Woodchucks look delicious

[growalot]

If you guys think wood chuck smell and won't eat them...then you have never gutted and cleaned a turkey or ANY poultry...as far as bugs really?? squirrels die regularly due to their bug infestations and seriously you have never examined any of your deer? the lice alone could carry a carcass away...That said... never ever would I touch a raccoon as a meal...I've never come across a rabid wood chuck butt I have more than my share of rabid raccoons and there is a reason they have those nasty canine teeth you know....

[dbHunterNY]

i've had various game for table fair from across North America; moose, bear, elk, deer, beaver, rabbit, grouse, turkey, duck, etc.  not sure why but I haven't and don't think I could bring myself to eat woodchuck.  makes sense they wouldn't be bad, because they're eating alfalfa all day where I am.  puke or boogers as wooly's alternative suggestion wouldn't trump a woodchuck roast! lol  it'll still never happen though.  if one gets hit too far back by my Black Hills loaded 223 60gr Vmax round on rare occasion, it'll get a follow up to the head.  I agree, no need to let it suffer.

 

my parents have a sizable farm that's bread and butter is hay and hay only.  hay is finally being cut now.  if someone is hungry this summer, I'd have some available.  if given notice, i'll fill any and every freezer you've got by the time any left go into hibernation! lol

Edited June 11, 2015 by dbHunterNY

[wolc123]

I just got number two, same place, same gun, same range as the male 3 days ago.   The 40 gr Federal 22/250 did better this time, striking forward of the diaphragm and putting the fat female's lights out right away.  I suppose the young ones will crawl out tomorrow as they start to get dehydrated and hungry.  From the looks of the teats, she must have 5 or 6.  The 10/.22 Ruger will get some more work then.   I buried this one under a blue-spruce that wasn't looking so good.  Hopefully that will perk it up like it usually does for the apple trees.   There were lots of bugs on that chuck and I wouldn't want to get any closer to it than the length of the shovel handle.   I'll stick with eating fish killed in the warmer months.     

[kpkot]

I had woodchuck at a wild game dinner... Not bad. Also and this is no joke, or pun I have eaten beaver. I rank the beaver over the chuck.

[dbHunterNY]

by now the younger ones might be alright without her.  usually see them start to wonder now.  I haven't been out since the spring.  went out a couple times and got 4.  now that the hay fields are being cut the numbers will climb in a hurry if I can get out.  maybe tomorrow.  couple summers ago was my last decent count at 82 for that year.  opportunity was definitely there that summer as they were bad.

[wooly]

I had woodchuck at a wild game dinner... Not bad. Also and this is no joke, or pun I have eaten beaver. I rank the beaver over the chuck.

 

I believe you........ how old was the beaver?

[Elmo]

I believe you........ how old was the beaver?

hope it was of legal age. =)

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[kpkot]

Im guessing 28 in "beaver years" its a similar scale to dog years

[wooly]

How old was the Chuck,lol

[Big_Bean_Dog]

There is no reason for a woodchuck to taste bad. They are vegetarians with the same diet as rabbits ..... BUT ..... I just can't do it. I have even gone as far as dressing one out in preparation for eating, and still couldn't do it. It's just another one of those unexplainable biases. Of course those remembered images of some of those nasty disgusting, runny, maggoty, stinking, oozing, woodchucks that our dog used to drag home and roll in may have something to do with that particular bias. Can't get that picture out of my mind.

Properly dressed in the field and handled thereafter, they are good table fare. I haven't taken any in a couple years but a while back, I used woodchuck to make "veal" marsala. Nobody could tell any difference. My wife still thinks I made the story up.

Beandog

[wooly]

Here's the problem I had eating them.

 

Most every chuck I ever killed came off a dairy farm.

While I killed them in the wide open field grasses, I believe they spent their nights sleeping under the trough getting pee'd and pooped on...,,, basically marinating in cow shaaatieeet and piaaaasssssssssssssss.

 

Before I could even build up the courage to cut them open, the stench of the barn they lived under lingered in my nostrils and there was no escaping THAT!

I stopped shooting them because I had no use for them after that.

[nyslowhand]

I too had attended a "BYO dish-to-pass" wild game dinner years ago sponsored by Cornell's Dept of Natural Resources. If you did the blind taste test, most meats weren't too bad. BUT..once you found out what it was you probably wouldn't go back for seconds. Thankfully I was warned before hand that one contributor was notorious for cooking roadkill raccoon or woodchuck. As interesting as it was to try bear, elk, caribou, beaver, raccoon, woodchuck, etc -  I never went back for any follow-up dinners!!! Definitely a one-time bucket list adventure!

[mike rossi]

Interesting comments. As I said Turkeys are full of bugs and so are very other mammal and bird we hunt.  Ever get a turkey with a full crop and it smells like livestock manure? That is because it is manure. 

