00:00:05 Speaker 1: Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves from coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living. I want you to stay a while as I share my stories and the country skills that will help you beat the system. This Country Life is proudly presented as part of Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast the airways have to offer. All right, friends, pull you up a chair or drop that tailgate. I think I got a thing or two. The teach you how to cook a coon. You heard me right, We're cooking a coon this week. You know, some folks eat them because they like them. Some folks eat them to support a cause one we'll talk about a little later. Back in the day, at least down here where I live, some folks ate them out of necessity. They were making do with what they had, which is a subject I covered a few episodes ago that inspired This Country Life. Listener Jason Campbell sending the following story about a time in his life when he was making do. It might be a stretch to keep it on theme for an episode about cooking coons, but there's some coon hunting in it, along with a good lesson and good lessons with their own theme with everything, and Jason Campbell's words in my voice, Here's the story called hanging Back. It all started about the time I thought it was all ending for me. Like most high school freshmen, I thought I had the whole world figured out. I just couldn't legally drive far enough to explore much of it. Everything changed in my small town world the day my lifelong bad need diagnosis got a name, nail patella syndrome. It was barely an inconvenience as a small child, but at fifteen it became a daily issue, and I hit the growth spurt that seems to catch us all about that age, and things kind of got out of whack that My faith was strong, but it felt like the beginning of the end. Thankfully it wasn't. However, there was a slight shift in my mountaintainment abilities. After major reconstructive surgery and new parts in both knees, I found myself still hungry for adventure, even more so after the struggle learning to walk again. I was so thankful and relieved as I slowly regained my mobility, and I give the Lord and the doctors my great family all the credit. Fast forward eighteen years, a few more surgeries, and I'm proud to still be working hard as a machinist, hunting, fishing, and even raising our wonderful three year old son with my awesome wife Rebecca. Now I've come to understand the value in hanging back when it comes to making tracks. I ain't that fast. I can usually be found somewhere in the background, mosing alone, doing the best I can, and just thankful to be doing so. I don't run like a deer, and even dragging one's difficult for me. Okay, I'm gonna get to the good part the coon hunting. This part relates to fond memories, empty wallets, a lot of luck, and, as Brent loves to say, making do with what you have. Back there in high school, I had two strikes of luck around the same time, passed my learners permit driver's test, and then shortly thereafter met a new friend, a kind, older gentleman at the local gas station. It had been the best breakfast for miles around, and old timer's hung out there, you know, the kind of place that feels like home to everybody that stops in every day. We struck up a conversation and he invited me on my first coon hunt that night. I al withhold his name for privacy's sake, but we'll call him mister Dale. At the time, I couldn't tell a good coon dog from any other. But man, I'm telling you, I got a great a backwoods education that night. And then a long list of things learned that stand out to me. Now here's three, in no particular order. Number one, listen to the old timers with your good ear. Number two, mister Dale had some health troubles and he wasn't fast, just like me. Number three, bloodhounds are beautiful and powerful creatures. Now, honey, with mister Dale and his crew every other night that season. Sometimes we treed one, sometimes we didn't, but I always had fun just easing along talking life with mister Dale. Now. A lot of times my knees and his health meant we missed the action at the tree when the faster folks got there first. Sometimes we just plumb gave out a breath and couldn't make it to the tree. It never bothered me. One bid to miss it. I was just happy to be invited along season. End of day year and it's usual fashion of going out of about the time the crappie started biting in the spring. So I was back to sleeping at night and then school and fishing in the evenings. Time marched on in a few months went by like short days. Then one day I was out fishing at a local farm pond and I see mister Dale walking across the pasture. Now, I wonder what he's doing here? Where's his fishing pole? How did he know I was? Then came the shocker, as mister Dale told me he had given up coon hunt, mostly for medical reasons, and I could see his despair and telling me about selling each of his beloved hounds one by one. I thought, surely that the last one, the only bloodhound of the bunch, and secretly, my personal favorite, was being saved as his pet just for him. Now, I have yet to find the words to describe my thoughts. As he went on to his next point and his reason for tracking me down at that pond, he described to me the multiple offers please and even downright arguments he had dismissed up to that point. Regarding the future of his beloved big red dog. He said, Son, my whole family and half of my friends are after old Betsey, but I've given a lot of thought. If you'll have her stopped by the house tomorrow, I want you to take her and my dog Box two. She's a good dog, and I always appreciated you hanging back with me in the woods, even if we missed a tree or two. It was such an act of kindness on mister Dale's part. It's been almost twenty years since it happened, and I still don't have the words for it. Though Betsy has long since been ringing Heaven's hollers. The memories are