We took a few days earlier in March to address the muskrat population on a creek I often get invited to for late season duck hunts. The idea was to show another trapping series and then prepare them for a meal differently than we prepped them last time.

Our YouTube channel audience is mostly hunters and I am often surprised by how many misunderstand trapping; something I grew up doing to fund my hunting/fishing. So, I try to mix in some trapping content whenever opportunity allows.

So, here is Day One, out setting a few traps and explaining the damage muskrats do to spring creeks. Wish I had time to get after the seriously like a I did a few years back.

Advertised as swamp rabbits in the deep south. Should be fine grub.

Ya I work with a colored feller from Mississippi that says coons are good.... And that's not a pun....

Day Two; first day of checking traps. Not a bad haul for 28 traps in tough conditions. Didn't even fall in the drink on this day.

We always saved the hind legs off the muskrats. We usually dredged them in flour, browned them and stewed them with onions and chicken broth. When done thickened the gravy and served them with drop dumplings and sweet/sour red cabbage.

But then we would make stew and jerky from the hind legs and backstraps off the beaver we caught, slice up the liver and fry it with onions and serve it alongside our eggs in the morning.

Raccoon got roasted just like a turkey.

Thanks, Randy. We always had plenty of rats but never trapped for them (NE Mont.). They were always in our mink sets and once skinned they went into the mink bait bucket. I learned a great market lesson as a kid when I had a hundred rat skins and the market was $.75 and the conventional wisdom said they had to go up to a buck. Wound up sellin them for $.40. ;-{>8

Good stuff Randy.
Thank you

Great videos. Thanks for sharing.

Day 3: On this second day of checking the traps I can see we are already cleaning up the local 'rats. If it was not frozen, there would be a lot of traveling rats and the catch rates would stay the same.

Day 4: Due to a crazy calendar, it's time to pull these traps, finish with the skinning and butchering chores, then get these muskrat hams over to Marcus (camera guy and wild game cook) for tacos tomorrow.

We know you can trap them.... but can you eat ‘em?😳

Weasles like em....guess Randy does too.

If you don't eat 'em, they'll eat themselves.

Muskrats have an 80% mortality rate per year, and this is the time of year when they turn very cannibalistic.

No kidding?

Day 5: The catchin' is done. Now it's time for cleanin' and cookin'.

For sure. If you run "floats" in the spring or even the setup that Randy is demonstrating, the biggest problem will be that the other rats come to fight and eat on any of their brethren that are anywhere near the surface of the water.

We have gone to #2 size traps for the simple reason that they are plenty enough heavier to sink a muskrat to the bottom post-haste and thus avoid being chewed on.

Actually, here we can trap inside huts as well, and if the weather is cold enough to hold iceup until late February, the muskrats just start eating each other inside the huts also. Once the water is severely cold, they won't dive out of the hut to drown anymore. Then they are sitting ducks for the rest of the clan to eat up fast.

Pretty similar behavior to prairie dogs, I think.

Not high on my menu list but I’ve ate Muskrat before. Back when I trapped I would give 3 or 4 carcasses to my grandma to make for grandpa. She would make a stew.
And nice professional made videos.

Eating 'scrats?

That doesn't sound pleasant. At all.

You have no idea what good eating you at missing. The description marsh rabbits is real close only MR's are better than rabbit.

Cool stuff Randy. Enjoyed it.

100,000 mink can’t be wrong! Mine become bobcat bait but to each their own.

Was up to camp with my grandpa 60 years or so ago and he was cooking a coon my uncle had shot. He parboiled it for an hour at least to boil some of the fat off of it, then popped it into a covered turkey roasting pan with a pile of onions (and a dose of his home brew, IIRC). He roasted that bad boy in the oven of his wood-burning cook stove until the meat just slid off the bones. When he piled up a plate for me, I admit I was a little wary. I asked him what raccoon tasted like, and he answered, “Well it doesn’t taste like beef, and it doesn’t taste like chicken. It just tastes like coon!” Indeed it did! I ate a couple of platefuls.

Meat is meat.

Anyone that'd eat an oyster will eat anything.

Where did you get the fur hat made or where did you buy it?

Great. I have been there a number of times (live in Minnesota), and happen to have a few tanned beaver furs. Thanks.

They are called trapper hats here and are available all over the place.

http://www.alaskafurexchange.com/hatstrapper.shtml

When worked on the N Slope, asked a Native what he was going to do on his off time, response was trap rats, I asked him what they tasted like?

He thought for a while, then responded like Rat!

Never had muskrat before, but one year my dad did a pig roast for a bunch of his friends instead of using a pig he used to Beaver and never told anyone. After everyone ate it they all liked it and then he told him it was a beaver. It was pretty greasy from what I remember

I've never eaten muskrat, but I have a friend whose trapped nutria on Back Bay in Virginia and cooked those. They are actually very good, indeed. He soaks the meat in buttermilk to tenderize it.

We have a lot of muskrats here. I suppose most places with water do. We have a local business park that had a WWII era drainage canal in it that had muskrats and the last population of cottonmouth snakes in that part of the city. Once the business park was established and picknick table put out for the workers, people started to complain about the snakes. Heck, I had one crawl into an inspection garage at the insruance building I worked at. The landowners started killing any snake they found. It wasn't to long after the cottonmouths were eradicated that it became unwise to walk anywhere near that canal. The muskrats had burrowed into the banks and walking close to the canal you stood a good chance of the ground collapsing into a maze of burrows and being in mud up to your hips. That canal is a total cluster now. It was once a pretty park-like area. Now it's eroded and broken and none of the landscaping is safe from muskrats.