Gutting and not gutting small animals

powernoodle said:
I'm a city slicker. Whats the par boiling do - remove some of the gamey flavor, tenderize it, or something else?

thx :thumbup:
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If you kill an old boar squirrel and don't boil it first it will be like trying to eat an old wool hat, in other words you better have strong teeth. :D Chris
 
Any more step by step help for us unknowing ?
I've got a bunch of Greys that need some serious population controll , but I'm not willing to just kill them ,if I'm unsure how to get them from target to the table. Dang concience :rolleyes:

Phil
 
hey Guys..

PN...

It helps cook the meat,, possibly kill some nasties..

Since there is little fat,, if you cook it too long on the grill, it'll dry out and burn quickly..

Basically when you par boil it,, it is pretty much cooked.. You simply finish it off on the grill with spices or sauce,,what have you....

ttyle

Eric
O/ST
 
1894 said:
Any more step by step help for us unknowing ?
I've got a bunch of Greys that need some serious population controll , but I'm not willing to just kill them ,if I'm unsure how to get them from target to the table. Dang concience :rolleyes:

Phil
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Clean the squirrel like in the video, BTW squaks hangs out over at www.rimfirecentral.com, then use the meat in any recipe that you like chicken in. My favorites are dumplings, pot pie, but fried with gravy, mashed potatos and bisquits is hard to beat.
 
I skin deer, antelope and goats the same way he did the squirrel in the video except I hang them up head down. Once you get it started you can just pull it off like a shirt with a little muscle power. Don't try it with a hog though...it won't work!

As for the squirrel recipes guys, try this: after par-boiling cut the tops off of some jalapeno peppers and rake the seeds out, then fill the peppers full of cream cheese and stick them inside the squirrel(2-3 per critter) after that, wrap each squirrel with 2-4 long strips of bacon using long tooth picks or water soaked wooden skewers to hold the bacon on and the peppers in and finnish on the grill...:D:D:D Texas Style!!
 
I can't say I agree with the following or not, but I can say I never thought of it before seeing the show: On Survivorman, Les Stroud killed a desert packrat with a deadfall trap. He didn;t want to touch it because of a potential disease (maybe hanta virus or something). So, he used a bicycle spoke to poke through its head, ran some steel cable through there, made a loop, and hung it about 3 feet above a fire to cook it. He cooked it for several hours I think. Then he just peeled away the burned fur and skin and ate the meat.

Me? I never even would've considered doing that. I would have skinned and gutted it. The virus would never have occurred to me.
 
kr1 said:
I have skinned and gutted squirrels and have seen plenty of larger animals done. My question is when you start getting down to the size of a chipmunk, in a survival situation can you just cook them on coals without skinning or gutting? Is it possible to cook even a squirrel this way without skinning and gutting? I have always wondered about this and if anyone has actually tried it. Will the gut explode rendering the meat useless? Any information would be appreciated.

Thanks,
KR
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I have shot a few chipmunks and skinning + gutting them is very simple. If you can do a squirrel, you can do a chipmunk, it's very easy.
 
If you want you can squeeze the guts out a rabbits butt, just hold him facing you and hand over hand squeeze and they will most all pop out the butt. When I was a kid the limit was 10 in Mo. and we got a limit pretty regular and it makes them a lot lighter
to carry in a hunting vest too.
 
1894 said:
Any more step by step help for us unknowing ?
I've got a bunch of Greys that need some serious population controll , but I'm not willing to just kill them ,if I'm unsure how to get them from target to the table. Dang concience :rolleyes:

Phil
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I like to cut a slit crosswise about mid squirrel, stick my fingers in and pull toward each end. Tough little buggers.;) I don't bother with the front quarters, just the backs and hinds.
I like to "Crockpot" them all day with my favorite seasonings.
Start before work and they're all done and tender; meat falling off the bones when I get home.:thumbup:


Population is down considerable here.:D
 
Myal said:
OK , so where does one find bike spokes and steel cable in the wilderness ?

just curious :)
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Well, the point is, he cooked the packrat whole, without skinning or gutting, in order to keep from having to handle it. Whether you used a spoke and cable or a stick or whatever, I wouldn;t have thought of cooking it whole just to avoid a disease. I would've missed that I suppose.

However, to answer your question: I don;t know where you might find a spoke and cable in the desert, but on Les' show, the scenario was that he was stranded in the (Arizona or Utah) desert after getting a flat on his mountain bike and getting lost. So, he stripped the bike, hauling away a few choice things he thought he might be able to use.
 
I see

I havent seen his show .

Cooking critters whole tho isnt a new idea tho , I have lived with folk who cook their roos whole even , bury them under a fire and let them cook for a while , hair , guts and all , peel and eat when its done , keeps the meat moist , not bad when its desert country .
 
Most small game have higher metabolic rates than larger mammals and process more waste and pollutants, proportionately speaking. This makes it especially important to field dress your quarry each and every time. For instance, all careful hunters know to inspect the livers of each rabbit kill. Tularemia is not a nice thing, especially if you're already in jeopardy/survival situation. You won't be able to see the spots on an infected liver if you never look inside...
 
Myal said:
Cooking critters whole tho isnt a new idea tho , I have lived with folk who cook their roos whole even , bury them under a fire and let them cook for a while , hair , guts and all , peel and eat when its done , keeps the meat moist , not bad when its desert country .
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What kind of roos? Kangaroos?

As far as handling vermin, Hantavirus and also plague. Being able to burn the hair and just cook vermin unskinned and ungutted with as little contact as possible until after they are cooked is one of the reasons I am wondering about this. Also I would not eat any organs of animals. All flesh is edible on almost any animal but you can get yourself in serious trouble eating organs cooked or uncooked. Some animals carry large lethal amounts of dangerous items in their organs. An example, I believe it was Shackleton's expedition that ate the livers of the dogs that they brought to sledge with. That gave all of them a poisonious dose of Vitamin A. Hair and teeth fell out and open lesions on the skin. Not good in a survival situation. Uncooked the organs can have living parasites.

KR
 
wn2142 said:
Most small game have higher metabolic rates than larger mammals and process more waste and pollutants, proportionately speaking. This makes it especially important to field dress your quarry each and every time. For instance, all careful hunters know to inspect the livers of each rabbit kill. Tularemia is not a nice thing, especially if you're already in jeopardy/survival situation. You won't be able to see the spots on an infected liver if you never look inside...
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Darn, somebody got to it before me. I've got, among other things, a veterinary background so anything I'm going to eat gets necropsied rather than dressed.:)
 
I eat the hearts and livers of deer and ducks that I kill and have done it for many years without ill effect. I've not eaten it raw, but would in a survival situation. Somewhere in my dim memory, I remember explorers getting sick from eating livers, but I was remembering them to be Polar Bear livers. Been wrong before. Ask my ex wife.

Codger
 
I believe that the liver out of any bear should stay in the gut pile.
Not sure the reason but , very sick or dead was the possible outcome from even eating just one.

Phil
 
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