Arkansas Blog

Game food is still part of the diet back in the hills, and pelts bring in spare cash. If you'd ever handled a raccoon, you might have a bit more sympathy for the ag teacher.

Now cue Tom Waits:

Now the ravens nest in the rotted roof of Chenoweth's old place
And no one's asking Cal about that scar upon his face
'Cause there's nothin' strange about an axe with bloodstains in the barn
There's always some killin' you got to do around the farm

A murder in the red barn, a murder in the red barn

Now the woods will never tell what sleeps beneath the trees
Or what's buried 'neath a rock or hiding in the leaves
'Cause road kill has it's seasons just like anything
It's possums in the autumn and it's farm cats in the spring

A murder in the red barn, a murder in the red barn

I understand that racoons can be pests. Sometimes once, sometimes 5 times a week, I go out in the middle of the night to bring my basset in because she's letting me know she's treed one. One time, my husband killed one that was getting too agressive. However, that is far different from killing an animal with a NAIL gun and skinning it as a class project.

It's hard to totally refute the "dirt floor" stories that circulate about us when this is in the mix too.

Any word on whether the class had a coon barbeque afterwards. That would make those foks down in Gillett mighty proud.

Mighty tasty.

www.coonsupper.com

I've had three baby raccoons for pets in my life. Everyone one of them bit the hell out of me at least once. They're cute, but they aren't cuddly.

The nail gun part is creepy, I agree, but I'm trying to imagine a humane way of killing a raccoon without a gun handy. (Apparently, the teacher was expecting a dead raccoon, not a live one.) Cleaning the carcass, though, that's part of farming, and an appropriate topic for an ag class. At my school, ninth grade ag students helped castrate pigs. (Some of us not in ag class had similar yet different aspirations in life--this was the same year as Watergate and we had pigs of our own to consider.)

I think using a nailgun to dispatch a raccoon is at least as humane as gigging a frog for biology class or killing beef cattle on the slaughterhouse line with a slug to the forehead.

I hope the ag teacher turned the carcass over to the home ec teacher after they figured out if this coon was the one carryin' off the chickens or raiding the sweet corn patch. In the not too distant future, it might help to know how to bake the critter -- and maybe other less palatable ones. Possum, anyone?
As a young married, I necessarily, and maybe obsessively, followed market basket reports indicating inflation of foodstuffs.
Now it seems no one is particularly concerned. Nor are they storming our government offices about gas prices, the excesses of the banking and money lending indutries, the invasion of Iraq, or the potential invasion of Iran. I guess if folks still have a few bucks left to spend before their credit card limits kick in and they don't have to worry about a draft, everything's right in their world.
In the meantime, much of the Middle East is an even greater tinderbox than it has ever been and most of that enmity is toward us. (I really can't imagine why. Can you?) Iran is teaming up with China, which, by the way, holds a bunch of our paper and probably our future in its coffers, and the rest of the world is thinking "Good enough for you."
If this keeps up, those suburban towns won't have to worry about deer munchin' the shrubbery. They'll be as scarce as they were in the 1940s and '50s. If you see one, you'll have to dispatch it with anything at hand, even a nailgun, and eat it before your neighbor gets a shot at it.

Y'all stay away from Madison County.. they are crazy! and the raccoons are even worse in these parts..Their teeth are sharper and they all practice an extreme form of Islam with their marsupial friends the opossum .. Being a martyr in schools around these parts, for them, is just part of the deal. Like serving in Iraq for critters.

Seriously though.. how do folks think store bought meat gets to their table? I think a large nail gun type of device is used on most pigs and cows in slaughter houses? Or do they shock them nowadays?

Madison is my neighboring county just a few miles to the south.. I can see some of its hilltops from where I type right now.
There is a rough form of distemper going around in these parts.. When deer hunting last year, I would often see a raccoon completely disoriented as the disease was taking it's final toll. I have to wonder if its safe to handle raccoons these days since the disease is a huge problem up here and spreads easily from what I hear.

