wild hogs??

You folks that have them, do you eat what you kill? Is there a noticeable difference in the meat from the real ones and the ones that have crossed with domestics/ferrel pigs? Saw a hunter a week or so ago with a tub of meat from some they got that were ranging too close to town. It was as red or darker than any beef I've seen... Never tried it because I always thought pork was pork..

FF and the wife took me to a guesthaus (restuarant) that is part of a wildlife park estate (??) for my Bday... We sat outside overlooking the park havind beer and a nice meal while we watched the relatives of what we were eating frolicing happily while waiting thier turn in the kitchen.....

Anyway, had my first boar meat and it looked /tasted better than any beef I've had... Don't know what cut it was but is seemed like the backstrap....

You are what you eat. Wild hogs are no different.
If they're into farmers crops, particularly grain and corn, may be fairly tasty. Acorns, roots tree bark, other swamp vegitation, not so much. Seen the same thing with whitetail deer. Those feasting on corn were like domestic beef. those living off cedar and other forest growth can be awful.

never did have wild hog before, but Ray is right, you are what you eat. I shot a bear that was feasting in a barley field years ago, it was pretty darn tasty.

Same thing here. SIL goes to the mountains to deer hunt (read big beer party) and will come home with Rudolph strapped on the roof. Yhen he complains our corn raised venison tastes better than his...

Actually Acorn fatten hogs have some of the best
pork you'll ever eat,saw awhile back Acorn feed
pork from Spain was selling for around $75/lb in
New York City.Local moonshiner/farmer friend of mine used to have some of the best country hams I've ever eaten fed the hogs spent mash and ran them in a 50 acre section of Oaks.Store bought pork these days is just bland with no real taste of its own.

(quoted from post at 06:01:27 05/07/12) Actually Acorn fatten hogs have some of the best
pork you'll ever eat,saw awhile back Acorn feed
pork from Spain was selling for around $75/lb in
New York City.Local moonshiner/farmer friend of mine used to have some of the best country hams I've ever eaten fed the hogs spent mash and ran them in a 50 acre section of Oaks.Store bought pork these days is just bland with no real taste of its own.

Click to expand...

These animals all run in forested areas, get fed hay, haylage, beets, whatever grains they get from cleaned out combines or is not sellable quality and as much fresh grass as possible from cleaning roadsides etc...
Some of the meat if the place is actually bought from hunters and has froliced in the fields of local farmers.... The plate was a mix of boar, deer, and rabbit... All were very good... and had no real wild taste...
Thing about this area is, within an animal's roaming circle, a complete balanced mix of all feeds that a domestic animal will get along with the extra browsing goodies. Sure it wasn't fat meat but I don't like fat (got enough around my belly :roll: )

Oh I see Lyle. Since the 'long gun registry ' is overwith, you now admit you got guns again... you learn that from your uncle magoo?
As far as ...taste of wild things... I always said a deer wished he was born a cow, live in a barn and eat corn and soy grain all day. When they get the corn, they taste alot better in my book than pinecone, acorn and treebark feed bambies.
My other cousin- the one that brags about his gun collection- anyway, he got a wild pig once, he wasn't impressed, his wife didn't like it at all, they gave it all to me... I tell under aged peasants that this pig tastes like the pork and bacon from the store did when I was little.... agh.. 30 years....OK... 40 odd... OK, when I was a little kid a long time ago.
I think it is as much the breeding as the feed, kinda like as marbling in beef changes everything when in the kitchen.

last feeerl hog I shot had decent red meat, almost no fat.

soundguy

Give this a try fellas. Rub it on that wild hog meat the night before and slow cook in it's on juices the next day.

These things don't have much fat like farm raised, so grilling them usually dries 'em out and makes them tough.

1 C white sugar
1/4 C Lawry's season salt
1/4 C garlic salt
1/3 C celery salt
1/4 C onion salt
1/2 C paprika ( preferably Hungarian)
1/2 C ancho chili powder
1/4 C black pepper
1/4 C lemon pepper
1/4 C ground sage
3T dry mustard
1T ground thyme
1tsp cayenne
1T ground cumin
1T ground coffee (yes, coffee)

Mix in a bowl and put in an airtight container till used.

