At the Blue Springs home of Billy Washington, raccoon, fish, bison and deer are staples on his family's table.

On this day, it's raccoon.

All night he has been soaking a carcass in a solution of salt and vinegar in a five-gallon bucket. Now he rinses the raccoon in his kitchen sink.

"Eating raccoon has never gone out of style. It's just hard to get unless you know somebody," he says as he carefully trims away the fat and the scent glands.

"My kids love eating game. They think eating deer and buffalo make you run faster and jump higher. My grandkids will just tear this one up, it'll be so good."

The meat is almost ready to be boiled, except for one thing: Although its head, innards and three paws have been removed, it still has one. That's the law.

"They leave the paw on to prove it's not a cat or a dog," Washington says.

He cuts off the paw and drops the carcass into a stew pot, slices up a carrot, celery and onion, and sprinkles some seasoning into the water. Two and a half hours later, he transfers it to a Dutch oven. It looks a lot like chicken.

He bathes the raccoon with his own combination of barbecue sauces. Stuffs the cavity with canned sweet potatoes and pours the rest of the juice from the can over the breast.

"I follow the same tradition I watched when I was little. My uncle would cook 'em all day, saving the littlest coon for me," he says.

"If stores could sell coon, we'd run out of them. It's a long-hidden secret that they're so good."

After several hours, a delicious smell - roast beef? chicken? - drifts from the oven.

A mingling of garlic and onion and sweet-smelling spices.

And when Washington opens the lid, a tiny leg falls easily from the bone.

"See that? Tender as a mother's love," he says with a grin. "Good eatin'."

And the taste?

Definitely not chicken.

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