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View Full Version : Results from an area hog hunt



x101airborne
02-15-2012, 07:46 AM
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/417510/wild_hog_hunt_serves_as_a_contest_a_diseasetesting _program/

I was not in on this competition and none of the hogs were killed on my property (that I know of). But this competition covers our area and there were some interesting FACTS found out about pigs and disease. Check ou the article.

BoolitSchuuter
02-15-2012, 08:26 AM
I've been reading posts about hog hunting for some time now. Hogs have everything a hunter wants in a challenge. Too bad its all out weighed by the destructive pest factor. I ALMOST wish we had them here.

2ndAmendmentNut
02-15-2012, 08:31 AM
I would not wish a hog problem even on my enemies. The only good hog is a dead one.

DIRT Farmer
02-15-2012, 10:57 AM
Boolitschuter some of my neighbors do hog hunt not far from you on some land they farm in MO, not far from you.

stubshaft
02-15-2012, 04:22 PM
I've been reading posts about hog hunting for some time now. Hogs have everything a hunter wants in a challenge. Too bad its all out weighed by the destructive pest factor. I ALMOST wish we had them here.

No you don't. I do predator control on a local ranch and they just don't stop breeding.

bowfin
02-15-2012, 05:01 PM
Any idea whether the meat was utilized?

Hamish
02-15-2012, 05:31 PM
[QUOTE=BoolitSchuuter;1591249]Hogs have everything a hunter wants in a challenge.


Hogs have everything I want too.


BACON!!:bigsmyl2:


Personally, I don't think it will be the rats and the cockroaches at the end of the world, it'll be the piggies.

Noticed that was a 2006 story. Wonder if they kept going. (I was too busy jumping in with my two pence to actually contribute with a little google-fu.),,,,


mmmm,,, bacon, it's wjhy the moose-lims are cranky. They don't get any.

x101airborne
02-15-2012, 06:56 PM
They have that contest every year. It is the first weekend in Feb. I was looking for the Cuero Record writeup that we got in the local paper the other day, but that was all I could find. And the Cuero Record did not seem to have a search function, so I am not sure if the paper is online or not. The paper only services about 2500 people, so it is kinda a small thing.

x101airborne
02-15-2012, 06:58 PM
And dont get me wrong, you COULD, but you would be hard pressed to find enough belly to make bacon on a wild hog. Now just salt pork? sure. Bunches.

TXGunNut
02-15-2012, 10:57 PM
Still looking for bacon on a wild piggie. Most don't even have ribs worth the trouble of saving.
I'd be interested in the disease screening results. I take precautions-just like domestic pork-but would like to know.

x101airborne
02-16-2012, 08:35 AM
The Cuero Record writeup said that every pig killed in the contest has the sinuses cut out for disease testing. In the 8 years they have been doing the contest, NO disease has ever been found in the near 3 thousand wild animals processed and tested. The good thing about these animals is they come from over 1500 square miles and are not communitied before testing wich could skew the results. If there is ANY disease or sickness, it is present in the sinuses. No matter what kind it is. This is basically proving that although they COULD carry disease, wild pork is probably as clean or cleaner than venison.

This part is my opinion...... I have raised domestic pigs for home processing and have seen some of the diseases possible. I have done the vaccinations and used precautions. I have also eaten several hundred wild pigs and sometimes used less than exacting butchering standards for them. I have never yet, YET, had a problem with wild pork. I think ferral pigs are cleaner and more disease resistant on their own than domestic animals on any day.

Ed in North Texas
02-16-2012, 08:39 AM
Still looking for bacon on a wild piggie. Most don't even have ribs worth the trouble of saving.
I'd be interested in the disease screening results. I take precautions-just like domestic pork-but would like to know.

FWIW, the USDA has declared US farm raised pork as no longer being a danger of transmitting trichinosis. The hog farmers/industry has worked a long, long time to eliminate the problem and the AG department said a couple of months ago it has worked and they no longer recommend cooking pork to 180 degrees, dropping it to 165 degrees. I'd sure take care with wild hog meat (though we don't know for sure that there is trichinosis across the wild population, we also don't know that it isn't there), but you can skip the overcooking with domestic pork - or not - your choice.

Ed

RidgerunnerAk
02-19-2012, 09:50 PM
It's my understanding that there has not been a case of pork caused trichinosis in a human in the US since something like 1957. Not sure if that's true or not and can't remember where or when I read it, but it was many years ago and I do remember thinking that the source was reliable at the time. I learned to eat bacon raw while working in the Russian far east. I thought they were crazy until I tried it. It's better raw than cooked. Over there they have so little food sometimes that they can't stand to waste a single oz of fat so they just make sandwiches of raw bacon. In the jungle in Belize we hunted hogs at night, which was exciting to put it mildly, and slow smoked them in pieces, which was as tasty as it comes, aside from roasted armadillo, of course.

x101airborne
02-19-2012, 11:52 PM
Not to change or hijack my own subject,......... but how do you roast an armadillo. I understand the litteral meaning, but am interested. I have never eaten one, but I am willing to try anything once.

Halley Barry, take note.

a.squibload
02-20-2012, 12:52 AM
Basically, in the shell. Spices to taste.

