Tried a couple of times after a couple of resets, and Gobbler still isn't giving out his quest, nor is he accepting meat.
Gobbler is still broken
Some grammatical ambiguity in Gobbler's description has been sorted out for v840. The quest is accessible to characters level 2 - 4 inclusive.
I've also gotten confirmation that it works for characters in the above level range.
If, after v840 goes up, you are levels 2 - 4 and can't get rats for Gobbler, open up a new bug report.