In reply to Chester, on the subject of dead mice.

[mapsedge]

I started this as a reply, decided it would make a good post. So here we are. This was predicated on the post I wrote for The Road Less Ordinary, Of Mice and Traps.

To Chester:

Michelle has watched (correction, helped, she says) her grandfather, an avid racoon hunter, skin and field dress a racoon on several occasions (I'm pretty sure it was a different racoon each time). She has changed a variety of diapers. She held me once while I was being violently ill from a bad reaction to a prescribed pharmaceutical. She will insert her hand into the body cavity of a dressed chicken to remove the giblet package and scrape away any innards the butcher might have missed.

But she will not touch a dead mouse, or bait a fishhook.

I told her yesterday as we were making pizza that I'd like to try rabbit. She agreed, guardedly, like she knew there was more coming. There was: I told her why.

Our neighborhood is lousy with rabbits, making them a cheap source of edible and, with the right seasonings and cooking method, I would guess delicious protein. As my predation creates less competition for food, their population would grow, providing more food for us, and so on. It's a win-win. Outside the city limits this is "normal." Inside them, it's "weird." I don't get the distinction.

We try to eat naturally and seasonally. I can field dress a broccoli blindfolded, chop an onion with nary a tear, and I am ... curious ... to try my hand at our world's fauna, to pay, as Michael Pollan says, "the full karmic debt for my meal."

I'm a kid of the suburbs. I am not a hunter or trapper, but I am keen to try.

Comments

[thebruce.livejournal.com]

Awesome. Now, how, pray tell, do you propose to capture/dispatch the wee beasties? Hav-A-Hart trap and a piece of 1/2" pipe?

[billthetailor.livejournal.com]

I like that option better than running it down on foot and tearing its throat out with my teeth. Top of the food chain I may be, but my canines aren't suited to the task :)

Yeah, I'd kinda figured on trapping since there's not a clear line of fire in any direction in my neighborhood, the actual dispatching to be done with a Daisy Model 880 pellet rifle.

Although, to be perfectly frank, we haven't gotten that far yet.

[jehosefatz.livejournal.com]

I like the idea. In a residential area, traps definitely. My concern would be that the Daisy is a little lightly powered for killing things of rabbit size in a relatively humane fashion, one-shot fashion. If you were gearing from scratch, I'd recommend something like a .177 or .22 CO2/air rifle for the dispatching - > 1000 fps on the muzzle.

- J

[thebruce.livejournal.com]

Bill, I have to strongly second this, or recommend the aforementioned 18" piece of household steel/galvanized pipe applied behind the ears of Mr. Bunny as he's held by the back legs. I raised rabbits for many years, both here and abroad, man and boy, and that's the most humane way I've come up with.

[billthetailor.livejournal.com]

The 880 is a pump rifle, and on 80% pressure with a pellet is supposed to be the functional equivalent of a .22. Of course, if your gun is old - as mine is - that may no longer be true, and I have no real way of determining that.

My only reservation to the Mr. Fudd in The Study with a Lead Pipe method is the "grabbing the back legs" part, as I have no desire to be bitten by a wild animal.

I do want to be humane about it. I have no desire to inflict more discomfort than is strictly necessary in order to feed myself.

I've looked into snares, some, and it seems to me that the snare kills the animal, though I can't for the life of me figure out how.

[thebruce.livejournal.com]

Snares are not a good idea for anything but a survival situation. They're illegal in Germany, and a bad idea especially in neighborhoods where the passing cat may trigger it. A snare kills by breaking the neck.

Your pellet rifle will do the trick, between the eyes at point blank range, and then followed by.... well, I'll tell ya next time I see ya or in a private email.

Do you recall my Pig Story?

[jehosefatz.livejournal.com]

Well, I say that only because I used to have a Crossman 760 pump and it was definitely under powered for rabbit. I looked at the Daisy and BB velocity is supposed to be 750 fps and pellets in the 650 range. It may work fine at point blank, but that'd be my concern.

For comparison, most .22 caliber air rifles are in the 900+ range, many over 1100. .22 caliber powder starts near 1100 and goes up to 1800 or so I think.

Personally, I like rabbit. I'm considering taking up fishing again this year -- although I know nothing about the whole fly-fishing/salmon/NW mystique. I'm just a simple, southern-style, closed-reel, live-bait, fisher dude.

- J

[starwyse.livejournal.com]

I think I'll come for dinner on a non-rabbit night...

Or bring a bottle of tequila - just in case :)

[brotherwilliam.livejournal.com]

a .22 short travels a mile and will go through several layers of drywall before stopping. Try traps.

Better yet, I now know where to come when I am in town with my bird to be...

RileyG
hope to be apprentice falconer...

[glesyn.livejournal.com]

We have an excellent K9 available for rabbit hunting....she does a loverly job in our backyard....

