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?

[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...)

[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.

[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!