Maverick said

Say, Mav……did you get much for that hide?  

Is Louisiana Coyote skin considered an Eastern or Western pelt? Asking for a friend.

Sincerely,

Maverick

  

Your friend need not worry his head.  In Louisiana, it is whatever it needs to be at the moment and for the purpose in question.  My Dad was born near Baton Rouge, raised near the old LSU campus, and, during the Great Depression, he and my mother lived in Good Hope, once a small community lying between Pontchartrain and the River. Dad ‘splained this (and other things about the Bayou State) to me before his death.  According to Dad, coyotes and nutria are not considered edible there but just about everything else is, provided you use a reasonable caliber rifle and know how to fix it. I was in BR recently and they still know how to cook shrimp and mud bugs. 

One of our local disk jockies created a radio character with a Cajun cooking program. “Justice Gustin” had recipes for Cottonmouth Moccasins and other questionable fare, including road kill, but even he never mentioned nutria.  I like snails and frog legs but You are welcome to my share of nutria.

To keep this thread germane, I can confirm a .351 WSL factory 180 grain softpoint will, at a range of 30 yards, neatly kill an invading and unpleasant nutria just as dead as maverick’s unlucky coyote, without liquifying his entrails and blowing them out an evulsed, offside shoulder exit wound. 

Maverick said

Grandpa always used a 22 Short well place on the head for nutria along with everything else in the woods.  

  

In South Louisiana during the Depression, 22 Shorts were an accepted form of currency because they represented food.  You didn’t have to starve if you had any kind of 22 rifle and a fishing pole, preferably along with a truck garden. You traded skins for 22 Shorts, which were more useful than a dollar bill and more available.  

In those hard years my Dad had a good job as a journeyman machinist just South of NOLA.  He was able to buy the brand new Model 90 that had been setting in the gun rack of a small town hardware store for months because it was chambered for the 22 WRF, which he called by Remington’s name for it, the “22 Special”.  He said the ammunition was readily available but considerably more expensive than Shorts, which most folks wanted instead. Sadly, when he volunteered for the Army Air Corps after Pearl Harbor, he sold the rifle to have extra money for Mother.  

Several years before he died, I found a 3rd Model so chambered and presented it to him with a thousand rounds of ammunition.  He was surprised at how heavy it felt compared to his little Browning BL-22.  I wound up trading the Model 90 away, with his blessing.