Coon up a tree

[GoodOlBoy]

by they way it is fact, not fiction, that a determined coon can pick a lock with them bitty fingers. I have also watched a coon catch a perch out of a creek, then wash it off in the same creek it came out of before he would eat it. Lot's of folk eat coon, and possum. Never had much taste for either myself. But we use to catch them, skin 'em for the hides, and sell the meat locally.

GoodOlBoy

[w5pv]

When I was younger I had several coon dogs,I used Treeing Walker's that was from the old House's Tom/Tom and House's Hank stock of dogs.Very good blood line.I never had one that was real high priced dog but I knew of some that were sold for 5 to 10 thousnad dollars.
We hunted nearly every weekend and some during the week and for the most of the time never killed the coons just located them marked them down as being treed and gone one for another run lost of fun and it kept the kids off the street.

[WRideout]

When I was in the CA Army Guard, we used to train at Camp Roberts quite often. The oak foothils around there are full of coons; they would come into camp, open a rucksack, open a package of MRE's, and keep opening packages until they found the food. One of the forward observers said that they were out at the OP one night, and a crowd of coons came to visit. He thought they were going to be in trouble for a minute.

BTW: I have it on good authority from an army captain I met, that coon is delicious.

Wayne

[rosewood]

Coons unlike many tree climbers can go down a tree head first. They have the ability to turn their paws almost around backwards so the claws grip for going down. Very crafty critters. They are good at getting around obstacles you put on your deer feeder to keep them out. However, the Duke's dog proof coon trap work every time.

[oldarkie]

B B Q coon is real good but it takes awhile to cook it. Ground hogs can climb trees also,I have seen them many times.

[Multigunner]

I wonder if Sasquatch are descended from Racoons?
Thats about the only other critter in North American that has hands.

Seriously there are critters that are descended from Racoons that bear little resemblence to the coon. In Japan theres a doglike creature related to the racoon.

[mold maker]

There is simply no end to the education you can get here. I just got a coon education, from as polite a bunch as you could ask for.
Thanks gus.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Just because they wear a black mask doesn't make them the Lone Ranger. I have an uneasy feeling that out earliest primate ancestors might have been pretty much like them.

[rosewood]

At the risk of opening up a can of worms. All of my ancestors were human.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Then they fell for a bit of fast talking from the serpent.

[drinks]

Young, corn fed coon is good, IF you remove 90% of the fat, old, mature coons are tough and sorta strong.
As to having a coon for a pet, a friend who had one advises to NOT have a pet that is smarter than you are.
I have never eaten groundhog/woodchuck, but as it is just a big, fat squirrel and I enjoy squirrel I do not doubt it is good.
A friend eats muskrat and beaver, both rodents, and said they were good, if cleaned and cooked well.
I do not eat possum.

[goofyoldfart]

Drinks, I used to hunt groundhog/woodchucks in LaPorte in N. Indiana. skinned, cleaned (parboiling helps clean them good) and make stew out of them. fed them to the wife and girl for 3 years before the wife caught me skinning one. that night for dinner she was awful quiet about eating until baby girl (11) said that if she didn't want it, she'd eat it and started to take the bowl. Mama smacked her hand and said to leave her "roast beef stew" alone and started eating. I had told her for 3 years that it was roast beef stew and she snarfed and gobbled it. I paid for that for a few days, but she got over it and I still tease her about it. God Bless to you and yours. Goofy aka Godfrey

[blackthorn]

About 10 years ago I got up to my cabin a day before the other 2 guys. Sitting there, looking out the window, I spotted a couple of marmots (AKA ground hogs) hanging around my outhouse. Now, those varmints have a habit of digging into the edge of the bank near the bottom of the outhouse and they push the dug ground into the hole! NOT COOL! I got my 22, opened the window and very shortly there were 2 dead marmots. Thinking about it, I got a wild hair and thought I would skin those fellows, boil them a bit to get rid of the grease, and make a stew. I went and collected them but they were crawling with vermin! So--- my buddies did not get the "beef" stew I had con template making. There is really no reason not to eat them, after all there is a couple pounds of plant fed meat there and all they do is eat and lay around in the sun, so they should not be tough!

[AggieEE]

My grandmother and her brother went to his deer lease one year and he got a turkey. That night htey had it hanging on the porch to stay cool and went to bed. Some time later that night my grandmother woke up to pots and pans banging together. It finally got loud enough for her brother to wake up, hard of hearing. They were laying in their beds trying to get the other one to go see what the noise was, they were both 50-60 something at the time. He had a bad hip so he couldn't move too fast and grandmother just didn't want to. In the morning they say where coon(s) were trying to get the turkey and they were jumping up trying to grab it and was hitting the pots and pans hanging on the porch. She had a good laugh about that with me when she got back home.