I recently acquired a woodchuck that was trapped out of a farmer’s soy bean field. Often in agricultural settings a nuisance animal like a woodchuck would be euthanized then disposed of. Farmers have little tolerance for woodchucks because of the damage they cause to crops. Since I like to experiment with different types of wild foods, I took advantage of this culinary opportunity to sample ’sub-terranian whistle pig.’

In his book Stalking The Wild Asparagus, Euell Gibbons writes mostly about foraging for plant foods. However, he briefly covers some basic preparatory guidelines and recipes for some of the more unconventional game species including fish, frog, snapping turtle, raccoon, opossum, etc. He also provides a small section on woodchuck that I chose follow. I’ll spare you the details involved with the processing of the animal other than to say that I used a couple of waste flakes left over from flint knapping to skin and eviscerate it. They worked well initially but quickly dulled when removing the feet & head due to contact with bone. The only other difficulty I had was locating the scent glands that are supposed to be removed prior to cooking. Apparently two of them should have been found under each forearm and the other two at the small of the back, presumably the anal glands. I searched thoroughly but just couldn’t find any of them and assume they were obscured by a thick layer of subcutaneous fat and probably came off with the hide during the skinning process. The carcass was then soaked for 24 hours in a bryne-like solution of vinegar and salt, after which the cooking process began as described by Euell.

Now, bear in mind that part of the intention behind preparing the woodchuck in this manner was to make the transition to straight woodchuck a little easier to swallow. However, I don’t feel that the time and energy involved was worth the trouble. It would have been a lot simpler to just roast it on a spit over an open fire. The meal as a whole was acceptable, but there was so much done to it during the preparation that any residual taste of woodchuck that may have remained was completely overpowered by everything else that went into it. A little disappointed? Yes! But now I can say I’ve tried woodchuck and eating it again in the future will be a lot easier.

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