Chownings Tavern Brunswick Stew
 

I for the most part followed the Colonial Williamsburg “Chownings Tavern Brunswick Stew” recipe . I’d wanted to replace the chicken they call for with tree rats but good intentions or laziness didn’t provide me with enough squirrels . So in their place I used pheasant thighs . And to be honest , for a first try it isn’t to bad . First pick was as it was simmering and the second the finished product . I still wanna try this with tree rats ,maybe next season .

I've always wanted to try muskrats and this sounds like a good possibility for them.





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Doubt you will like Marsh Rabbit. Pretty gamey

Only thing you could say in their favor is that a Priest downriver from Detroit proclaimed muskrats to be a fish so they could be eaten on Friday

Black folks on the Eastern Shore were said to eat them when I hunted a fair amount over there .

My thought that the stuff tasted halfway decent musta been true as the pot Lickers at the shop all made multiple trips .

Don't know what the economics are today, but a while back, carcasses were bringing more than the pelts.

Actually I've had Muskrat and they were pretty good. We had a farm outside of Smithville, Dorchester County, MD and it was a very small enclave of black descendants of slaves. Wonderful people they were and every weekend after Thanksgiving their church would put on a supper and Muskrat was on the menu. They cooked it cacciatore style. We used to give them lots of ducks, geese and rabbits but they actually preferred those Marsh rabbits. We had over 1000 acres of marsh and they had exclusive rights to trap them so they did us a favor.

Musk rats are fine for a stew. You stew them all up with all sorts of nice veggies, toss the whole thing in the dog dish and eat the pot!!

There are plenty of good critters to eat in this world, without have to eat a musk rat.....

I hope I don't live long enough where that becomes an attractive option.... :D

There is or was a fellow name of TJ Jenkins that ran a small outfitting buisness in Dorchester County called “Muddy Marsh Outfitters” . I bow hunted with him several times . His center of operations was down close to the lower Dorchester County I suppose you’d call it dump facility . TJ is originally from Bath County VA . Anyway he told me he and the guy that worked with him had trap lines in the marsh they leased for nutria but they caught a pile of muskrats as well . He also told me they sold the muskrats to local black folks for about $1 a piece . That was about 25 years ago , so he may bot be trapping anymore .

Craig, try raccoon. Dark, moist meat and works great for BBQ, stew, soups, etc. I recommend just using the front and hind quarters. Don't mess with the innards. Raccoon and woodchuck were always the first dishes to be licked clean when we had our wild game dinner at our Kutztown church.

A lot of folks in central VA back when I was a youngster ate groundhogs (not just black folks) . They’d specify a young groundhog and bake him with apples etc . Don’t think I heard of many eating coons . Mike did you ever kill any of the European hares they have in the Poconos ? I’d be curious how palatable they were !

We eat snowshoe hares often, Gotta cook them a long time,or in a pressure cooker, as the legs are like superballs

I hunted a number of years back in Stuttgart Arkansas and Gillette and saw signs for the famous "Coon Supper" I asked about it and the guides and owner said, "Yup, it's a real thing but it ain't that good...and those Clintons used to come to it and Hillary would make believe she ate it and she never really took a bite to swallow...." Don't know if that's true, but it wouldn't surprise me from her : )

Now coon, that's a different story. They actually make a very tasty stew. I came across a hardly damaged and still warm roadkill coon late one night while riding with a friend in her Corvair in about 1967. I took it home and practiced my taxidermy skills on it - remember the Northwestern School of Taxidermy ads in the comic books? I stuffed that coon up real nice and had it on the end of our dinner table watching us as we chowed down on the stew that my grandmother made of it - I swear that woman could make you like a stew made from gravel! It was very tasty, not at all gamey, and at some point my sister noted that it was good and asked what was in the stew - bad idea. I told her it was from the coon down at the other end of the table. She choked and jumped up and ran outside and threw up and was clearly done with coon stew - forever. An unforgettable true story that I still laugh like hell at and love telling after all these years.

Craig, I never hunted for nor ate snowshoe hare. My uncle used to take the entire season off of work to hunt them. They frequent higher elevations with a lot of swampy habitat.

Mike if memory serves from my years hunting PA. the season is very short and in a very small area. I did a lot of hare hunting in Maine at the time and was suprised that there were any in PA.
They do not eat as well as cottontails and need more cooking. We made a stew from them.

Dan, the hare season in PA is three days and they are very localized.

Thanks Mike, my memory said a week at that time(70's) so i looked it up. Limit of 1 a day. Guess it would be a trophy to a PA. beagler. Ran in to a few PA. beaglers in Maine who had made the trip to run them. They do not hole and will take the dogs out of hearing causing some anxious moments when you begin to wonder if they are running off game.

Craig - How can woodchuck be any different than muskrat?

I gotta get me a muskrat soon and cook it up like i would a snowshoe hare... and let me tell you, snowshoe hare is not tough at all. I quarter them and take the quarters and the section that has the backstraps and tenderloins and cook them on the grill basting them with something mild (so as not to destroy the flavor - they taste like the dark meat on a store-bought turkey) and eat it like you would a drumstick - Delicious!!

Every year at deer camp I try to get a hare or two with my .270 - just look for their black eyeball against the white fur and the snow on the ground - put the crosshairs on that eyeball and BAM! No loss of meat at all.





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But they always circle back. Could be an hour or it could be two... :shock:





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I didn’t eat groundhogs either . I can remmember my grandmother talking about having someone catch them a possum from time to time . They’d put it in a cage and feed it table scraps for awhile then kill it and cook it . Under no circumstances did I ever consume a possum or groundhog or coon or muskrat . Tree rats and a rabbit or two were my extent of trying little fur bearers .