However I think it's a damn good thing to teach kids, you know, how to survive.. in the most basic way.. When the shi* hits the fan.. Piggly Wiggly better not be your only option. It wasn't that long ago we had to eat every deer in Arkansas in a depression ..only after the depression did the AR Game and Fish import deer from Kentucky for re population.

Well, we all agree on this one. It's an ag class--not politics, economics or chemistry. A nail gun is probably more humane than what occurs at chicken coops and slaughterhouses. And, racoon meat is not that bad. Growing up on a farm, I remember how my grandfather would stretch the hides and make us coon skin caps. Sounds like the globe trotting editor is forgetting his small town, Louisiana roots.

In my Army survival training years ago, we were shown a technique for cooking a wild bird that involved encasing the carcass, feathers and all, in mud and burying it in the coals and ashes of a fire until the hardened mud could be cracked and removed, pulling off the feathers in the process.

We were divided into small groups, and each group was given a live chicken to practice on. Many of us were from Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma, so we knew at least the basics of wringing a fowl's neck in order to kill it (my grandma could wring four chickens at once--two in each hand). In the group next to mine, though, apparently no one was a country boy, and the one from Brooklyn, who had never seen a live chicken, had tried standing on the chicken's head and pulling on its feet, thinking the head would come off. It was the chicken's legs that came off, however, and one of us had to run over and dispatch the poor bird.

The cooking method works, though, in a pinch.

The unanswered question about the nail: finish, frame or roofing? I think the guy could get a lucrative nail gun promotional contract.

Looking at the Arkansas Hunting Guidebook 2007-08 and I'm not sure the Huntsville agri teacher who killed a live raccoon with a nail gun followed the rules.

(http://www.agfc.com/!userfiles/pdfs/guidebooks/2007-08HuntingGuidebook.pdf)
From the "Arkansas Hunting Guidebook 2007-08", "Nuisance Animals" subsection (page 24):

"Beaver, coyote, muskrat, nutria, striped skunk and nongame wildlife other than migratory birds and endangered species that are causing damage to property may be taken during daylight hours or trapped the entire year.

A Depredation Permit from the AGFC, (501) 223-6381 or available from all AGFC regional offices, is required to trap or shoot nuisance game animals other than beaver, muskrat, nutria, coyote and striped skunk outside of the trapping season. A Depredation Permit is required to shoot any nuisance wildlife at night. Landowners or their designees with Depredation Permits may use any trapping method legal for use in the fur-trapping season. Conibear or comparable body-gripping traps with jaw spreads of up to 10 inches may be used inside buildings. Cage-style live traps may be used. Traps set in the outdoors must be marked with name and address, vehicle operator's license number or current vehicle license number (registered to the trapper). Firearms may be used day or night if specifically approved by the Commission employee issuing the Depredation Permit.

Live traps: Nuisance animals may also be removed by landowners (or their designees) at any time without a Depredation Permit. Trapping in towns must be in compliance with municipal ordinances. Wildlife must be released unharmed outside the municipality's boundaries. Live traps must have the trapper's name and address or his vehicle operator's license number or the current vehicle license number registered to the trap user."

Furthermore, I fail to find nail gun listed on page 23, "Legal Hunting Equipment".

"Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter." Ernest Hemingway

In my day we'd'uh used a ball-peen hammer on the striped-tail little sh***er.

We would'n'a been puttin on airs with no fancy nail gun.

I heard that one of those Huckabee boys tried to attend the event, but couldn't get there on time (got side-tracked in a Taco Bell). Seems he has some experience and expertise in matters such as skinning animals. I understand he was disappointed they killed the critter first, though.

Reading this item and all the accompanying comments, I understand more clearly why torture is now an accepted practice of our country.

Any word on how much merit pay the Farm Bureau is ponying up for this dude?

Whiksey - Tango - Foxtrot? This is the best story I've heard about in a number of weeks. Thanks for the laugh.