Eating a Racoon

Help Support CattleToday:

I believe it was CT member Jogeephus that once said beaver tail was dang good..good for nothing.


That's pretty much what beaver smell like too. May be different up north where there's cold deep water but down in East Texas, where they almost exclusively burrow in the muddy embankments they smell like puuck.

Historical antropologists at the end of the 3rd millennium will state that 21st century man:
"Has conquered the atom.
Has ventured out into the solar system.
Has clawed his way to the top of the food chain.
Eats rats."
They stink here too
 
Back in the 70's I knew a couple rodeo cowboys who were in college. They were short of funds and food. They went to a horse sale and bought a fat Welsh pony for about 40 bucks. They had it in their backyard for a couple days. The neighbor kids were feeding it grass through the fence. Well the pony took a one way trip to some range land and came back as quarter out meat which was cut up and put in the freezer. It was pretty good eating.
 
Back in the 70's I knew a couple rodeo cowboys who were in college. They were short of funds and food. They went to a horse sale and bought a fat Welsh pony for about 40 bucks. They had it in their backyard for a couple days. The neighbor kids were feeding it grass through the fence. Well the pony took a one way trip to some range land and came back as quarter out meat which was cut up and put in the freezer. It was pretty good eating.

My wife lived in Belgium for a while when she was in her teens. She still talks about how good the fries were that were fried in horse fat.
 
O Brother Where Art Thou-- one of the greatest movies ever made. I have the music CD also.

Our German shepherd tells us there's a varmint living under the barn. Tonight we set the live trap. It's either a coon or a possum. It leaves a calling card of poop on the cement walkway to the house.
 
Eddie Gains, our horse shoer in Texas, was an older guy who use to hunt coons with hounds. He said what they did was drive out in trucks with a cage full of hounds. Then opened the cage and the dogs offloaded in all directions, found, bayed up and treed the coons. They shot 'em out of the trees. Eddie gave me a great recipe for coon but it was lost in the fire. He said they would also make camp fire cook bacon and drink alcohol. Sometimes they would just hang their coats on the barb wire fence next to the road and go home. The next morning all the coonhounds would be resting by the coat.

One moonlit night some of our hillbilly-like friends took us on a coon hunt. Pappy let the dogs out on the ranch and they ran in all directions. Soon we heard them bay something up and they traveled all over the countryside with their beautiful music. Then, we heard hounds had been joined by a bunch of yap hounds. The people over on the hill owned a pack of chihuahuas.

The hounds must have ditched the short legged chihuahuas, because they came back chasing something to the creek. They bayed treed, the howl they make while looking up. We went down there with flashlights. There was a coon up in a cedar tree and the best hound Bell was way up on a lower branch clawing at the trunk trying to get that coon. No one had brought a gun so we all leashed up the dogs and went home.
 
Dad did some trapping when I was in high school . I'd come home to his day's take waiting for me to skin out...
Caught a few beaver at one time. I smoked a couple, and they made pretty decent barbecue meat. Small one, I cut up and cooked in the crockpot...all I could smell was castor gland stink... I couldn't stomach it, but I chopped it up, poured on the BBQ sauce and took it to a church potluck. Didn't tell anyone what it was... I'm sure they figured it was venison...and they cleaned it up!
 
Me and two of my stupid buddies (that made three total) went spotlighting coons one night when I was about 20. We were in a jeep, so the guy whose father owned it was driving, the oldest was riding shotgun (which meant he opened and closed gates, so I didn't mind), and I was sitting in the back on the fender. As we'd get a coon we'd throw it in the back, and by the end of the night my legs were of course laying across them, but I didn't think much of it. We got back to the camp and started throwing them out on the ground to skin. One of them wasn't as dead as we thought, and he stood up and growled at us.

I'm glad he didn't wake up when we were on the road. That could have got real exciting real quick.
 
My ex husband had a pointy eared Dobermin dog. I was losing a chicken almost every night. That Dobermin would raise his head and look toward the screaming chickens, put his head back down and go back to sleep. So I set a live trap and caught a great big 35lb boar coon. I loaded the trap on the truck to give him a 'ride out of town'. You have to go at least 5 miles or else they come back. The Dobermin wanted to go too and he jumped in.

I drove to an wide open field and dumped the coon out. He took off running for the treeline and that dog right after him. This is great I thought. The Dobernin caught up with the coon and there was a rolling snarling fight. Then the fight broke up and the coon was chasing the dog. The coon caught up and another rolling fight, then the dog was chasing him. Across the field they went kicking up clouds of dust all the way to the tree line. After a while the Dobermin came back grinning, torn eared and bleeding all over. He seemed very pleased with himself.

Every night after that the dog went out and patrolled the woods. I never lost another chicken.
 
Last edited:
Two brothers bag state record boar coon.
I wonder if they are going to cook it?

This reminds me of a Burl Ives song

"Let's go huntin', " says Risky Rob
"Let's go huntin', " says Robin to Bob
"Let's go huntin', " says Daniel to Joe
"Let's go huntin', " says Billy Barlow

"What shall we hunt for?" says Risky Rob
"What shall we hunt for?" says Robin to Bob
"What shall we hunt for?" says Daniel to Joe
"Hunt for a coon," cried Billy Barlow (it was hunt for a rat)

"How shall we take him?" says Risky Rob
"How shall we take him?" says Robin to Bob
"How shall we take him?" says Daniel to Joe
"Go borrow a gun," cried Billy Barlow

"How shall we haul him?" says Risky Rob
"How shall we haul him?" says Robin to Bob
"How shall we haul him?" says Daniel to Joe
"Go borrow a cart," cried Billy Barlow

"How shall we divide him?" says Risky Rob
"How shall we divide him?" says Robin to Bob
"How shall we divide him?" says Daniel to Joe
"How shall we divide him?" says Billy Barlow

