What do you do with your varmints?

[jds holler]

I've always thought that if I was killing groundhogs like you guys back east, I'd have to try eating those things. They seem like a cleaner critter than our chucks out west. Ours are pretty skanky -- flea and fly infested, living in dens full of their own droppings, and not very appetizing.

The disease that is worrisome is tularemia, and it can be carried by basically any rodent. Also known as rabbit fever. I've heard that winter decreases the chances of disease, mainly because the stress of wintertime will kill many of the sick animals.

Properly cooked meat does away with any risk, but handling a diseased critter could still pass it to you. Matter of fact, handling your predatory house-cat, could give it to you.

I'll still enjoy eating the right looking rabbits from time to time, but I'll pass on our chucks and sage rats, which are pretty much an infestation of dirty little rats. jd

 

[Konocti's Wigwam]

Last night a Racoon showed up on the fence outside my office while I was reloading. The past couple years there have been a lot of animals showing up in the city. My gardener said they often live in the sewers and come out at night looking for food. I have seen a family once before, a momma with 3 babies. This one was alone, though. I shined my cell light and there was the bandit's face, staring at me. I tried to get a pic, but he left when the light went off. Coons will stare at you like that, I once lived at a lake in SoCal and coons would come and eat the dog food, and if you shined a spot light on them they would just stand there staring back and keep eating the dog food. Interesting animals, they got some b@!!s...

 

[Alguapo]

Hawks, vultures, ravens/crows other birds of prey, badgers , coyotes anything in the food chain that will eat them up. I don't touch them.

 

[outasite`08]

Lol, folks and snakes, something you can kill with a stick. My dad hated any and all serpants, they were not dead until in pieces and put into the burning barrel. Didn’t phase him a bit to unload his old Ithaca SxS on a snake, if it was more than 16” long, it usually got a double dose.

Your father sounds sorta like me Kill`em twice to make sure. My two favorite snakes are the dead and the dying. Jeff

 

[snert]

I guess I don't get either side of the trolling comments. If you're question is asked in honesty, and I tend to believe it is, then I guess I don't understand the accusation of another poster of you trolling. However, I also don't see why posting photos of what we do with our dead vermin is trolling either.

I do know many who, for moral reasons, feel it important to eat what they shoot. No question a good moral to have. However, some things just don't eat well, and yet are certainly shootable for other reasons, morally.

So in a sense I see this alleged dichotomy (moral conundrum?) between only shooting what you can eat or shooting vermin as a non issue. Eliminating a host of squeeks, or a pile of chucks is a morally defensible action, eating them or no.

So, back to the question: No, I don't eat groundhog. Though K22 likes em, and JDScholler would like to try em, I did and found them to be gamey, rank and just not very good eating. So I shoot them and the farmer loves me. That is moral enough for me.

Now, the other question: Why is it better than shooting paper, or steel?

1) I don't have to share my shooting with a dozen other guys
2) Every groundhog is an individual...slow and fat, cautious and creepy, bouncier than a monkey on meth, slick and fast...a 400 yard gong is, well, one dimensional.
3) It is never the same twice
4) wind, bugs, mirage, heat, and hilariously timed comments by my partner all add to the challenge
5) I get to do this all over in scenic areas
6) I don't have to shoot any to have fun...try that on a 100 yard paper target range.

 

[snert]

These days, I toss them deep in the tree lines to keep the buzzards from messing up my hunt.

In my younger more bolder days when I fancied myself a mountain man, I would grill the hind legs and eat them. My annual ground hog roasts at the end of the season in western PA in the 80's was infamous. Wifey would visit her mother in Philadelphia in late September and I have the boys (hunting buddies) over for a hog leg feast and plenty of cold beer.

The event ended when my neighbor's wife told my wife that I tried to poison her husband, a non-hunter / non- gun guys who, curious about what was happening on my back porch, ventured over to our roast. We were quite into our "cup" when he arrived.

One of my ornery buddies offered him some "Pennsylvania Chicken" off the grill. The poor fellow ate a leg and commented on the unusual taste then asked what exactly this meat was. Again, my ornery buddy told him it was "groundhog." The poor fellow turned green and puked on my porch. He apparently thought it was a "roadkill". Being non hunter / tennis player and golfer, he had no conception that someone would hunt these critters and less conception that someone would eat them.

When wifey returned from Philly, his wife called mine and I got taken to the woodshed. When we moved east in 87, wifey laid down the law, "we are moving to civilization - no more hog roasts!"

Gotta say I appreciate your willingness to "go along". I might have sent the neighbor's wife a groundhog tail necklace. At least the thought would have gone thru my mind.

 

[AWS]

I used to make roach clips from raccoon penis bones. They were unique gifts.

Poor quality beaver got.tanned and laced on willow hoops again they made great wall hangings.

 

[Coyotefurharvester]

Fur that is tanning quality is sold or shipped for tanning. Coyote skulls with no damage are cleaned by beetles, there is a market.

 

[Bill K]

I leave them for other carrion eaters to have a feast.