The best way I have found to cook it is to put a ham or shoulder in a big pot on the wood heater in the shop with onions and potatoes and cook it all day long adding water as needed and salt.
Juicy and tender with no wild taste. Yum Yum.
Richard

dave2, Thunder NO! little males No bigger than 60 lbs, Females 120 lbs,,,After these wts they get too Nasty to eat straight out of the wild. I have seen guys trap the little bigger ones and feed them a real ration and grow them a while to get the nasty, Boorish taste out of them,, but they will never eat a larger pig from the wild!
The rest Gut shoot or Poison, I don"t care which! They are getting worse than Fire Ants Here in Texas. Declare open season on them, on foot, pickup, 4-wheeler, Chopper, Time has come to make a serious dent in their population!
Later,
John A.

I've butchered 200lb boar before and the meat was just fine.

I've also walked up on 200lb boar after the shot and about tossed my lunch from 20 feet away.

Whomever will tell you that any pig over a certain size is bad meat isn't around enough of them.

I'm not sure why some smell and some don't but that's what I've seen and smelled.

You got that right John A., we trap 'em, run dogs, night hunt, stand hunt...whatever it takes to get rid of 'em down here. Like you said, we don't eat any of them over #100.

You got that right John A., we trap 'em, run dogs, night hunt, stand hunt...whatever it takes to get rid of 'em down here. Like you said, we don't eat any of them over #100.

You are absolutely correct. Its open season on wild pigs in Tx. They cause over $56 million in damage to crops/pastures in Tx alone. That does not include the damage to wildlife habitat, parks & residential areas, and livestock through transmittable diseases.

According to Dr. Higginbotham (the recognized wild pig expert) there will be a bait legalized in 2015 which will kill only hogs. Its sodium nitrite and pigs are super sensitive to it. It prevents the blood from absorbing oxygen and it works like an overdose of sleeping pills. Pig gets sleepy from lack of oxygen in the blood, lays down, goes to sleep and never wakes up.

Sodium nitrite is found in lots of prepared meats like salami, but a human would have to eat 183lbs of salami at one time to have adverse affects from the sodium nitrite. Nor does it have adverse affects on other wildlife like deer, squirrels, coons, etc.

These pests have spread all across the US and are even in Canada.

Remember the E-coli outbreak from spinach in California a couple of years ago? That was traced back to wild pigs.

These animals, while the smaller ones do make good eating, do more damage than they are worth as a meat source.

We will definitely be on the list to get some bait.

NitrosaminesA principal concern about sodium nitrite is the formation of carcinogenic nitrosamines in meats containing sodium nitrite when meat is charred or overcooked. Such carcinogenic nitrosamines can be formed from the reaction of nitrite with secondary amines under acidic conditions (such as occurs in the human stomach) as well as during the curing process used to preserve meats. Dietary sources of nitrosamines include US cured meats preserved with sodium nitrite as well as the dried salted fish eaten in Japan. In the 1920s, a significant change in US meat curing practices resulted in a 69% decrease in average nitrite content. This event preceded the beginning of a dramatic decline in gastric cancer mortality.[23] About 1970, it was found that ascorbic acid (vitamin C), an antioxidant, inhibits nitrosamine formation.[24] Consequently, the addition of at least 550 ppm of ascorbic acid is required in meats manufactured in the United States. Manufacturers sometimes instead use erythorbic acid, a cheaper but equally effective isomer of ascorbic acid. Additionally, manufacturers may include alpha-tocopherol (vitamin E) to further inhibit nitrosamine production. Alpha-tocopherol, ascorbic acid, and erythorbic acid all inhibit nitrosamine production by their oxidation-reduction properties. Ascorbic acid, for example, forms dehydroascorbic acid when oxidized, which when in the presence of nitrous anhydride, a potent nitrosating agent formed from sodium nitrate, reduces the nitrous anhydride into nitric oxide.[25] Note that Nitrous Anhydride does not exist in vitro.[26]