Jake has eaten squirrel, different birds. I was always leery of their cookouts when I first met him. Jake had a large family who raised 7 independent kids who learned if they ate they had to work and provide either picking beans and crops or hunting. His father was a hardworking man. His mothers work,' as the saying goes' was never done. I was more of a city slicker who lived part time in the country, with a mother who was city girl raised by well to do parents but wanted out of the city, moved to the country. Answer is no, sadly, I've not eaten anything you couldn't buy at the butcher or grocer.
I agree that lobster has a great marketing team. And to think it was fed to slaves because no one else would eat the Biblically unclean foods.
I've eaten squirrel, rabbits and deer while avoiding the buckshot. I've had raw ground beef in Germany. It has to be prepared and served in one day by law. The worst was calamari which is squid tentacles. It's rubbery and you chew and chew and chew until you're tired of chewing when you just swallow.
I won't eat anything shot with lead shot. I always used a .22 and shot for the head. The same with grouse, always a .22. Anyone else eaten bull, sheep, or goat cajones? Now that is some good eats if fixed right.
Yeah, I'm with @Faye Fox. We ate squirrel, but usually as a meat flavoring for a stew or pot of beans over a campfire. Only bad shots in my neck of the woods used shotguns on squirrels; we always used .22s. We also shot frog for the legs (illegally) by using .22 shorts and a hollow potato as a suppressor. Better than chicken. I have had snake, alligator, rabbits, various game birds, Guinea pigs, and a lot of stuff in both the Orient and Latin America that I had no idea what I was eating. Moose tongue is wonderful stuff, but it takes a long time to prepare. I haven't had the moose nose stew though, although some folks here say it is good too. Mink head stew is another thing eaten by trappers here that I haven't had. Beaver is good, although we usually fed it to our dogs, as it is greasy like opossum. I don't recall eating muskrat but I may have. The native dishes, both here and in Japan, that are fermented meats and fish are something I have always deemed too dangerous to consume.
I suppose people will eat just about anything if they are hungry enough. My parents were children of the Depression so they weren't as picky as I am. I love crab but my brother wouldn't touch it. He turned up his nose at "bottom feeders," including catfish.
I loved catfish when I lived near the Gulf Coast in Texas. I've had moose but prefer whitetail deer to moose. However, while I liked whitetail deer in the UP of Michigan, I hated whitetail deer in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. I suppose it had to do with their diet.
Mama ate some things I didn't even want to be in the same room with, like Pickled Pigs feet. And she would trick us with Brains and eggs, that is, till I was old enough to read. I wish I had a larger wild menu, and sure if times get bad I will. I also ate lots of catfish as a child. Don't care for it now.
Like a lot of you, I have eaten many different kinds of game growing up; squirrel, rabbit, deer, dove, pheasant, quail, tongue, brains, frog legs, crawdads, wild turkey, rocky mountain oysters and probably some other things that I can’t remember right off the top of my head. I also had to help my dad skin, gut, and butcher some of the critters. It wasn’t just for boys to know how to do. I liked eating most of it but I didn’t like the tongue or brains, but I had to eat them anyway before I could leave the table. We sure liked those rocky mountain oysters as kids though! It was one of our favorites. I don’t care to eat any of those things ever again, and I haven’t for many many years, but if I was hungry enough I would not have a problem with it.
My grandfather was of the depression too, but he got lucky and landed a job at Maritta Bread Co. out skirts of Atlanta, with bread lines it kept the plant going, then he started buying up penny on the dollar real estate he turned into rental properties all over Atlanta area. Got rich off the depression.
The deer I've had from mountainous regions required the "soak in tomato juice before eating" treatment (and it was still too gamey) from eating roots & acorns, while the deer harvested near farmlands was literally grain-fed from the cornfields, and was always mild & delicious.
Kopi luwak, scorpions, rattlesnake, snails, haggis (American version), insects. Eggs in different stages of development inside a chicken, which popped when I bit them, and that startled and repulsed me a little as a kid, though to others they were a delicacy. Also, insects, borscht, Korean kimchi an' I love it. My sister, older by 20 years, said during WW2, beef went to the troops, horse was sold to civilians. She liked it. I have had it only once so far, unfortunately canned, so it was sub-par. I found a can of chili powder when I was younger. First time I had seen any. Used it in my first attempt to make homemade chili. It was very good, if I say so myself. Much later I realized the bugs were not an original part of the mixture! They had crawled in and died. Didn't taste bad, though. Little earwigs.