 

[markT]

 

[J.d. Popkes]

Well you can think that if you like. You don't need to post though. Yes, it is a legitimate question. I wonder who's trolling who when I see piles of varmints. So far one or two people are eating them.

I notice you don't contribute to this site. Maybe you should consider it, or are you trolling us? Maybe you should consider upgrading if you value this site?

I think it’s important to remember that there’s a large cross section of people represented on this forum. Totally different cultures all in one group, mixing. For example where you are from it’s probably a legitimate question, but I read it and was pretty surprised.

Takes all kinds I guess……

 

[jds holler]

Fur that is tanning quality is sold or shipped for tanning. Coyote skulls with no damage are cleaned by beetles, there is a market.

I remember back in the day, when certain fur buyers would pay for coyote canine teeth. Wasn't much, maybe 25 or 50 cents. Also porcupine hair, and I think coon pizzles. So sad these days to see fur bearers selling for such low prices. jd

 

[Steel Mover]

In Argentina you start shooting and the eagles show up, free groceries. It is interesting to watch them walk under the shooters guns to pick up birds on the ground while you are shooting, eagles dodging falling birds. Next day, clean field. The foxes and coyotes do not mess with eagles clean up better than a buzzard.

 

[K22]

Gotta say I appreciate your willingness to "go along". I might have sent the neighbor's wife a groundhog tail necklace. At least the thought would have gone thru my mind.

I thought it was amusing - just some go natured fun. Besides he invited himself to my roast. Wifey was on my side but to keep peace in the neighborhood, she half-heartedly scolded me. Although she didn't much like me storing my ground hog legs in her freezer in the basement.

He didn't talk to me for about 3 months. I tried to explain to him that ground hogs are herbivores, but he just couldn't get pass the road kills he saw along the road. His wifey never forgave me.

 

[Downeast]

I have no problem shooting varmints when needed. As a kid we shot groundhogs in central Virginia and the young one's were quite tasty. I was raised to eat what you kill. To do otherwise would be a sin and waste. But that is my opinion and what others do is not my concern. My neighbor shoots deer in the summer that are eating his beans. He drags them to the edge of the fields. A more efficient way is to shoot center mass so they run off and later die in the woods. He kills dozens, does, bucks, fawns. If you leave a deer carcass in the field by the time the vultures get through with it there will be a 1/2 acre of beans crushed flat. As some said, nothing goes to waste. Prairie dog, woodchuck, coyote, or even deer.

 

[SSL]

Back in the day (1960s) our county was so over-run with groundhogs that the Farm Bureau got up a special fund to pay a bounty on them. Each pair of ears presented at the county courthouse was worth fifty-cents. With .22 LR ammo costing about thirty-five cents a box at the local Western Auto, that was a pretty darned good return on your investment if you were a fairly decent shot. Farmers usually welcomed you and pointed out the areas where the 'hogs were most populous. Of course, those were the days when it was no big deal to see a kid riding his bike through town with his .22 rifle on his bike. I strapped my old Remington 510 to the "ape-hanger" handlebars on my bike and usually would spend most of a Saturday hunting until it was time to return to town and run my paper route. I commonly would get between 3 and 8 each trip depending on weather and time of year. In those days I would scalp them and then hang them on barbed wire fences so the farmers could see I was doing my job!
Now, I generally toss them in the nearest fence row for the other critters to eat.

 

[Stugots]

Carcass Stew!​

 

[Gary in MD]

Been hunting ground hogs since the 1970s, we leave them lay. They get cleaned up fast by the scavengers.
Gary

 

[andym686]

I worked on a farm in the 80's and shot quite a few groundhogs. Usually, I would toss them over in the multiflora rose bushes.
I had so many in one spot that the deer hunters hunting with bows early in the season asked me to take put somewhere else.
The aroma was getting to them. I gladly obliged.

 

[Ackman]

I guess I don't get either side of the trolling comments. If you're question is asked in honesty, and I tend to believe it is, then I guess I don't understand the accusation of another poster of you trolling. However, I also don't see why posting photos of what we do with our dead vermin is trolling either.

I do know many who, for moral reasons, feel it important to eat what they shoot. No question a good moral to have. However, some things just don't eat well, and yet are certainly shootable for other reasons, morally.

So in a sense I see this alleged dichotomy (moral conundrum?) between only shooting what you can eat or shooting vermin as a non issue. Eliminating a host of squeeks, or a pile of chucks is a morally defensible action, eating them or no.

So, back to the question: No, I don't eat groundhog. Though K22 likes em, and JDScholler would like to try em, I did and found them to be gamey, rank and just not very good eating. So I shoot them and the farmer loves me. That is moral enough for me.

Much more fun to gutpile a varmint than poke a hole in paper, or ring a piece of steel. But some folks just don't like the idea and have no clue. Years ago at a party talking to a very urban woman, the subject came up. And she asked the question......"why do you shoot them?" My answer was, "God gave me the ability to enjoy shooting them, and I feel it's my responsibility to follow that potential." She didn't know if I was funnin' her or not, also didn't know how respond.