Realy dumb question?

[dragon32]

Hi All,
The other night I was just dropping off to sleep and thinking about a night out, and I thought could I do all that if I REALY had too. I mean if my survival and that of my family depended on it. It got me thinking about food and what I could supply for my family in a situation of disaster. Yes I would be able to take rabbit and some birds. Deer perhaps. That bought me into the more unusual food stuffs. That got me thinking I wonder if anyone on the forum has ever eaten fox or badger. Before I get flamed at, I am not suggesting anyone eat these animals but if anyone has I wondered what they taste like? Yes I know its a dumb question.

Don

 

[Jack Bounder]

Like chicken

 

[dragon32]

Thanks Jack Bounder,
In an emergency situation it would be possible to feed that to my family. I know that some of the Alaskan trappers eat wolf but foxes eat just about everything so I didn't know if it would affect the meat at all. I don't realy want to eat either fox or badger but if you are going to know about the natural world and move in it I feel you have to know these things.

Thanks again,
Don

 

[sunndog]

If you are hungry enough it will taste just fine

 

[bobnewboy]

Google 'roadkill recipes'. Cant say I've tried it myself, but it does seem more common than you might expect.

 

[GGTBod]

Are we talking disaster on the scale of the family car breaks down in the middle of nowhere and no phone signal and need to survive until discovered or end of society as we know it style disaster?

Personally i think if it came down to you and your family genuinely starving you could eat anything, simple things to collect like insects and worms are a ready source of nutrition requiring minimal energy to source, if end of society situation all laws are null and void so all wild birds and wild game instantly come onto the menu plus all the fish/shellfish, abandoned farm livestock, stray pets ......... other people?

 

[dragon32]

I was thinking about both I suppose and I am sure you are right that anything you can catch in that situation would be acceptable. Just wondered if anyone had actually tried it.

Don

 

[crosslandkelly]

I've had road kill Badger jerky (thanks Rev), and very nice it was too.

 

[Bishop]

Vaguely recall something about Cambridge University having an unusual food club, think Stephen Fry mentioned it on QI. Could try sending him a tweet.

 

[Robson Valley]

If & when the meat is in good condition, local trappers save all sorts of things. Cougar & lynx are OK, porcupine and beaver are disgusting (only if I really, really had to).
Of all the big herbivores, moose, elk, mule deer, whitetail deer, mountain sheep and mountain goat, elk is the best. I buy at least one side of bison each year (14 yrs?)
I used to eat white-faced range maggots but they all taste like chemicals now. Squirrels and bush bunnies are good, especially curried. Properly done, bear hams trump pig, period.
Migrating ducks taste more like liver than liver does, even local lamb liver tastes better but I could get used to eating Canada geese. If anyone ever offers you some llama, turn it down. Learn to say NO.
Strongest meaty taste had to be kangaroo, better than I expected. Never tried mice or voles (lots of prep work there, I think). I hunt grouse with a passion. 40-60/season. Best wild organic chicken on the planet.

The real deal with bison and game is that it is far, far leaner than you imagine. Cook pink OK. Cook well and Dunlop and Goodyear will be interested.

I'd try to drift away to the nearest sea coast, absolute bounty of food for the picking at low tide. Tidal pool? Put a bunch of smashed bait meat in there as the tide comes in,
one big crab/day.

"Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie. When the pie was opened, there were all the blackbirds, the feathers singed and smoking."
Caveman Joke: When did cavemen first eat chicken? When somebody said: "Taste like dog." Dog and Guinea pig are not good.

 

[santaman2000]

Hoover chicken. (nothing to do with the vacuum cleaner)

 

[Robson Valley]

santaman, if you are speaking of grouse, they are primo.
I hunt my buns off in the autumn and all my kids want to do is snarf on a belly-ful of Dad's pan-fried grouse.

Worst, I hooked up with a GF who decided that she wanted learn to kill as many grouse as possible. Dawn until dark.
Jeez, woman, give it a rest sometimes, OK? But, she's come along as a fast and accurate shooter. Proud to watch her shoot well.
She's happy, end of the season (Nov15), field dressing the last bird in the pi$$ing rain by the headlights of the truck.

I mentioned bison.
Get together with your bushcraft flint-knapping pals and get over here. You can arrange to "harvest" your own bison.
Black powder muzzle-loader or risk your lives with some really stupid stone age stunt. You will be up against a ton of warm meat
with a disposition matched only by a Cape Buffalo. Understood? They want to meet you and greet you and gore you and stomp you into a pulp.
Now. To underwrite the cost, I need to buy a side of bison. You butcher it right and I'm your man.
Never fear. A couple of good old boys with .338 Lapua will watch your six.

 

[Countryman]

In the UK there are 60 million people on a very small island. If there was a great collapse then some will just curl up and die, some on Meds will rapidly succumb to their illnesses but that's a heap of clueless people left looking to eat rabbit! Wonder how many could prepare it if they were able to get one?