"I'll take the shoulder," says Risky Rob
"I'll take the sides," said Robin to Bob
"I'll take the hams," said Daniel to Joe
"Tail bone mine," cried Billy Barlow

"How shall we cook him?" says Risky Rob
"How shall we cook him?" says Robin to Bob
"How shall we cook him?" says Daniel to Joe
"How shall we cook him?" cried Billy Barlow

"I'll broil the shoulder," says Risky Rob
"I'll fry the sides," says Robin to Bob
"I'll boil the hands," says Daniel to Joe
"Tail bone raw!" cried Billy Barlow
 
Last edited:
There was a guy on my crew that wanted every coon I would catch, he told me how his wife cooked it.
She would boil it and skim off the grease as it cooked, when satisfied most of the grease was gone she would put it in the oven, pour bbq sauce over it and bake,
He brought some out to the job site with a loaf of bread and the crew devoured it.
It was pretty good.
 
Here are step by step instructions with pictures of how to prepare and cook a coon.

 
I hate to resurrect an old thread but I wasn't around when it was being written. I'm not begging for any sympathy here, I did what I needed to do, but If it wasn't for trapping and coon hunting through the 80's, I couldn't have raised my family. I worked 2 jobs, ran a trapline, and coon hunted nearly every night. My daughter's prescription medicine at the time took every dime that I made at one of those jobs. Prices for furs were good then, $40 for a coon hide over 35 inches (measured from the base of the tail to his nose), but inflation was extremely high as well so everything else got what extra I could make. I never threw away a coon carcass, if my family didn't eat it, they were sold to customers who always knew I had them and yes you had to leave one foot on them but I left all 4 as the fur buyers didn't buy the feet and it took time I usually didn't have to take them off. If you didn't know, a coon will fit perfectly into a bread sack, they didn't make freezer bags for whole coons.

I caught all kinds of critters while trapping, stray domestic dogs too. I never killed a dog, though it did cross my mind a time or 2, They were a PITA (pun intended) to get out of a trap without getting bitten and took more time than I usually had to do it, but I always released them, I won't say unharmed as I really don't know because they were as we say "Gittin some yonder" when they left there. I still carry great memories of coon hunts with other guys, family, and by myself which I did a lot. I could tell stories for hours and not tell them all. I still have my carbide lights from when I started; by the time I quit, I had bought a fancy battery light. It was used, but so much better than the carbide, and not near as dangerous as stumbling around in the woods with a gas bomb strapped on your forehead. I think that I still have a can of carbide as well, used to buy it from a local Chinaman who ran a jewelry store. A true business man with a jewelry store in the front, lawnmowers and shotguns in the back room.

The secret to cooking a coon is to get all of the lymph nodes out of the meat before you cook it. Us country folks call them kernels, best I remember there are 12 in all, some around the neck and tail will come off with the pelt but you have to separate the muscle of the legs to find them there. I have eaten all kinds of critters mainly on hunts and excursions I went on as a kid with my dad but there were some that were served at the family dinner table. All are memories now as my younger kids had it much better than my older kids, I have 5 (14 grandkids, yeah now I'm bragging}, but not to hear them tell it. To me, the older ones have better stories to tell.
 
Last edited:
I hate to resurrect an old thread but I wasn't around when it was being written. I'm not begging for any sympathy here, I did what I needed to do, but If it wasn't for trapping and coon hunting through the 80's, I couldn't have raised my family. I worked 2 jobs, ran a trapline, and coon hunted nearly every night. My daughter's prescription medicine at the time took every dime that I made at one of those jobs. Prices for furs were good then, $40 for a coon hide over 35 inches (measured from the base of the tail to his nose), but inflation was extremely high as well so everything else got what extra I could make. I never threw away a coon carcass, if my family didn't eat it, they were sold to customers who always knew I had them and yes you had to leave one foot on them but I left all 4 as the fur buyers didn't buy the feet and it took time I usually didn't have to take them off. If you didn't know, a coon will fit perfectly into a bread sack, they didn't make freezer bags for whole coons.

I caught all kinds of critters while trapping, stray domestic dogs too. I never killed a dog, though it did cross my mind a time or 2, They were a PITA (pun intended) to get out of a trap without getting bitten and took more time than I usually had to do it, but I always released them, I won't say unharmed as I really don't know because they were as we say "Gittin some yonder" when they left there. I still carry great memories of coon hunts with other guys, family, and by myself which I did a lot. I could tell stories for hours and not tell them all. I still have my carbide lights from when I started; by the time I quit, I had bought a fancy battery light. It was used, but so much better than the carbide, and not near as dangerous as stumbling around in the woods with a gas bomb strapped on your forehead. I think that I still have a can of carbide as well, used to buy it from a local Chinaman who ran a jewelry store. A true business man with a jewelry store in the front, lawnmowers and shotguns in the back room.

The secret to cooking a coon is to get all of the lymph nodes out of the meat before you cook it. Us country folks call them kernels, best I remember there are 12 in all, some around the neck and tail will come off with the pelt but you have to separate the muscle of the legs to find them there. I have eaten all kinds of critters mainly on hunts and excursions I went on as a kid with my dad but there were some that were served at the family dinner table. All are memories now as my younger kids had it much better than my older kids, I have 5 (14 grandkids, yeah now I'm bragging}, but not to hear them tell it. To me, the older ones have better stories to tell.
Lot of respect for you.
You did what you had to do.
I remember those 35-$40 pelts, I wish they were still selling that high because the country is overrun with them now, we trap for control now, I would rather be able to sell the pelts, and use them, but we know the animal rights crowd destroyed that.
We have so many it's affecting our squirrel population.
 

Latest posts

Top