Coon Hunting with the Gourmet Chef”
One night Don and I were out on a hunt by my house, just down on the creek.
We had one coon and while the dogs were finding another we built a fire just to be warm while we skinned the coon and waited on the dog’s as we did not intend to stay out long. I slipped off the old coon’s hide and hung it in a bush by the fire, then threw the carcass in a honeysuckle thicket, we were in no hurry and don had a flask of tequila.
So we sipped a few snorts and as we waited on the dogs as it was late and I was hungry.
I went to the honeysuckle thicket, where I had thrown the carcass and whipping out my old skinning knife cut half a dozen pieces of coon meat and slipped them on a green stick. Laid it on the coals and waited till they were well done and then set them off the fire to cool. We sipped some more cactus juice and when the coon meat was cool, I pulled a piece off the stick and tried it. It was good! In fact it tasted fine and would have made a fine dinner had we been able to chew it. I was as tough of a piece of meat as I could have ever imagined.
Good tasting but tough!
And that reminds me…
A Chinese friend Jimmy who owned a restaurant in Duncanville,
tried coon meat and being from Taiwan had eaten just about everything.
He wanted to try Coon meat!
The thing back in Tiawan, where he was from was eating tigers but they had ate them all up.
So I brought him a possum, a coon, and odds and ends from my trap line.
Jimmy didn’t like the possum, when the Mexican cooks opened it back in the kitchen they all burst out laughing!
Jimmy came out and said, “ Jack, that rabbit!”
And I said no Jimmy, possum!
And he said “cooks say is rabbit!”
And that went on and on…
but it wasn’t good anyway so I brought Jimmy a Coon!
Next time I went in for a repast of my favorite dinner, La Tzu Tzi,
He came over and said “oh! Jack! I try meat of Kun! “ I said, well how did you like it? And he said after holding his right and left jaws in his hands and rocking his head back and forth,
Oh! Very tough! Very tough!
It was not coon that found me an outlet for my extra trap line meat, but bobcat!
Jimmy loved it!
And boys, old Bobcat Connally took to selling Jimmy carcasses too! Ted was a telephone co. retiree and had a trap line where a new lake was built.
When they flooded the new lake the cats down in the bottom were forced up the creeks as the water filled the new lake.
He caught 10 cats that winter to my 3!
And said one night at the fur buyer meeting… Jack where did you say you sell that bobcat meat?
I told him about old Jimmy, I said to go to the restaurant after the people had left, and don’t just walk in, everybody having dinner at Jimmies restaurant, with a couple of bobcat carcasses,
next time I saw old Ted selling fur to Al Barton,
the fur buyer, he said he had been selling lots of cat carcasses to Jimmy and they had really gotten on!
At seven dollars a carcass, hey… you can’t go wrong!
Now Jimmy did not sell the meat to customers,
he saved that for when Grand maw and Grand paw came over,
do you think they had hamburgers?
Hell no! they had mu gu gia cat!
J. Winters VonKnife
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