with me deeper than these scars on my knees. So many nights just found me and old Betsy I can still hear, especially when the wind blows cold through the briar choke Creek Bond just singing to my soul, just for me while I'm hanging back. Thanks mister Dale, Well, thank you Jason Campbell for sharing that wonderful story of compassion, determination, faith and generosity. And according to Jason Campbell, that's just how it happened. How to cook a Coon. A short while ago, my old partner Clay middle name I cheated turkey calling contest. NUKEM told you all about an event that he, his wife, Missedy, and me and my wife Alexis went to in Gillette, Arkansas, the Jillette Coon Supper. It was the eightieth annual gathering of friends, family, and like minded individuals who may not agree on politics, but can all agree that education, community, and heritage is important. It was my first attendance of an Arkansas tradition that I not only was aware of, but that I supported most years by buying tickets but never attended. It wasn't because I didn't like the crowds or I was disgusted with the thought of eating an I've been eating these critters my whole life. It was all about timing. The Coon Supper takes place in January, during the most holly of outdoor pursuits for a lot of our Kansas and those that fancy themselves as honorary residents Duck season. Duck season had My brother Tim and I are working hard entertaining clients at our duck cap on the Arkansas River and in the small community of Raydo. Now we were hunting and whining and dining and folks and just couldn't fit the event into our schedule, even though it took place less than thirty minutes from our camp. We never knew how many people we would have, and let's face it, not everyone, even hunters, get real excited about gnawing on the ham of a ProCon loader, the trash panda, the mass bandido, a river bottomed coon. So we would usually buy tickets from a friend of ours who sold them just to support the scholarship program that they've vent funded. We guided professionally for twenty six years. We missed twenty six coon sumpers. We retired from guiding a dozen years ago. That's thirty eight coon suppers that I didn't attend. Then came twenty twenty four, and my friend Austin Booth, the director of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, invited Clay and I and our wives. To look on my wife Alexi's face when I said, Austin's invited us and Clay ad missed it to the coon supper next week and to let it was not astonishment or horror. It was supportive and agreeable, with only one caveat. I'm not eating any and I'll be glad to go with you, she said, And that Gal's my best friend and I can always count on her. Support. However, eating fur bearing creatures is about where she draws the line. I've eaten them forever and usually either like them baked with sweet potatoes or barbecue like them cooked that way, but neither way stood out really from any other wild game I've ever read. To be honest, the most significant or intriguing factor of eating a cooked coon was the fact that you were eating a cooked coon. It became a staple of country folks during hard times, but the outside of the coon was historically more valuable than the meat found inside until the fall of the fur market. Now, when the fur market crashed in the late eighties, the way coons were valued changed with it, and people no longer trapped air hunting and killed them for the fur, and there were never very many hunting them just for their meat alone. It's too easy to fill your freezer full of deer meat, ducks, and fish, and those were always more appealing to folks with less of a conviction for eating wild game than a coon. The older fancies of the meat died out slowly, with only regional peel from specific communities keeping the flame burning for a stupot full of cooked coon. Except Gillette folks down at Gillette were keeping on keeping on. And while the amount of meat cooked through the years may have gone down and the alternative domestic choice has gone up during that event, the quality of this Southern delicacy has remained. Now, I'm going to tell you how they cook it. Cole Counts is in the agrive business and as a young man compared to a lot of those associated with the Coon Supper, but he's also a get alumnist who is helping maintain the tradition and supporting the legacy by volunteering every year. Cole sees the importance of the mission by bringing the community together in support of education. Now, Cole himself was a recipient of the scholarship and stewards the benevolence he received by working in agriculture and giving back to his community along with a whole bunch of other folks. He's quick to downplay his role in the preparation and pushes the attention to the men and women who've been there way longer than him. I get it. They should be recognized and have been as recently as Clay's Bear Grease episode number two fourteen. If you had listened to that one, get your hind end over there now and listen. He dives deep into the history and the politics and the highlights some of the OG's that have been instrumental in fanning the flames of that event for the last eighty years. Now, you folks have my unwavering gratitude and appreciation for staying the course and keeping the mission of the event alive and well education and family. But someone has to be reaching for the torch when the time is right to pass it on. That's why people like Cole and the others who come in now are so important. Alexis and I sat beside a couple who have been coming for sixty one years. He told me he was a graduate of Gillette and had never missed one. He lives in a little rock now and he and his wife travel every year to support the community and the students scholarships. The good Lord Willing I won't miss anymore. Now, let's cook this thing. A coon has four sets of glads that need to be removed before cooking. Failing to do so will give the meat the very undesirable flavor. It's