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We've all walked along the shores of
lakes, ponds, and rivers and seen the
bleached out remains of crawdad shells
and legs as leftovers from some critter's
tasty meal. As we consider crawdads tasty
morsels, they also are near the top of the
menu for mink, raccoons, skunks, and
large birds that wander along the shal-
lows looking for a meal.
According to the Louisiana Agricultural
Marketing Center, their state accounts for
over 90 percent of all crawdad produc-
tion in the United States and live ones or
frozen tail meat can be purchased from
several Louisiana producers that you can
find on the Web. But with the cost of
shipping, including refrigeration, this gets
to be a costly option. Crawdads are now
seen quite regularly at the fish counter in
many of the big box stores in Montana
and most all are imported from China.
With both options you will be getting
farm-raised crawdads so I'm guessing
that the taste-fade would be similar, for
example, to the difference between true
wild salmon and farm-raised salmon, in
other words, just no comparison.
So, if you're really interested in trying
out some crawdad recipes, why not get
the real thing, wild crawdads from pristine
Montana water. Some people who are
into crawdad cuisine trap their meal, and
others catch them by hand, which in some
cases is done by scuba diving. There are
Crawdad
montana's
Cuisine
M
ost waterways, ponds and lakes in Montana
are home to this cousin of the lobster, the
crayfish. They are also called crawfish, crawdads,
and mudbugs. This is not going to be about biology except according to the Montana
Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks there are two predominate types of crawdads
that make their home in Montana, the Virile Crayfish and the Signal Crayfish.
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