Yes had Badger and it is quite a deep taste, not gamey but a bit funky. Not had fox as its a bit too dog like. Couldn't eat my dog but might consider swapping her for next doors, which I could tuck into with gusto ( ruddy thing ) fatter than ours too.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Robson Valley]

Countryman, you made my day. Ask how many could build a fire. Just imagine the food-fight in London.
I've been to Britain just once. Hard to breathe until I set foot on the NYorks moors (family.)
Like I said before, gotta make the coast for easy food.

What you all need to do is to lay your hands on one of the very best cookbooks ever written.
"Kill It and Grill It," by Ted and Shemane Nugent. Nuge is just as good a hunter as he is a hard-rocker.
Ch 19 is a most entertaining piece called "Hasenpfeffer by Glock." Actually, I think Shemane is the brains in the kitchen.
In any case, some of my best game sauces came from them.

Ted had a TV show. One episode, 6 inner city kids who had never seen dirt outside of a flower pot. Milk bottles in the grass could have been a cow's nest to them.
One crate of 6 live chickens. Cook a chicken dinner. The Birds Are In The Box. Not exactly "fair chase" but close enough. Fortunately, one boy took the scene in hand.
Whacked all the chickens and got everybody else going. Ted had his straw-boss there with a truck-load of condiments and it really was a truck-load. Capers, you name it.

Hunger is a driver. Kill anything and everything. Problem is that your fire will attract predators who want to push you off your kill.
I can't do the skin and bones thing. Gotta be cleaned up. Here, gun shots mean gut piles and that means black bears, grizzly bears, cougars, wolves and wanna-be smaller predators.
A person can go from the top of the food web to the bottom, very quickly.

 

[sandbender]

"...Just imagine the food-fight in London..."

I think you are being a little negative, I have great faith that in times of great crises my fellow citizens would pull together and all would be well.

Oh, wait....

 

[Robson Valley]

I've seen too many examples of grocery stores nearly cleaned out in the face of "potential" disaster.
I like to think that I have a stash of fuel, food and water to last me 10-14 days. Meat's a treat =
not enough plain and simple calories to avoid starvation. Dry staples for possibly 6 weeks.

Many grocery stores don't have the warehouse space to spin the goods out over long time periods.
"Just In Time" restocking/delievery seems to be the common and popular model. Miss a truckload or two
and there won't be much left under the best of circumstances. Cities are populated vertically so the demand
is just that much greater.

I live in a village which can and does get cut off from the rest of the world from time to time.
Mudslides, rock slides and avalanches are managable things. 1" of frozen rain on the highways and nobody can go anywhere
since a lot of the local driving is up and down mountain valleys. One winter, we had an extra 150+ truck drivers added to our population
for a week+. Stuck here with impassible road conditions.

The only time I can remember that we had the needed flow of groceries delivered on the train.

 

[spandit]

I have a gun. I'd politely request food from those who don't.

Hope I have a few years before this crisis happens so my fruit & nut trees can produce enough to sustain my family for a while. Should attract some squirrels too but there's always rats

 

[British Red]

I have a gun. I'd politely request food from those who don't.

Hope I have a few years before this crisis happens so my fruit & nut trees can produce enough to sustain my family for a while. Should attract some squirrels too but there's always rats

So, you eat the squirrel. Now is the time to practice squirrel trapping

As for eating fox and badger, if you are serious about eating carnivores, there are far more cats than foxes.

 

[Macaroon]

I reckon I'd feel a whole lot better eating moggy than fox; somewhat irrational, I know, but it definitely is how I feel, and quite strongly. Mind you, faced with real hunger it'd have to be the most efficient and easiest catch;
looks like moggy, then

 

[DurhamBushcrafter]

If & when the meat is in good condition, local trappers save all sorts of things. Cougar & lynx are OK, porcupine and beaver are disgusting (only if I really, really had to).
Of all the big herbivores, moose, elk, mule deer, whitetail deer, mountain sheep and mountain goat, elk is the best. I buy at least one side of bison each year (14 yrs?)
I used to eat white-faced range maggots but they all taste like chemicals now. Squirrels and bush bunnies are good, especially curried. Properly done, bear hams trump pig, period.
Migrating ducks taste more like liver than liver does, even local lamb liver tastes better but I could get used to eating Canada geese. If anyone ever offers you some llama, turn it down. Learn to say NO.
Strongest meaty taste had to be kangaroo, better than I expected. Never tried mice or voles (lots of prep work there, I think). I hunt grouse with a passion. 40-60/season. Best wild organic chicken on the planet.

The real deal with bison and game is that it is far, far leaner than you imagine. Cook pink OK. Cook well and Dunlop and Goodyear will be interested.

I'd try to drift away to the nearest sea coast, absolute bounty of food for the picking at low tide. Tidal pool? Put a bunch of smashed bait meat in there as the tide comes in,
one big crab/day.

"Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie. When the pie was opened, there were all the blackbirds, the feathers singed and smoking."
Caveman Joke: When did cavemen first eat chicken? When somebody said: "Taste like dog." Dog and Guinea pig are not good.

i will disagree on CUEY, ( Guinea Pig) it aint bad, Cat is OK, Dog is just rancid.