 

I am pretty sure woodchucks or any other free ranging animal won't let other animals urinate or defecate on them, and more sure woodchucks spend their nights in a borrow rather than under the legs of cattle. They are in the squirrel family by the way and I have not heard anyone cringe about eating squirrels. 

 

No comments on hear indicate anyone has any experience working or being around slaughter houses and/or dairy farms, stockyards, or where livestock is raised for meat - beef cattle, hogs, whatever. If you want to see animals covered with urine and feces, those are the places to see it, Interesting someone would worry over a ground hog being dirty, but probably eats grocery store meat. 

 

 

[Doc]

Many food biases are not based on actual fact, but rather perceptions, and other lifetime experiences that created those biases. However, don't think for a moment that those biases are not just as engrained and powerful as any logic based feelings toward food. For example, you can tell me how delicious rattlesnake meat is, but don't ever expect me to even go near a plate of it ..... lol. No logic or fact involved there, but my aversion to eating a snake is just as powerful as it would be if it were a plate of fly covered garbage. I can't see any situation other than starvation where I would eat dog meat either, but there are cultures that have no problem with it. That doesn't mean that I feel deprived because I don't dine on Fido.

 

I don't see woodchuck becoming part of my diet anytime soon.....lol

[jjb4900]

to be quite honest, if someone killed one and properly cared for and prepared it, I would have zero problems eating one............I may have missed it, but I have yet to see many chuck hunters carrying a cooler full of ice out with them to throw them in when they kill them on those 100 degree days, what I have seen is them laying around all day with flies all over them......so yeah, if your sole intention was to harvest them for food and properly care for them, I say eat them all...........as with any other animal the bugs and parasites usually start to bail out once the body heat starts to drop.

[dbHunterNY]

Interesting comments. As I said Turkeys are full of bugs and so are very other mammal and bird we hunt.  Ever get a turkey with a full crop and it smells like livestock manure? That is because it is manure. 

 

I am pretty sure woodchucks or any other free ranging animal won't let other animals urinate or defecate on them, and more sure woodchucks spend their nights in a borrow rather than under the legs of cattle. They are in the squirrel family by the way and I have not heard anyone cringe about eating squirrels. 

 

No comments on hear indicate anyone has any experience working or being around slaughter houses and/or dairy farms, stockyards, or where livestock is raised for meat - beef cattle, hogs, whatever. If you want to see animals covered with urine and feces, those are the places to see it, Interesting someone would worry over a ground hog being dirty, but probably eats grocery store meat. 

 

being involved in 4H at a young age, having dairy farms in the family, and living on a beef cattle farm I've seen a lot.  even went out to Kansas for an exchange trip and while out there went to Cargill Foods to see what operations for processing beef are like on a huge larger than imagined scale.  within the processing facilities everything is super clean.  before then the livestock can get pretty dirty.  basically as they're conditioned to optimum weight and fat content, or a basic stock yard for a small facility, the cattle are in smaller pens that can get pretty messy from them being confined to an extent.  like many other things I think conditions have gotten much better over the years.  the tour wasn't for the faint of heart though other wise I'd be posting video tour links.

[dbHunterNY]

yesterday evening the count was at 6.  nobody PM'd me though so they're fertilizer.  didn't find any holes in a newer hay field with a slope so it was a good day.  hopefully more get mowed without issues or breaking equipment.

[Paula]

You have video of process when you were there?

[First-light]

Game on, got to the cabin today and saw a Woodchuck hole going under my cabin. Have a trap set tonight if that doesn't do it I will hunt it down tomorrow! BTW do chucks come out in the rain??? lol

[hunterintheshadows]

i eat the younger ones. they are good eating if cooked correctly, you need to remove the glands and as much fat as possible. i used to hunt them hard core up till a few years ago, and would take 100+ a season. when the coyote population exploded, they became really hard to find in my farmland haunts. now i usually only see them close to outbuildings or houses, so i mostly hunt them with an airgun now

[dbHunterNY]

Game on, got to the cabin today and saw a Woodchuck hole going under my cabin. Have a trap set tonight if that doesn't do it I will hunt it down tomorrow! BTW do chucks come out in the rain??? lol

 

if it's a really light rain all day and they haven't eat then yes for short periods of time.  otherwise they hate the rain.

[dbHunterNY]

You have video of process when you were there?

 

when we went there due to health code and safety standards we couldn't go in the and around were they did most of the processing.  they had a video they showed us from start to finish.  even done in the most ethical way it's still not for the faint of heart.  much more humane than mother nature though.  you can see some it online.

http://www.cargill.com/connections/beef-processing-tour-dr-temple-grandin/index.jsp

 

they can be audited at any moment and never know until it's too late if they were doing something shady.  it's not like crap from other countries that you see on the internet, from Oprah, or something else ridiculous.

[jjb4900]

http://www.newsday.com/news/region-state/woman-getting-rabies-treatments-after-woodchuck-attack-1.10560710

[turkeyfeathers]

One could present grinners that look that appealing and appetizing but I ain't eating them. I'll feed the chucks Stingers instead.