Serious rabbit question.

[fido dog]

About a hundred years ago some buddys and I shot some rabbits. They had worms.

Can you still eat rabbit if they have worms????

[PEL]

At this point it might depend on the extent of the freezer burn - 100 years is a long time...
I assume these were intestinal worms? The rabbits should be fine. Cooked you could eat the worms too!

[Angus]

I gotta throw this in: when my dad, who was an avid duck hunter, passed away, we defrosted the freezer in his garage (the glacier).  Found all manner of mummified birds in it, including one teal with a tag from `86!!  Of course, the old man had lost his sense of smell, and pretty much his sense of taste, so he'd put something like that rancid, freezerburned bird in a crock pot and stew it.  The smell alone kept the rats out of the house!!!

[Tsalagi]

If you're talking about the worms under the skin, just flick them away and continue dressing the meat. The local birds will appreciate the worms and they don't do any harm to the meat. Just don't tell any squeamish people about it at the dinner table when serving the rabbit.

[JMartin]

PEL....that's pretty funny! We would never eat a rabbit with "wolves". Dad made us feed 'em to the hogs. I gotta agree with Tsalagi though, they're a bot, or cattle grub, I wouldn't have any problems eating  a rabbit with 'em.

[Don Stokes]

Botfly larvae only infest healthy animals. If the rabbit has "wolves" it's safer to eat than one that doesn't.

I've read that Native Americans wouldn't eat a warm-season rabbit or squirrel unless it DID have one.

[JMartin]

Makes sense. Some beef cattle have lot's of them. We eat them. My business partner got a raging case of "rabbit fever", Tularemia, when we were kids. It was pretty tough on him. We had a weekend rabbit hunt, camping, cookout. There was five of us that didn't get it that weekend, so......we figured he probably cut himself, or got poked with a bone or something, got rabbit blood in the cut. It was tough on him. Be careful when cleaning them.

[Flt Rck Shtr]

We were always told never to eat a rabbit until after the first hard frost and never eat one with knots (worbles) on them or you would get Tularemia. I have an uncle that had it as a child and nearly died, I was told.

[Tsalagi]

You can't get tularemia from warbles (bot fly larvae.)Flies don't carry tularemia. In fact, cooking until done kills tularemia. The risk is in the skinning and gutting, which is why you wear surgical gloves while doing so. A white-spotted liver is how you know the rabbit has tularemia. I've eaten plenty of spring and summer rabbit.