1 Day Old Talon SS fires on taking safety off

Not a lot different from eating gator or frog legs when you think about it. I look forward to eating ‘gator bites’ at a restaurant on the water in Daytona every time I roll into town for Bike Week or Biketoberfest. It is all in how it is cooked no matter what meat you are talking about. First time I had gator at a small restaurant in the Florida Keys it was nasty (pan baked). Frog legs are average where ever I have had them except for a place on Grassy Key called The Galley Grill where they deep fry them, all you can eat on Monday nights, and a side dipping sauce bowl of melted garlic butter and lemon.

The iguana slow cooked on the grill with the garlic salt and BBQ sauce turned out really nice today but next time I will try deep frying one with some corn meal dusting or maybe cajun spices. Don’t waste your time dressing out the entire critter as there is not much meat on the upper body, very thin. Just take the back legs (less the feet) and the first quarter or so of the tail. The one we shot today in the front yard was about 4 1/2 foot and still mostly green and just the head had turned grey (they have long tails). They often get over 8 foot as they mature and turn from solid green to solid grey. They eat EVERYTHING in your vegetable garden. No watermelon for us this year.

This was the main reason for me purchasing the suppressed Talon SS in .22 was for the iguana problem with our extensive backyard vegetable and fruit garden. The little Benjamin .177 pump pistol I bought 25 years ago is just not powerful enough to bring the big ones down, particularly from distances, like today up a 40′ palm tree. Stupid things are everywhere down here in the Florida Keys. Tasty enough that I may not wait for them to come in the garden anymore and start looking for them for my weekend cookouts.

Cheers,
Mitch

Thanks for the tip. We were slow cooking ribs on the smoker in the back yard and I was plinking in a pellet trap with my Benjamin pump pistol and my son was using his Daisy spring cock rifle when my brother in law says there is a 4 1/2 foot iguana under my daughter’s truck. What timing! It had run up a 40′ palm tree be the time I grabbed my Talon SS. Dropped it out of the tree and taught my son how to dress a critter out. Turns out there is not enough meat in the body to make it worth the effort really unless in a survival scenario. Plenty of meat on the hind legs and first third of the tail though. We seasoned it and put some BBQ sauce on it an threw the tail and legs on the slow cook charcoal grill with the small ribs we already had going.

Man was that tasty! No, not like chicken. More like frog but tougher (in a good way) but not too chewy. So the meat is harder than chicken but softer than cow steak.

Thanks for all of the input. I decided to take the rifle back and although he did not have another .22 Talon SS in stock, he took the barrel out of mine and put it on another new .177 Talon SS frame in the store and I am ‘good to go’ now.

Longhunter mentions for safety to “decock after loading a pellet” but how is that done exactly? I prefer to keep mine loaded and by the back door for speed in pest control for my extensive back yard garden (dang iguanas eat a big part of the garden constantly and are an invasive species in Florida).

I may still consider taking the safety out as many mention doing here. I am actually an armorer for Beretta, Glock, and Smith & Wesson pistols but this is a different beast and I am very aware from my other armor schools how different each weapon system is and how easy it can be to damage parts unless you specifically know what you are doing (particularly with trigger groups). Has anyone made a uTube video that details step by step the procedure to remove this? For example, I removed the magazine safety from my S&W 645 but unless you had been trained it is unlikely that you would know that it involves removing the rear sight as an integral step.

Cheers,
Mitch