Can you eat coon

As a young boy, I would sit in motionless suspense as my grandpa Varney replayed the memories of his youth through storytelling. My mind could see the cascading streams and rugged mountains that he painted of his Appalachian home in West Virginia. He could make you feel the emotions of the moment, too. Like the anxiousness of sitting still in bed while a rat snake slithered through the drafty rafters of his old house.

Or the disgust of finding an opossum crawling around inside a dead horse. Thinking back to those stories from so many years ago, I laugh at what is considered normal table fare today. For my grandfather and his rural neighbors during the Great Depression, it took a first-person disturbing event to remove opossum from the menu.

I clearly remember my grandpa recounting eating chipmunks and raccoons, too. Our modern culture has strayed far from what was once considered traditional delicacy. There is however a movement focused on eating local and fresh. He grew up on a family farm near Hazlehurst, Georgia, a few counties inland. While some of the culinary staples of Drayton's country childhoodfried chicken, biscuits, sweet potatoes and okrahave skyrocketed to headlining spots on big-city menus, baked raccoon, once a holiday treat for the Draytons and other rural families , has all but disappeared from the Southern dinner table.

But none of the young people know how to do that. Despite what you might think, raccoon tastes pretty good when cleaned and cooked properly. Like dark-meat chicken or turkey , though it is greasier and more tender than either. Where can you find a raccoon to cook?

If you live in the country, you might be able to buy one from a friend or neighbor. In South Georgia, I know, many more are shot and trapped than are cooked, and I imagine that most people would be more than happy to make money from a carcass that would otherwise go to waste.

If you can shoot, you can get one yourself. In some parts of the South, people hunt raccoons with dogs. Surprisingly though, raccoons taste right when cooked and appropriately cleaned. It has a masked- face, as in its fur on the face resembles a mask. It also has a stripped tail and very distinctive paws. Raccoons look almost like cats because of their size, but we see the difference in their fur and beady eyes.

They are omnivores; they catch fish with their swift hands and on land, and they grab mice and other insects from their holes. Raccoon meat is delicious; it is dark and slightly greasy and tastes like lamb meat fried in melted butter.

Overall, the taste of a raccoon varies on what the animal eats. If it scavenges garbage, then the raccoon is inedible as it stinks. Raccoon meat tastes like dog meat but less tender. And the best way to eat a raccoon is to barbeque it or roast it with many herbs and spices. It always has a musky taste and has a strong smell, so it is advisable to use potent herbs to overpower this taste. Your email address will not be published.

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