How to Field Dress and Skin Hogs

[Gray Fox]

It's been 40 years since I shot my last hog in Hawaii, and will be heading to a middle Georgia WMA to chase some with .45 Colt cast boolits in my Rossi 24" rifle and my Smith Mountain Gun. Assuming success on a less that 150# eating size hog, what is the best/easiest way to field dress and skin one? I'm going within the next 30 days before it gets to darn hot. Thanks, GF

[JudgeBAC]

Try this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT9itEYJNmI&feature=related

[flounderman]

I skinned a lot of domestic hogs years ago. I used a couple of blocks of wood to hold them on their back with all four legs pointing up in the air. split the skin down the belly from one end to the other and up the legs. skin the legs down and skin both ways on the belly slit, laying the hide out as you go. the meat will lay on the hide as you roll the hog to finish cutting the skin loose it was laying on. when you have it skinned and the hide stretched out you can lay it on its side, on the hide and open the body and ribs and roll everything out. if it is not absolutely necessary, I prefer not to make any cuts on an animal until I have it where I intend to skin it. keep your hands clean while you are skinning and gutting. don't get something strong on your hands and then handle the meat. give it time to cool and air out before you freeze it. if you don't have a cooler to hang it in, a refridgerator will work. leave the meat open to the air. don't put it in bags. leaving it 2 or 3 days in the refridgerator exposed to the air will make a world of difference in how it smells and tastes. this works on deer or any large game

[LEADHOPPER]

Gray Fox, not to get off the subject of field dressing wild hogs, but which WMA are you planning on going to? Just wondering due to the fact that I to hunt hogs at a couple of the WMA's around middle, GA and know for a fact after deer season you can hunt hogs on WMA's until the end of small game season which would be the end of Feb. The only catch is that you can only use a gun that is deamed a small game weapon. Which would be anything rimfire or a muzzleloader. Now I do not know many folks that would shot a gray tree rat with a 45 or 50 cal muzzleloader but that is the way the hunting regs are written. Unless you are hunting a special hog hunt for that WMA you might want to check into that, I would hate to see you get a ticket for hunting hogs with the wrong weapon, or for hunting hogs when the WMA's do not have a small game hunt in process. Just my 2 cents worth.

LH

[LEADHOPPER]

As far as field dressing them make sure that you have some good rubber gloves on when you do this. Dish washing gloves work pretty good. Wild hogs carry lots of bad stuff and you don't want to get any on them. I just field dress them like I would a deer and them I hang them up to skin them. I know at Oaky Woods WMA they have a skinning pole at the check station. Not sure about the other WMA's though.

[Gray Fox]

LH, I was looking at Ocmulgee. My brother and I both have TC .54 sidelocks that will do the trick. I've about decided to call DNR up in Social Circle to see if I can get a clear read of the reg. On page 13 of the current hunting reg, under legal firearms it says, "Feral Hog Firearms: Any deer, bear, turkey or small game firearms." I sure don't want to hunt with a .22 or #6 shot. My question will be, since the hogs are tearing up the DNR food plots so much, is if hogs can be hunted after the squirrel season ends at the end of Feb. If you take a look at the current issue of GA Outdoor News there is an article about hog hunting with traditional archery gear at this WMA. One of the guys I know from Traditional Bowhunters of GA is the one using the longbow in the photos, and he claims to have taken 175 hogs with that bow. I've shot with him and I believe it. Take a look at the photo of how the hogs have torn up a planted area. I'll drop you a note with what I find out. GF

[chaos]

I've butchered my fair share of wild swine. They are not any different to clean than a deer. Only difference is the skin can be a bit tougher and greasier. I keep a roll of paper towels to wipe my hands with when skinning. They butcher/quarter our exactly the same.

I never wear gloves when skinning any animal. I think its a good way to cut your fingers off. Swine disease is way blown out of proportion. I havent gotten "the fever" yet and I would bet I've cleaned close to 200 of them.

[hamour]

I prefer to hang a hog from its bottom jaw, just slit the jaw from the V of the jaw back towards the throat, run your rope through (Like putting a big fish on a stringer) and out his mouth. Hang him and then cut him down the middle of his back plus cut his legs and neck towards the gutting cut, just like skinning a deer. Then peel the skin off half at a time. This works easiest for me.

[Lloyd Smale]

I used to help my buddy with his pig hunting operation and gutted and skinned a bunch of them and never used gloves and never had any problems because of it. there kind of a bugger to skin, at least compared to a deer and i couldnt imagine struggling with a pair of gloves on.

[starmac]

I'm just curious, does any of you guys that hunt hogs scrape them and render the lard and make cracklings, or is it just too much trouble on a hunt.

[chaos]

I'm just curious, does any of you guys that hunt hogs scrape them and render the lard and make cracklings, or is it just too much trouble on a hunt.


I personally never have, nor do I know anyone who does. I like to eat the darn things, but never even thought of making them myself.

[starmac]

We always made them when I was a kid, but it would be a pain on a hunt to rig up to scrape the hog.

[PacMan]

Like hamour said. Spliting the skin down the back is a lot easier.

[greywolf444]

I took mine thru the car wash first then a good scubbing with peroxide and a new toilet brush. got him all nice and clean. hung and skinned like a deer. i made some wood blocks with nails driven thru to better grip the greasy hide. I was feeding this one to a group of people and didn't want to risk contamination on the meat. much nicer to work on a clean hog.

