After trapping a chicken killing skunk, Shawn Woods checks his gag reflex and attempts to roast and eat the stinky beast. Will he be able to keep it down?
Primitive skills expert Shawn Woods has a chicken killing skunk that's raiding his henhouse. So he does what any self-respecting creative farmer with a decided bend towards things primitive and natural would do: he devises and builds a deadfall that uses the power of leverage to trap and kill the varmint.
The deadfall doesn't use a very thick or heavy drop log component to kill the skunk. But Woods places a large, heavy piece of driftwood on the end of the stick which immediately increases its effectiveness tenfold.
He sets the trap near his henhouse and sets up trail cameras to capture the action.
As you can see, the trap worked like a charm. In fact, he caught two skunks on succeeding nights.
But now we come to the really interesting part of this two-video series. Woods skins the animal and prepares to roast it over an open fire in order to eat it. He declares that Bear Grylls once stated that skunk meat "tasted like a steak covered in dog feces." Woods seems a little more hopeful. Perhaps his optimism is because of his previous rat cooking experience.
He takes extra-extra precautions when skinning Pepe' LePew around the scent glands, as he doesn't want to release anymore of the odor than was already released upon the skunk's demise.
He sets the carcass up on a rotisserie and places its heart on a stick to roast like a marshmallow.
He bites into the heart and declares it to be good eating. But now the moment of truth; he cuts off a piece of one of the hams and chomps down on it.
He looks like he's about to gag before spitting out the leg. "Ech!" he says as he spits. "The heart tastes good. The leg tastes bad. It's nasty. It tastes just like regular skunk. Disgusting! Maybe skunk meat isn't as good as I thought it was."
Haha! Well, hats off to Shawn Woods for giving it a try. Now he knows, and now the rest of us know too. Thanks for taking one for the team there, Shawn.
Interestingly, Woods also says that he gets a lot of hate mail when he posts trapping videos, presumably from people who are ignorant of the ways of the wild or rural living. I say more power to him and tip my hat to him for sharing his experiences with those of us who appreciate them.
Like what you see here? You can read more great articles by David Smith at his facebook page, Stumpjack Outdoors.