simple, and with a little practice, you can have that rascal ready for the bully pot in less than a minute after you snatched his hind and off. The glass resemble a bean in shape and size and vary in color with subtle shades of grape. They're found in between muscles on each side of the neck, the joints between the thigh and the lower hind legs both sides of the rear part of the backstrap, and the joint between the body front legs between the muscles. Once that's done, the meat is cutting quartered into serving pieces. Front legs, hind legs, and a backbone. Pieces are placing in salt water baths of brine overnight. The brine can simply be water and salt and that works great. You can also use pre made flavor infused brines that have sugar and other spices added to create some unique flavor of yol. Turkey brins have been used by friends of mine and they say it's a great way to enjoy it. Now. I haven't tried it yet, but I will. The function of the brine is to infuse flavor and to tenderize and moisturize the meat. Brin a turkey, brin, a coon, it's all the same thing. Now in a big pot of water. I use a thirty quart the same part of brin am in. I just wrenched the pot out in the coon off before following coals directions, and I added four carrots and four onions, four bell peppers, six or eight stalks of celery night, cut up a couple of limon and then I went out on my own and I added a couple of bay leaves and a cap full of liquid crawfish ball to mix and I let it slow bowls for about two hours. Now, once that's done, the coon is cooked. But there's one more step. We need to amp up the taste even more. It's time to fire up the smoker. Any residual fat that's left should be removed before placing it in the smoker. I removed the coon from the pot, took off any fat that was left, and put the five pieces of bone in backstrap, both shoulder and both hams into an aluminum pan. Now, I have a camp chef pellet grill and set the temp at two twenty five in high smoke, and I let it sit in for about two hours an hour and the cook I turned the meat once. Now, once that was done, I took the pan off the smoker and immediately covered it with aluminum fall and I let it rest thirty minutes on the stove. If you're going to add any barbecue sauce, anything else like that, now's the time to do it. I didn't. That's up to you. Now allow me to do you another solid while I'm at it. Everybody knows that biscuits go with gravy, corn bread goes with beans, but for the uninitiated, sweet tateres go with coon. Now. I whipped up a batch of cream sweet potatoes while Coon was in the last stage of smoking, and they were ready to go when it was time to uncover the pan. Hot dog tastes better at the ball game. All my kids, from the oldest to my youngest, Amy, Hunter, and Bailey will testify to that there's a legitimate link between place and taste. Fish tastes better on the river, so it only stands to reason that coon would taste better in the environment of where it celebrated most. Let you let coon soper. However, there was no loss of flavor or enjoyment of eating it when I prepared my plate and set at our family table with Alexis and Bailey. Alexis and Bailey both had some If a bike can be counted as some bailey, she didn't care for it. Now, this is the girl that would rather eat barre chilla than ice cream. Remember that's probably a slight exaggeration on my part, I'll admit, but she loves wild game coon. It wasn't for her. Alexis the poster child for city girls who voluntarily jumped into this country life of mine with an open mind and a sparkly pair of uggs many many years ago. Try to bite and she said, I couldn't tell you that that wasn't beef. I just ate it has the same consistency as roast. It's just the thought of it being a coon that has me not wanting another bite. I love you, Brent, and I ain't eating any more of that. I like the way she always says she loves me, right before she adds she ain't about something I am. Everybody needs a cheerleader, a companion, a godly spouse who supports them in whatever they do. That's good, even though that may not wish to participate. Alexis is mine, and I'm sure there are just as many ways to cook coon as there is to cook anything else. This is just one way. The way I chose to do it was this one, with some help from my buddy Cole. I thought it was fantastic and will absolutely do it again this fall. Someone like my friend Jason Ellsworth, who is they show enough wild game chef, a man who could make a feast out of butterflies and haystring. There's no telling them what that rascal could contract with a skin coon. Check him out over at Ellsworth dot cooks on Instagram. If you don't believe me, now, I've been talking about frying catfish in the past, and now how I like to cook a coon. And if you like these episodes, let us know and maybe we'll do some more in the future. We've got a lot of stuff to talk about in this country life, and we'll take suggestions from everyone, even the guy that left a one star review saying I don't listen to the ex cop turned country boy who is talking about only god knows what every week. Well, mister, I was a country boy before I was a police officer. Maybe you were listening to it backwards. I don't know. Maybe you should try the Meat Eater podcast, Cutting the Distance, Foundations, Wired to Hunt, Bear Grease, Cows. We can review God's Country or The Element. They're all meat eater podcasts, and surely you'll find something one of them that won't make you so angry. J Cody J. Finishing this up in Manitoba, Canada. I've been up here getting ready to chase black Bears with old friends and new friends. And we'll visit about that later. Something else we'll be talking about very soon is some This country life of barrel gonna hang on just a little longer. I think you're gonna like it. Time to get ready to hit the woods until next week. This is Brent Reeves signing off. Y'all be careful.

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