[x101airborne]

what is the best/easiest way to field dress and skin one? Thanks, GF

After butchering around realistically 2000 of them (no that is not an exaggeration) I say that the best thing to do is go to your hardware store and purchase a retractable razor knife with a hook blade. These are comonly used for cutting lenolieum (sp?) and carpet and usually come with several blades. With the hog on it's belly like it would squat, split down the back from the back off the skull to the tail. Cut around the hole(s) and down the back of the legs. then cut down both sides of the neck behind the jowels. grab a skinning knife and peel the hide down both sides front to back. you will have kind of a skin tarp laid out both sides. Take a breaking knife or a large deboning knife and remove the shoulders down to the first joint. Use an anvil type tree pruner to remove the shoulders at the first leg joint. Remove the backstraps downboth sides of the back to the front of the pelvis. Debone the pelvis from the top. This puts the hip joints in a bind and you can seperate the ball joint easily with a sharp tip knife. Or you can cut the bone with your handy dandy tree pruners. Cut the hams off with the pruners when you get to the first leg joint. There you have all that is practical to use without a lot of mess and all the hide, guts, pee, poop, dirt is contained in one pile.

There is more that you CAN use on a hog, but when you kill as many as I do, it takes too long to get. If you want the ribs and such, you are almost gonna have to hang it. Then you need of course a gambrel, a hoist, a waterhose, etc. Rain on that for a hog. On a track of several thousand acres with no tractor in the wet season, I can reduce a 300 pound pig to around a hundred pounds of pure meat in around 10 minutes. It is a lot easier to pack out 100 pounds of meat. Watch hog meat carefully as to cool it as fast as possible. If I am pretty sure of killing one, I take 30 pounds of ice and 10 gallons of water and 2 cups of pure salt and make a slush in my ice chest. This will cool a lot of meat quickly and the salt not only lowers water temp, but helps with some of the funky smell that hogs can have. Leave the ice chest in your pickup and fill with hog meat when you get back. Even if you dont kill anything, that water will chill a case of beer in no time. :drinks:

[Brl]

x101, I like that idea. A friend took me hog hunting on his tomato farm one time. I shot 3 hogs and he cleaned them. I was/am new to hunting and he said he would do all 3 in 20 minutes and get me the meat I needed.

He did something very similar (I think) to what you said. He cut open the back and took the tenderloins or backstrap...forget which is which. Then he cut out (after peeling back the skin) both hams and shoulders and left the rest. He never opened up the chest/abdominal cavity. It wasn't messy at all and it did really take him about a half an hour to do all 3. I was pretty amazed.

Thanks!!

[RugerFan]

I quit gutting hogs a long time ago. Now I skin and bone them in place. Skin one side and de-bone, then roll em over and do the other side (bring gallon ziplocs and a backpack). No need to open the belly at all. If you shoot one with a quartering shot and puncture anything icky, you will rue the day you attempted to gut that rascal. A very nasty diarrhea type mess will be awaiting you.

[Brl]

I'm going to have to start practicing this. Great tips...thanks!

[Gray Fox]

This method sounds similar to what a friend does in S. GA, but I had never had it explained in detail. Sounds like the way to go as the weather warms up, for sure. Thanks for all the input.

[onondaga]

If you can quickly get the un- gutted carcass to a pressure washer, blast it clean first before cutting. They are pigs, literally. The meat will taste better if you get the pig stink off with a pressure washer. Some pig hunters carry a portable pressure washer and a barrel of water right on their truck for this. After gutting, blast the inside too. Then, wait a few days before eating it so the pig stink will be out of your nose too.

Gary

[dogrunner]

quickest, neatest, easiest hog cleaning I have ever seen was done at a Florida hunt club I was once a member of.

Usually when someone wanted a hog for BBQ or smoking they'd catch it alive with their pit bulls and truss it till they got back to the camp site. The hog was then promptly shot in the head with a .22 and immediately hung by the snout using a set of welding clamps. The carcass was then scrubbed and cleaned of sand and mud. It was NOT gutted at this point.

The skinning consisted of using a razor carpet knife and the initial cut was around the head, just south of the ears. That cut was immediately followed by multiple slits thru the hide & into the fat vertically to the pigs extremities. The resulting hide strips were about 3 inches in width.

Those individual strips of skin were then pealed off and when the animal was completely free of it's hide the body cavity was opened and the entire contents dumped into a large bucket on the ground just under said pig.

The rest of the dressing consisted of a quick washout of the cavity, followed by quartering and trimming.

That crew could complete one pig in just about the time it took me to write this up and was a real revelation to me. I will never again bother to try to clean one on the ground!!!

[RP]

Well were starting to get hogs in the areas I hunt and I have been thinking of what to do if i shot one. A lot of tips here I will keep in mind thanks for the info fellows. I do have a ? I clean my deer using a crane this is how I do it. I cut around neck split hide down the back tie that off to bed of crane and then lift the deer out of its hide. I then remove the front legs back strap and meat off the hams. I do not gut the deer. Would something like that work for a hog ?

[dogrunner]

Ramrod. You say you don't gut your deer, if so you are leaving one of the best cuts of meat the things have, ie: inside loin.

[10 ga]

dittos " " to dogrunner! RAMROD, They call those loins "slapdaddys" because .... You should be slapped for leavin even one behind. 10

[selmerfan]

Ramrod. You say you don't gut your deer, if so you are leaving one of the best cuts of meat the things have, ie: inside loin.

You actually CAN pull the inside loin, aka, tenderloin, hanging loin, slapdaddy, etc., without gutting the deer. Just literally reach in and pull them out.