When I was a kid, I ate a lot of rabbit thinking it was chicken…
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Yall, I meant to the animal PREDATORS, not to humans! 
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So they’re not a rare animal, and they might taste bad to coyotes. I missed your meaning on two points. Got it now…
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It’s gotta be a me thing today, sorry!
I tasted raccoon many years ago. I don’t remember it well, so it must not have been awful.
Apparently it’s “greasy” if you don’t cook it right. It wasn’t “greasy”.
I tasted it only because the people we were with, stopped by their friends house and they were having it for dinner. They offered and it seemed impolite not to at least have a taste.
I remember thinking it was OK but I wouldn’t want to eat much. Probably the thought of it. Of course I told them that it was great. I didn’t know that people ate raccoon…
My favorite game, beside duck (which I love) was venison cooked in a crock pot. I don’t know what the recipe was but it had sour cream in it. It was really good. 
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my favorite wild meat is elk.
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Elk is popular here. It needs careful cooking not to be tough, thus the popularity of elk burgers.
I don’t know any hunters anymore. 
For venison you have to make sure all the fat is off. Deer fat is GROSS.
I think the same FB bloggers that put out the information that possums eat lots of ticks are the same people that want you to be thankful for your armadillos “because armadillos eat fire ants”. Sorry guys - I have lots of both and I have never seen any sign of anything digging in fire ant beds to get to the larva. Nor have I seen possums scouring the ground for ticks. More like trying to find empty cat food cans in somebody’s garbage.
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The social media hype campaign for opossums drives me nuts. There is a large portion of vocal people that are absolutely rabid in their defense, it’s odd. They don’t last long at my place, they’re my top predator of chickens, next to raccoons. People on FB will tell you that their dear marsupials would never ever eat a chicken, which is strange since I’ve caught many in the act. And yes, it’s my job to protect my birds, but gads - they have acres and acres and acres of woods and streams and a small river, stay the eff away from my barns.
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I always thought oppossums were just harmless, homely scavengers but if you’ve had
EPM go through your herd, you never want them on your farm again.
EPM is rampant in my area and the main cause is oppossums.
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Guinea hens for the win! I would love a small flock of hens, but they are loud… and dumb and I don’t think my neighbors would like that.
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I had a huge female opossum take up residence in my barn loft last year. I had no idea she was there until I started feeding the squares to my goats ( horses don’t get the good stuff). Imagine my horror at taking bales high off the stack and a head appears at about my face level.
I missed my opportunity to get her that time but brought a pitchfork for the next time we met. She wasn’t easy to catch and I ended up chasing her down the loft steps, behind some stacked extra tires . As I started moving the tires she made the most terrorizing noises. My dogs were ready and waiting and I was so glad.
She had a pouch full of newly born babies which flew everywhere when my GSD/ Anatolian came to my aid. I felt awful about the whole thing as I really prefer to live and let live but I would have been housing a whole herd of opossums in a very short time.
Country life is not for the timid. I never saw evidence of her existence and she had a nest in my stacked bales. She was there for a long time.
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I think this is another piece of misinformation. I have had a small flock (between 6-12 at any given time) of free range guineas for most of the 20plus years here. Never have seen them eat a bug or a tick or a moth or any insect. Vegetation and seeds yes, but not bugs. I’ve tossed engorged ticks their way…they investigate and walk away! Chickens on the other hand gobble up big fat juicy ticks. We have a small flock of free range chickens too.
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How do your free range chickens
evade predators?
Mine got eaten a week or so after they decided to roost in trees instead of in the barn
I kill raccoons. At least a dozen sometimes more every summer. I have a hav-a-heart trap set on the floor underneath the table where i feed the barn cats. Have a game camera in there too. If something is getting up onto the table rather than into my trap i can usually figure out why. Anyhow…with the cat food there there’s no reason for them to try to take a chicken. I might lose a day or so of some cat food, but very soon i’ll trap and drown that raccoon. And my fowl are all trained to sleep in the rafters in the sheep barn. I raise all chicks/poults in the house, then move them into a large dog crate. I let them out in the day and lure them in with a pan of good seed and feed and close them in and hoist them up to the rafters at night. i’ll look for pics. Anyhow, i do that for a few weeks until they go up on their own. IF i find one roosting down at grabbing level i retrain.
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No joke! A few months ago I was walking on the path between my house and pasture at night. I rarely use flashlights or headlamps because I know the terrain, like the dark, and see pretty well in it. That time I wasn’t paying enough attention apparently because I stopped mid-stride realizing there was something on the path right in front of me. It was a freakin opossum that I would have kicked if I had taken even one more step! I was very surprised and s/he wasn’t nearly surprised enough, IMO. I did use a light for a little while after that but I’ve regressed…
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I had a young possum living in my old barn who I used to regularly scoop up with the pitchfork and toss towards the woods. Then he/she would be back the next day. Rinse. Repeat. We did this for months.
Now that the tick myth is debunked, is there any truth to their rabies resistance? Off to google…
ETA: Another myth https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Shedding-light-on-rabies-in-opossums.-Diana-Mitchell/b197a019d8e627df5684ae4258a694a29bc50e90
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Infraclass
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I don’t think that is a myth. They are not as likely to contract rabies as other species of animals, but I don’t think any scientific source said they couldn’t ever get rabies.
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