Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Why can’t you live on Rabbit meat?

They don't marble like beef. All the fat is on the outside of the meat. You just need to eat it, not toss it. Lewis & Clark ate it all.

That was actually a question, Jag. lol I shot a few and they are vacuum packed in the freezer.

I think if they arent real young you might brown on the grill and drop them in a pressure cooker with a bit of water for 15 min.

I read a book about one of the early Alaska expeditions. They followed a river inland for months and had only rabbit to eat. They cooked the rabbit native style, removed the intestines and burnt the hair off over the fire then consumed the whole thing, hide and guts included in order to avoid rabbit starvation. So I guess if you eat enough parts there is enough fat to keep you going. The natives managed to survive somehow.

I tried a few cottontail’s in Oregon growing up, they were pretty rank. We have both snowshoe and cottontail in western MT, one day I’ll try one. I love domestic rabbit.

I would have just went and got a Whopper after nibbling on the actual rabbit meat.


Problem solved.

That's what we always look for.

Lotta rabbits have spots on the liver from liver flukes which are harmless. You'll usually find skeins of jellified eggs amongst the intestines if it's infected with flukes. Lotsa worry about tularemia considering it too is harmless so long as you cook the meat thoroughly and don't have any open wounds on the hands or wear latex gloves when dressing. Geeze, you'd think with all the supposedly great, knowledgeable, experienced "outdoorsmen" on these forums more would know this basic stuff.

Trapped many hundreds of beaver over the years in a number of states and over 150 a year for a few years in a row. Ate a bunch of them and they are very, very good. The only ones I have tried to eat that were not good were eating either conifers because they had wiped out the local willows or Russian olive in the eastern WA sand dunes.

Never found them difficult to skin. The tails are meaty for what they are, sort of along the lines of ox tail soup. Slow roast them in indirect heat for quite a long time and finish off very hot and close to the fire. They split right open and fall apart. You will end up with the grease running off your elbows. Some friends in the mid-west had me save a bunch every year for their club wild game feed. Lot of folks said it was the favorite of quite a few members.

Beaver10;
Good evening to you sir, I trust the week treated you acceptably and this finds you well.

Somewhere in the depths of my memory - I want to say it was in the John Palliser Expedition book by Irene Spry - he was the first to chart things like temperature, rainfall and such on the Canadian Prairies at the behest of the Royal Geographic Society. This was in 1857 to 1860.

Anyway they mentioned coming upon a band of Metis in the winter, near present day Edmonton and these folks were subsisting on a diet of rabbit and winter moose, both of which are of course extremely lean meat. As I recall it, they were all in a state of stupor due to the reduction of fat in the diet and it had negatively affected their cognitive ability.

Palliser and his men gave the Metis bear oil at first and then pemmican, both of which contain a fair bit of fat and most made a recovery.

It makes sense in light of that bit of information just how important the bison was, as it was fatter year round than any other meat and procuring bison meant survival plain and simple.

I worked with a couple Inuit folks who said that seal fat was similarly important to their people up north as the fat supply kept them alive.

Hopefully that was of some use to you or someone out there tonight. All the best to you as we head into warmer weather.

Dwayne

Dwayne,
Thank you for that bit of information...Since the start of this thread, I have come to understand that if I should ever be lost, stranded on a prairie, or trekking across the United States via pony and find myself living exclusively off only the offerings of the land, I will eat rabbit only on occasion mixing in a healthy amount of beaver tail, dog (not my traveling best friend) but some wild K9 and buffalo.

This should provide the required fats I would need to maintain my mental acuity and health until I reach a McDonald’s.

Thanks again!

Beav 😎

lol I hear ya

One winter in Ontario Canada some Natives die from eating only rabbit and staving to death, the snow was so deep they were not able to get around and were ;limited to catching only rabbits. Cheers NC

If you can't eat rabbits - eat carrots.

I had rabbit cooked like that, in a red wine reduction sauce, with mashed root vegetables at a sidwealk cafe in Paris. One of the best meals of my life.

Look f**k face......I didn't claim to be an expert on Rabbit innards......I simply pointed out that I too was told the same thing years ago (by someone WAY more "experienced" than you are).

Since you DO claim to be an expert though....post up some links to back up your BS......or are you just another "supposedly great, knowledgeable, experienced outdoorsmen''?

The variety of cottontails we have here are so small they aren't worth hunting. The numbers aren't good, either. We used to have lots of them, and jacks, but back in the '70's, the feds did a lot of work to increase the numbers of raptors. We have plenty of hawks and eagles but not that many rabbits.

Look here you withered, stupid, know nothing, fake old ass hole. Look it up yourself. I am not wrong and have known this stuff since I was a kid as any real outdoorsman would. Trouble is, there just ain't any of those here. If there were, they wouldn't need to be told basic stuff all the time. Like how to tell a crappie from a perch or if a rabbit has flukes. You fuggin nasty old cock sucker. Now fugg off and go do the world a favor and die.

LOL, no can do Main, pig/pork and it's fat will keep you alive.

I never knew that. 1 gram fat for 100 grams protein according to what I looked up. Faster than rabbit because that has 2.3 grams per 100. For a native of that region, what were the fat sources?

Now dadnabbit BH, that aint nice and this is Sunday.

I go by the months with "r" and dont wear gloves. R means good Rabbits, deeR, oysteRs, and elkeRs.