Safely Eating Wild Rabbit in Survival Situations

Assume for a moment that you are on a hiking trip and that you get lost. You find yourself in a survival situation and quickly make camp in a safe place, then head out to find food. Wild rabbits happen to be plentiful in the area and with a simple snare, you get lucky enough to catch one for dinner. Do you know how to safely prepare, cook and eat it?

Making wild rabbit ready to cook

Catching the rabbit is the toughest part, so the rest will be somewhat easy. That said, you will first need to skin the rabbit. While somewhat disgusting at first, it is not hard to do.

One of the most important details in skinning a rabbit is to wear gloves if possible. The reason for this is because rabbit blood can have some seriously nasty properties. It is best to keep this blood from direct contact with your skin if at all possible.

Take a sharp hunting knife and cut the rabbit lengthwise from head to tail. Remove all of the organs from the rabbit, and dispose of them immediately. If there are any bears in the area, they will certainly smell this process quickly. The sooner you are able to rid the campsite of the organs, blood and body parts, the better.

Next, you will grip the rabbit from one end and pull the skin off lengthwise. This is not nearly as hard as you might imagine if the kill is fresh. Chop off the head, tail and legs and dispose of them as well. Rinse the remaining rabbit meat with clean water thoroughly.

Safety from predators when cleaning and skinning the rabbit

When disposing of rabbit parts, you should keep in mind that the further away from camp they are the better. This nonsense about burying them to keep the scent out of camp is nonsense. Bears will smell them right away. You are better off putting them as far from camp as possible. As a matter of fact, you are better off cleaning and gutting the rabbit far away from camp in the first place.

Cooking the rabbit to the proper temperature

Once you have the rabbit skinned and gutted, then you simply need to build a basic fire with a skewer over it. Two y-shaped sticks and a stick to skewer the rabbit works just fine. Place the rabbit just above the flame without putting the rabbit directly in the fire. Make sure you turn the rabbit occasionally to cook it evenly.

The right temperature for a rabbit is at least 160 degrees, so you want to be sure to cook it thoroughly. The last thing you want is to eat half cooked rabbit and get sick in a survival situation. Cook it longer than you think you need to and you should be fine. No blood should be present when it is done cooking and the meat should be well done.

If you follow these basic steps, you will be eating in high style the next time you cook rabbit in the wild. Nothing tastes better when it is done correctly.

Source:

Cooking With Wild Game; healthysd.gov