Then the one paw left on might freak you out a bit.

Sounds like someone has been slipping in a cat or two.

Hey! I resemble that remark! (My last name ends in eaux)

Well all of us can't be perfect.

...but the rest of us can. Sorry 'bout your shortfall.

The meat is not marbled, so it is not greasy at all. We don't eat blobs of fat off other kinds of meat so why would anyone feel the need to eat it specifically off a coon. When cooked like a roast it is tender like any other roast and I have never seen stringy meat on a coon. They do have quite an odor when skinning and at first when cooking. I have a neighbor who asks me for coons on a regular basis so he can make pot roasts out of them.

Taste of coon depends on what it has been eating.

I cooked and ate one once. I'm sure they are good if you know how to cook 'em. Evidently, I don't know how.

Up here the fur industry is booming right now - best prices in 30 or 40 years. It is all going to China. Their large middle class sees fur as a status symbol and don't give a rip about PETA or PC governments. Trappers are getting huge money for fishers, bobcat, lynx and wolf. If you are really lucky and manage to get a polar bear tag you can sell the hide for 20K on the Chinese market if it is a really nice specimen.

Regarding coons - we can get $30-40 if the coon has his thick winter fur on. In fact in this part of the world it is only legal to kill a coon if you sell the hide or if it is damaging your property you can also kill it.

Edit:

Just did a quick check and in feb 2013 at the annual sale over 400,000 coon hides sold - average price of $31.20. One exceptional hide sold for $240.

There some things that are edible that also require you be to be awful hungry before it will taste good. I think raccoon is one of those that unless you are hungry it won't taste good.

I've decided to try squirrel meat for the first time this year. I just can't talk myself into raccoon yet. Maybe in another couple years....

You just now tried squirrel? Man, you've been missing out.

Coons are good, too. They're made of meat, after all. I don't know why people are so scared of meat.

Buzzards seem to like them OK.

pelts do ok in the winter... so much now... bobcats do better

hamburger meat is too cheap to eat coon.

I love squirrel, yes, you are missing out. I also love dove, turtle, rabbit, rattlesnake, deer, hogs, fish of all kinds, crawfish...the coon just was not good. Like I said earlier, might have been my cooking method. I'd be willing to give it a try again if someone who knew taught me how to cook it.

If done right racoon can taste dang good!

x2 on squirrel as well.

I'm reminded of a Samuel L. Jackson line in Pulp Fiction. "Sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie but I ain't gonna eat the filthy mother [bleep].

GENTLEMEN...I will take every coon you will give me within three days of me taking a trip back home. The folks around north LA. LOVE EM! I'd be a local hero if I brought a passle of "big ole coons" home for the "famly fokes and friends." They'd run out and buy up all the sweet potatoes at the grocery store. They'll boil them coons, then roast em with those sweet potaoes until it gets done. The meat gets quite sweet like the potatoes. Just don't let it get too dry. Some may barbeque it. I like em both ways.

Ill just stick to shooting em and leaving em laid out

Ate a few that different people have cooked , all tasted like roast to me

ive ate them a couple of times...we soaked it in milk then slapped him on a smoker with a brisket rub. Wasnt too bad. A little tough but thats to be expected.

possum casserole

http://2coolfishing.com/ttmbforum/showthread.php?t=379242&highlight=possum

It's not the best but defiantly not the worst , I smoked two one year at chili fest and fed the drunk's nobody complained till i told them what they were eating.