[purpledumbass.livejournal.com]

I remember a long time back, I had rabbit when staying at my uncle's house when I was about 5 years old. I remember this distinctly, as my uncle and older cousins were cleaning the rabbits, I recall a small fountain of blood from one of the rabbits, causing one my female cousins to "scream like a little girl" (how appropriate, considering that she WAS a little girl), because the small spurting actually hit her. Then moments later, her sister was nearly equally dismayed when, in the final instants of its small and fluffy life, one of the other bunnies peed on her as a last act of defiance. I laughed with childish glee that it wasn't me that was peed on. I went through a short period of "what do you mean we're eating rabbit for supper?" along with a small amount of being finicky because this was something I'd never eaten before. As children sometimes do, I was set that I was going to dislike it before I sat down to eat. My aunt pan-fried it like chicken, so it was very similar to chicken in that respect, as best as I can remember.

I also had rabbit roasted over a campfire at KCRF one day. Back when Fox had the Poacher's camp, my ex-wife's birth-mother came to visit during the run of Faire. She brought with her two of Pulaski county's grand champion 4H winning bunnies for dinner. These rabbits were slow roasted over the poacher's campfire, with a chef's apprentice marinating them occasionally, whilst he tended the fire. This time, the rabbit wasn't too bad, but I think I would have preferred it fried.

Since then, I haven't had many opportunities to have rabbit. I wouldn't turn my nose up at it in any case. If I could have it pan-fried the way my aunt did it those many years ago, I'd certainly jump at the chance to have it again. (Get it? Jump...rabbit... --oh, never mind...)

[billthetailor.livejournal.com]

Should this plan come to fruition, I will make a point of a rabbit dinner for you. I've only ever had it once - barbecued by someone who wasn't particularly good at it. It was greasy, but I think that was more a function of the sauce and the cook, rather than the animal, which I remember tasting rather pleasant under all the oil. I'm looking forward to trying it prepared well.

[motherpockets.livejournal.com]

I have actually skinned and dressed (same thing? Should be undressed?) a rabbit many a year ago. I even held it before the slaughter (tame rabbit, raised for food purposes, but I still wept, and my 7 year old nephew had to take me inside to wait til the skinning part). As I recall, it wasn't too difficult; you just cut off the head, slit the belly from throat to anus, grab the skin, and pull, gently but firmly, and it comes off. Take out the innards and you are pretty well done. Rinse, cut up like a chicken (leg and thigh piece, breast, forelegs where the wings might almost be, back part, and cook. We had it fried, as I recall. It does taste a bit like chicken, except the bones aren't like the chicken bones, nor quite in the same place, but the meat is fairly similar.

[billthetailor.livejournal.com]

I found a number of YouTube videos on the subject including one that showed how to disembowel the animal by squeezing the innards out through the bottom - like emptying a tube of toothpaste. Effective, in an ewww-ish kind of way.

[rowangolightly.livejournal.com]

Eww....

[joegoda.livejournal.com]

I remember rabbit, seeing the skinned and naked carcasses lying in a large cauldron of salt water, curing. G'dad and G'mom would let them sit in the brine for quite a while, if I remember.

Knowing my dislike for game food because they taste too... umm.. gamey for me, they served rabbit and called it chicken. I wasn't fooled. Still I ate it, and I still remember the taste.

The taste of rabbit wasn't horrible, and it was filling. It was pan fried like a port tenderloin and was very tender. Like the dark meat of chicken, it was a more solemn taste. Just not exactly what I would prefer to eat, since I have a wussy palete when it comes to the heavier tastes.

I'll take a good head of lettuce any day. They squeal much quieter.

[iarraidh.livejournal.com]

My Dad raised show rabbits for years before the neighbor's dogs (said neighbor being Sandy's Oak Ridge Manor, now Strouds North) got loose and tore them up, destroying the line.

Dad kept the cages ans started growing them for food, as we was po. Not 'pooor', but PO. Usually had rabbit every Sunday dinner for many years until finances got better.

I remember on Tuesday or Wednesday, Dad would let me pick the rabbit (which I think was just to make me feel like I had a part in it) and we went into the basement. Holding the critter by the back legs, he'd whack it in the back of the neck, killing it instantly.

He'd immediately open the belly and clean the entrails into a bucket then rinse out the cavity at the utility sink. I was usually done at this point because the sight of skinning scared me. I was like 5, after all. Each cleaned beastie was put in a container of salted water to pull the 'gamy-ness' out of the meat, and left for a few days. Come Sunday, it was usually prepared like chicken, and was not greasey or awful-tasting in any way for said 5 year old.

It's not 'just like chicken' per se, and far less tough and greasy than squirrel. Since you are looking to catch ferrel rabbits, they may not be as plump as out hand-raised ones.

I vote 'GO for it'

[hurricanedeck.livejournal.com]

Mmmmm.... rabbit!!! During rabbit season at our house (I was VERY surprised to learn that there was a season for them here, but I digress...) we eat lots of it. The dogs get the guts to eat and the skin to play and tear up, we get the good stuff!

Mr Tracker, earning his supper!

[billthetailor.livejournal.com]

That is a gorgeous picture! I'd be afraid to let our dogs have any portion of the rabbit - as indoor dogs raised on dry food, who knows what kind of messes we'd have to clean up after they ingested that.

[hurricanedeck.livejournal.com]

Oh, they get a little gassy, and we have to make sure to worm them, but it's the reward they get for flushing and then retreiving for us.

Mr. Tracker is waiting on Daryl to look at him and call him - I was able to snap that picture of him. Tracker takes all of his prizes to his papa!