What to do With Dead Varmints?

Today, I saw a coon in my yard, and to my everlasting shame, I didn't shoot him. He was wandering around outside my bedroom, and he appeared to be oblivious to the fact that I was a few feet away standing behind a sliding glass door.

It got me thinking. What am I supposed to do with dead varmints? There is no way I'm going to eat a coyote or a coon. What do most people do? Do you just throw them over the fence and leave them for the buzzards?

 

Mice I throw on the barn roof for the buzzards. If I was planting a tree or anything I might dig the hole extra deep and throw a coon in the bottom. It will feed a sapling for YEARS and make it grow faster. The creek out front has a lot of snapping turtles, I might feed it to them or just throw it out down at the cross roads and run over it. Buzzards won't know it from road kill.

 

Dog food.

 

So my plan of throwing them over the fence is actually a go.

I was thinking it would be fun to preserve the coon's tail. Would brining and drying to the trick?

 

Buzzards gotta eat too

 

I eat nearly everything. Meat is almost always edible, and if worse comes to worst, there's the pressure cooker and the ketchup bottle.

Surprisingly enough, the only animal I ever have found totally inedible - even including snakes, coons, possum, and coyote - was a young boar that must have had some sort of disease or meth habit or I don't know what. He stank up the whole house for at least a week. Otherwise, if I kill it with a gun or bow it goes onto my dinner plate.

 

You can never have too many pelts on the wall of your man cave. Except possums. As far as the carcass, shallow grave.

 

I drop them off somewhere on the back 40...coyotes and vultures take care of the rest.

 

Do you garden?

Any sort of animal is compostable. Throw them in the bin and put a few forks full of leaves, chips, whatever on them. In a year or so use the finished compost where you want it.

Or put them in the bottom of a planting hole. Throw a shovel full of dirt on top then put in whatever you are planting.

 

We have put a pretty big dent in the hog population at our place but I imagine have created a boom in the buzzard one...

 

An Opossum passing through will take care of your problem.

 

Man, you make me glad I only eat fish.

 

It's usually the older, mature boar hogs that are rank. They say you can get rid of it by smoking for most of a day and have some BBQ. I just leave those stinky things where they drop.

 

I generally like this idea. You kill it, you eat it. If it's too rough to eat straight, a stew, a gravy works wonders. I have failed, though. Puts me back in the winter of '77. It was a rough winter, eighteen inches of ice in the river, and fifteen below temperatures. Me and Joe were out feeding the cattle late in the season. The old International Scout we were in didn't have much of a heater.

Came across an old, sick possum, fifteen yards out. I was so shaking with the cold and the hunger I missed an easy head shot with my Ruger .44 Super blackhawk at fifteen yards. Possum took off running, and I popped him in the head next shot. I put him between the bucket seats, meaning to field dress him when we got home.

Next thing there was this god-awful smell almost bad enough to make me throw up. I saw Joe rolling the window down in the cold. Served him right, I thought, if he could smell like that. Next thing, between gagging, he accused me of causing the smell.

A minute later, we both figured out there was no sense in being mad at each other. It was the possum.

Possum got throwed out. The mark of a man may be what he can eat what'll kill another man, but I couldn't go that possum.

That was a rough winter, the winter of '77. In mid-April the ice in the river broke up with chunks floating down higher than a house, and it hit fifty degrees, and there was Joe, running through the snow naked screaming, "It's spring. It's spring."

 

I saw this on another forum, and couldnt resist

 

If you have vacant land then sure toss it over the fence. If you want to dig a hole, do so, put lime in it to stop the smell.

No way would I eat it. Who knows what it died from?? Poison, rabies ??
Keep the tail, but I believe you need to slice along it to get the meat out. I saw a dead red fox on the road in Ga and was gonna go back and get the it, but someone beat me to it. Looked up the procedure and decided I didn't want it that bad. My luck a Game Warden would see me with it and be it big trouble!
A racoon tail, no way.

 

Vultures love me. They wait in the trees for me to show up.

 

....so does Ma Nature. I generally bury anything I don't eat, especially varmints like raccoons, skunks, possums, etc. that may be in my yard because they're sick. Don't need a healthy fox going rabid on my account. Don't like the smell of rotting flesh or the sight of maggots. Don't like it when the dog brings back random pieces and leaves them for me to pick up. A hole is an easy thing to dig, except in the winter. Then they get hung in a tree high enough that most critters can't reach it. No smell or maggots either here in the winter.

 

I popped an armadillo going through my garden with a 30-06, about 25yrds, I just put it in my compost/dirt pile and will let it be for a while

 

It's either "Mystry meat Mondays or Taco Tuesday's", your choice.

 

Grandma was a child of the first Great Depression. She said that everything was edible in some way other than polecat and buzzard. I’ll take her word on that.

 

I've ate a lit of animals and different types of fish most people would throw away. I'd eat it if it looked healthy, the guts, head & hide would go in the field or woods for other animals to enjoy.
A local guy goes to one of the Dakotas to shoot parrie dogs every year. They shoot a butt load of them every day for a week.
They leave them where they drop. The coyotes and crows clean them up forthe first two days then they slack off. By day four they don't touch them any more. Then the maggots take over and then mice and what ever clean up the bones.
Nothing goes to waste in the wild. Something will feast on what ever is left out there.

 

I had armadillo in a "ring of fire" chili and it was well above average - though the following day lived up to the billing. I'd still do it again.

 

http://www.arkansasoutdoorcountry.com/recipes/crock-pot-racoon/

Here's a crock pot recipe for raccoon. Instructions says to boil and discard water twice before placing meat in the crock pot, probably to get rid of the blood. The recipe itself looks like a typical cream of mushroom roast.

 

You guys can save your coon recipes.

I've got a freezer that stays so full you can't put anything in with out taking something out and it's stuff I'm PAYING for to lay in there until it is to old to eat. The dog love that freezer burn stuff though.

It is going to take a lot more than the flu or a little animal loving guilt trip to put me to where I'm eating possum and raccoons.