Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Emus?

Friend of mine shot an ostrich with a 450 Bushmaster. Hit the damn thing right in the neck! Head fell over like a chainsawed telephone pole... then the ostrich went to floppin' around. You don't get close when they are floppin' around.

That damn bird tore up a pretty good sized patch of ground before it stopped kickin'.

Like a big chicken with it's head cut off?

Yeah.

A 250 pound rooster...

They have big claws, they would fuuck you up!

Neighbor up the hill has two in a little mini "Emu gulag"

Damn critters been penned up for 15 years in about a 20x20 mud hole high fence enclosure.

All they do is pace their miserable lives away.

They do fine if let out to fend for themselves, they eat anything, especially corn. I’ve wanted to stick one with an arrow for years.

Local business man got into them back during the "craze". Only person that made any money on them was his hired hand who built all of the fencing and pens and handling facilities.

A bunch of people wasted lots of money thinking they were going to get rich!

My parents fell for the hype and got 2. It didn't work out and they couldn't sell them, so we tried eating them. The drumsticks were ok but not great. Maybe a different recipe would have helped.
There was just too much meat for just my father and I, no other family member was interested in trying them. The women all had some kind of mental block that kept them from trying it. My dogs like it.

Maybe we missed out on a niche market - expensive dog food for rich people.

People paid big money to get in the Emu business 25 years ago. Buy a breeding pair or two, or buy eggs and incubate them. Took a few years to build up a flock. Gonna be a market for the meat and hide, but it didn't happen. Someone in Zachary, La. just turned his loose. You could drive thru a neighborhood and there would be 20 or so emus feeding in yards, vacant lots, etc. Never knew what happened to them.

That failed industry sure made the price of a good pair of ostrich boots drop from what they were selling for...

I do believe ostrich is my favorite boot leather.

Only boots I've ever had that were tougher were shark.

They are as dumb as dog §hit and die easily...just shoot them in the hip, anywhere else it tends to go through and leave them to run off and die a miserable death elsewhere.

When driving past them it pays to be wary as they seriously are stupid and are very likely to run straight across in front of you...or at your vehicle.

That entirely depends on grain prices. Lots of big Catfish farms went bankrupt back in the early 2000's. Lots of acres in South East Arkansas turned back to farming. Some still have the levees in place and are all grown up. Don't know the circumstances on those but a lot had the levees pushed down and planted in row crops. miles

I tried Emu, edible but I did not much care for it. Of course, I had no emu recipes to follow, so maybe a better cook would have helped. miles

Never tried the Emu, but ate quite a bit of Ostrich. It's a super lean red meat, so must be cooked accordingly. Done right, it's delicious.

So basically an Australian Whitetail?

But not as smart.

They really are badass. A healthy adult Ostrich has no natural predators, other than man. They can kill a lion.

We had a farm up here that tried to develop a market for ostrich meat and eggs. It fizzled out after a few years.

Emu was actually on the menu of a restaurant I was in in the '90s. It is quite good.