Baby alligator tastes just like beaver and is really really good. I brought home 'still warm' roadkill raccoon once that my grandmother made a great stew out of. You couldn't tell what it was; she was good that way. That lady could have made a stew out of an old tire and it would have been good. When I told my sister that the stew we were eating was made from the coon that I had mounted in an aggressive position and which sitting on the far end of the dining table she dropped her spoon and ran into the bathroom and puked. A great story that I love to remind her of to this day!

Some of us do... or did 'til they all dried up!

B

Having trapped and skinned hundreds of raccoons, I'd have to be very close to starvation to try eating one. The discarded skinned coon carcasses are not touched by any type of scavengers; not even the ravens, which I have observed eating a dead skunk. A friend of mine from Alaska once told me that beaver is "good" eating, but then he went on to say, "but not near as good as bear". Having eaten bear and considering what it tastes like, I passed on the idea of cooking a beaver.

Black bear is delicious.

I grind my black bear half and half with venison and make it into smokies, and its fine. Pure bear smokies or germans taste a bit course to me. I once ground a yearling bear into hamburger and cooked it in chili, which was quite good. Other bear recipes I have tried did not suite my tastes.

A trapper friend of mine regularly dines on beaver. I've eaten the back-strap several times and while it's a country mile away from venison, it does emit a rather woody, piquant after glow that to me anyway, tastes very much like owl and crow. :whistle:

We had a friend who used to hunt coons on our old place near Savannah. Dad asked him one time to fix him up a coon so he could see how it tasted. Our friend said "Can't do that Mr. Morrison, you'd like it so much you wouldn't let me come back." Well, we got someone else to cook some. I have tried it and they can have them all as far as I am concerned.

I've eaten a lot of fur bearing animals over the years. They've all got their good points and bad points. The trick on anything like that is to only eat the smaller ones. Big coons, big possums, big anything with hair on it, are usually a little rough.

Downriver Southeast Michigan Michigan, Port Clinton Ohio area, and around Mitchells Bay Ontario all have big muskrat suppers in the fall. The catholic folks have a special dispensation from Rome, they can eat muskrat on Friday because it's an animal that lives in the water like a fish.

A memorable meal for me was the time Roger Giles got a big bait of muskrat meat from an old timer down in Port Clinton. He, his wife, Apple Jack, and I all made a good meal on it. He stewed it in creamed corn, then discarded the corn, and it was as good as anything like that I've had.

Destry has the right idea. Beaver is for those who like it, it should never be smoked, braised, roasted, or anything else that involves heat. It is best consumed raw, and I hear midwesterners have a very limited supply. Groundhog is out of the question, as it stinks when gutted.