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Southern USA invasive species ...

6K views 68 replies 35 participants last post by  Pepperjd 
#1 ·
Was watching an outdoor channel program and they were hunting Nutria, which is an invasive species. They look like an oversized sewer rat. Just curious if anyone has ever hunted these critters. I think it would be fun with a 9mm carbine.
 
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#5 ·
The bounty has recently been increased to $5.00 per tail .
You get to keep the fur and meat .
Nutria are clean , plant eating and have a lean good tasting meat .
I much prefer them to possums and ***** .

Lets see ... you get $5.00 bounty per harvested animal tail , a fur bearing animal that you can sell the pelt, green pelts go for $1.77 right now . So that's $6.77 each plus they are very good to eat ... I don't see any problem with hunting them .
A 22 LR will do the job just fine .

Hunting nutria pays off better than hunting squirrels !
Gary
 
#9 ·
Interesting.

 
#10 ·
They're quite common up here in Washington, put a 22 in the boiler room or brain bucket. I was stationed in FT Polk,Louisiana back in the 90s ( holy crap it was hot ) didn't see any then. We got Pelicans up here on the coast now which is very new. Not to go into global warming but things are changing. And now Murder Hornets 😬
 
#11 ·
Never shot one with bow or 44 cap&ball as a teen when cove fishing for crappie or flippin for bass after work and before evening summer weight training, energy just seemed endless then.

Always wondered how big water rats they were able to get along with all the huge and foul smelling water snakes and cottonmouth.

Never came across killer bees but the south american fire ants were insane. After putting down sod near some of lakes, have to repair irrigation at times or at various farms - ants were brutal!!!! ~ real potential killers.
 
#48 ·
Never shot one with bow or 44 cap&ball as a teen when cove fishing for crappie or flippin for bass after work and before evening summer weight training, energy just seemed endless then.

Always wondered how big water rats they were able to get along with all the huge and foul smelling water snakes and cottonmouth.

Never came across killer bees but the south american fire ants were insane. After putting down sod near some of lakes, have to repair irrigation at times or at various farms - ants were brutal!!!! ~ real potential killers.
But, the gators love them! I think part of Louisiana’s significant gator population is due to nutria... not sure how well they like snowbirds(?)
 
#12 ·
I've been aware of them for decades, but have never seen one. They're not in Maine, at least yet. Wikipedia claims that "nutria" is "The trade name for the fur and skins of the coypu (Myocastor coypus), a large rodent native to South America. In North America it is used as the common name for the animal itself." That's from their disambiguation page.

Here's the full article on the coypu. They belong to a family commonly called "spiny rats".
 
#15 ·
In my youth, early to mid 80s, I used to trap and maintain a trap line, back when there was an actual market for hides. **** mostly, but the occasional mink, muskrat, possum, beaver. Nutria is closely related to muskrat and easy to catch. Hides brought around 8-10 bucks for a big one. They skin as easy as rabbit, no fleshing of the hide necessary. They are a menace to the farmer with crops along waterways and reproduce like, well, rodents. I have eaten a BBQ of beaver and muskrat and had 0 complaints. As said, a very clean animal. You could do a lot worse for a meal. Heads up to those looking to hunt them. They are typically most active nocturnally.
 
#16 ·
If you need a few Nutria recipes ... I can post them .
Makes a good Chile , Jambalaya , Gumbo , Sauce Picante , Fricasseed , Nutria Creole , Pot roasted with gravy... basically take your favorite venison , rabbit or turtle recipe and substitute Nutria meat for it ... it will turn out just fine .

Don't let good eats go to waste just because you don't know how to cook it !
Wasting good food is a sin ...or so my Mom would tell us .
Gary
 
#17 ·
I hear ya, gwpercle! I took to my grandmother many a **** for the pot. She was depression era and knew what to do with it. Wouldn't turn down a possum or a groundhog either. I ate them as they did. No complaints. Everything goes good with green beans and new potatoes. And my mom said the same thing. I'll hit you up for a recipe sometime when I come across something "different".
 
#54 ·
My wife and I have been together 38 yrs but she is my second wife and not the mother of my 3 children. I shared that just so this story makes sense. She's a city girl and I was raised so far back in the woods that the sun didn't come up till 8:00. When I took her home to meet my family, my son and brother had been hunting and bagged some squirrels and a ****. When we got ready to set down to dinner my mother told my wife " Being a city girl I figured you wouldn't like fried squirrel an gravy so I made you some **** burger."
 
#18 ·
Wow, I didn't think that many folks had experience with them. Louisiana has a mess of them as does Texas. I think a 22 mag would do just as well. What do they use the tails for? I've read they are tasty ... the tv show said a cross between muskrat and beaver.
 
#19 ·
You don’t have to turn in the entire animal for the bounty. You just have to cut off and turn in the tail as proof that you killed it. That way you can also sell the meat and pelt.

Harry Lee, the old sheriff of Jefferson Parish outside New Orleans, would have his SWAT team snipers go out at night and spotlight nutria in the local canals and get target practice killing nutria.
 
#24 ·
I used to live in a house with a canal running through the neighborhood. The people before me had put in a bulkhead of landscape timbers. The nutria would tunnel under the bulkhead and have tunnels and openings all along the water line. Made it a pain to cut the grass down there. They normally only come out at night. Saw a couple when I was fishing at night. I was constantly at war filling holes they would just dig back up.
 
#29 ·
Haha rmichael. Same procedure, different rat! I like hunting and eating squirrel. With them, I'll make a cut across the back and pull hide in both directions until what you want is exposed. A little quicker I think. A pair of dikes for the feet and tail help. No head or brains for me but I hear some folks like those??
 
#30 ·
They’re all over the place in Western Oregon - somebody brought them here to raise for fur and meat and they got loose. They’re almost exactly the size, shape and color of beavers and can be mistaken for them if you don’t see the tail.

I’ve hunted them with a .22 LR rifle since I was a kid - also with a 12ga shotgun (less sporting, more messy) and even once or twice with my .30-’06 while deer hunting. Their fur is sort of like beaver (but they are not protected) and the meat tastes like rabbit... sort of.

In most parts of Oregon where nutria live, they can be hunted night, day and all year ‘round. With permission of the owner, you don’t even need a license to hunt them.
 
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#39 ·
I live on 33ish acres of family farmland In South Louisiana. Crops are rotated between sugarcane and soybeans. That creates a huge difference in vegetation height. I’ll never forget walking down my long driveway from bringing my trash can to the end by the roadway and catching something out the corner of my eye. About 20 yards away was a coyote trotting through the foot tall soybeans. It hadn’t noticed me and I let out a holler. That got it’s attention and luckily it sped up and shot off in the opposite direction. After that experience I don’t look at trash night the same way. I always leave the house with my Surefire light and my 9mm.
 
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