coon - not for the meat, but for the hunt - for her grandma who made stews with them. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t so good I would eat them again on purpose.

Never in any other species of small game have I seen such rampant parasitic infestation as I have in coons, so despite a deep passion for coon hunting for furharvesting, I have no interest in letting coon meat pass my lips again.

Much like bullheads or carp, I don't care how it gets cooked, it is not good.

Yup. Hamburger is not that expensive. My dog won’t eat that stuff And he eats fresh horseshit. Kind of puts it in perspective for me.

Back in the late 70s and early 80s I had two bluetick coon hounds and hunted the hell out of the raccoons. I gave the mid-sized ones to three different people and once we did a game dinner at a bar I use to drink at.
I took in a hind quarter of a deer, some rabbits, some squirrels, some grouse, a pheasant and a couple raccons.
Frank & Josie were old school Italians so of course they cooked the raccoons in spaghetti sauce.
There was a older guy and his wife came there for the game dinner on a Sunday afternoon. He was a IBM upper management position. Always dressed in a suit & tie.
When they passed the meat platter around the told Archie (her husband) to grab her a leg from a rabbit, she said the last time she had rabbit was about fifty years ago when she was a kid and her dad would go rabbit hunting.
He grabbed a front leg from a raccoon and loved it.
After she ate it she told Archie to grab another leg of rabbit.
After dinner we all went out to the bar to have some drinks and shoot the breeze I asked her how she liked coon meat. She said she had rabbit. I informed her it was coon meat, I brought it all in.
She said it was good but wouldn't of ate if she knew what it was.
I liked it so did a few other's.

I have had coon, gopher turtle (not any more as they are protected), possum, dilla and bear. The bear was second to the gopher turtle. I didn't care for the coon or possum, but I did give some coon and possum to some poor folks when I was a kid and they were happy to get them.

There was an older guy that used to hang out at my dads auto repair shop. He would often bring in a big pot of something he cooked.
I remember once he had fixed raccoon. It was shredded and slow cooked in his homemade BBQ sauce and was really good.

I've eaten a lot of critters over the years, but as a rule I don't eat coons or possums. Coons are too greasy, and possums carry too many diseases to take a chance on. You can count me as another of the "won't shoot rabbits before a hard freeze" guys, too. It may be an old wives tale, but I'm not taking any chances. Too much meat in the freezer to do that with. I will say however, that young spring groundhog is one of my favorite meats to eat. Also spring-run trout, that have overwintered in the river. Their meat will be pink and have a different flavor than the young "stockers" the AGFC puts out in January. Spring goose isn't too bad if they've been on the ricefields all winter. If they've been in the sloughs, they aren't worth eight rotten eggs. Too fishy. Beaver is good just about all year 'round, though the fur isn't prime in the summer so I usually leave 'em be til fall/winter. Come to think of it, I don't recall ever seeing a tick on a beaver, or fleas either. Lots of fleas and ticks on rabbits and squirrels in the summer, another reason to leave 'em alone till fall.

Most of your "old timers" would put meat up all through the fall, and vegetables all summer, in preparation for winter. The smart ones put enough up to last until they could hunt again in the early spring, and the wild greens and etc. came on. They had enough stuff canned and buried to last until the gardens started making, too. Then they started all over again. Or at least we did. And still do, for that matter. I'll sure be glad for the garden to come off; I'm tired of last year's veg!

Mac