Hamish
02-20-2012, 01:19 AM
Watching a bear hunt the other day, they stated that contact with bear meat is the no.1 way to contact trichinosis now.

101, what would bring you to believe that Halle Barry would get all hot and bothered watching you gnoshing on a 'dillo? Izzat some new kind'a freakie-deakie??

(Ha!, I crack me up sometimes!)

RugerFan
02-20-2012, 01:22 AM
Not to change or hijack my own subject,......... but how do you roast an armadillo. I understand the litteral meaning, but am interested. I have never eaten one, but I am willing to try anything once.

Halley Barry, take note.

A buddy of mine from TX used to stir fry armadillo and really liked it. Not sure what season etc he used.

Mooseman
02-20-2012, 01:34 AM
A buddy of mine from TX used to stir fry armadillo and really liked it. Not sure what season etc he used.

Why Dill o weed of course !!!

jdgabbard
02-20-2012, 01:56 AM
I'm not hungry enough to feast on a dillo...

parrott1969
02-20-2012, 03:45 AM
Armadillo, Man you have got to be NUTS. Why would someone eat a disease carring rodent? Can you say leprosy?? There are roughly 50 documented cases in the United States every year and they can all be traced back to the consumption of armadillo. NO THANK YOU, I WILL PASS. I LIKE MY APPENDAGES. ALL 5 OF THEM.

DrB
02-20-2012, 04:48 AM
Armadillo, Man you have got to be NUTS. Why would someone eat a disease carring rodent? Can you say leprosy?? There are roughly 50 documented cases in the United States every year and they can all be traced back to the consumption of armadillo. NO THANK YOU, I WILL PASS. I LIKE MY APPENDAGES. ALL 5 OF THEM.

I was curious about armadilos and leprosy so did some reading a while back...

Apparently only one in twenty is susceptible to leprosy in the us population, the rest supposedly have a degree of natural immunity. I expect the statistic varies by race and health... Unless you're one of the unlucky five percent, you may never get it even if repeatedly exposed. (but do ya want to take the chance? :) ) If you get it, the good news is that if correctly diagnosed there are treatments... The bad news is most doctors will never have diagnosed a case in their careers, and so you've got a decent chance of not being diagnosed correctly before things get grim.

The armadillo population supposedly has an incidence on the ballpark of of one in ten or so... But I get the feeling there is little resolution to the data (small sample sizes, so that number is probably unreliable, and little characterization of regional variation... Maybe youre neighborhood is 100% infected, or maybe it's clean, and I doubt if anyone has any good reason to think they know which it actually is ). Some of the folks diagnosed supposedly were infected by digging around while gardening in.burrows and such soil that armadilos had been in.

Folks say armadillo is pretty tasty... I believe 'em and might try it if they cooked it very, very, well. I wouldn't mess with the risk of cleaning one though unless I was on the starving side of peckish! :)

Mooseman
02-20-2012, 05:33 AM
By golly you are right...Texas and Louisiana Armadillos are carriers.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1010536

Look at the map...Looks like Fla Armadillos are safe...whew !

Jeff Michel
02-20-2012, 07:30 AM
Trichinosis Is caused by a parasite found usually in the soil. People in the U.S have had it drilled in their head to fully cook pork for years. It's not much of a problem with domestically raised pig as they are normally raised on concrete. As a result, with fully cooking the pork and the environment that they are raised is very rare to non-existent. Europe has alway certified their pork ie, freezing pork at 0F for thirty days kills the parasite. Thats why you can eat raw pork in Europe. As someone in the food industry, I would absolutely cook anything that came out of a hunting trip, be it bear or boar. Most of the animals are infested with internal parasites. Our domestic animals too, we just treat them.

x101airborne
02-20-2012, 09:51 AM
101, what would bring you to believe that Halle Barry would get all hot and bothered watching you gnoshing on a 'dillo? Izzat some new kind'a freakie-deakie??

(Ha!, I crack me up sometimes!)

I dont know if it would or not, but I would like to see her hot and bothered over anything. If armadillo gets it done, Im game.

And anyone that has never been hungry enough to eat an armadillo has never been hungry. And I pray they never are.

DrB
02-20-2012, 01:52 PM
By golly you are right...Texas and Louisiana Armadillos are carriers.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1010536

Look at the map...Looks like Fla Armadillos are safe...whew !

Great link! So the belief in the article is that armadillos in FL originated from a separate introduction than the population in tx, la, al, etc., and that fl/eastern seaboard dillo appear to be clean of leprosy. I hadn't heard that before.

I would point out though that they only mention about 30 armadillos in total, and the map show just several armadillo case locations... Thats not much meat to make soup from, unless there is more to it. Doesn't make sense to me to give fl armadillos a clean bill of health on that basis... Especially since fl apears to have an elevated incidence of leprosy relative to the rest of the non armadillo infested country, and dillos appear to account for a fair fraction of leprosy cases in the us. Fl armadillos may be fine, but they may just not have sampled densely or completely enough to identify all infected regions... It would be interesting to read the two cited articles that are the source for the armadillo information.

Regarding being hungry enough to eat armadillo, i'd eat one well cooked in a clean kitchen, but my experience butchering is that it is easy to get small droplets into your face/eyes, or onto your clothes and not realize it. It doesn't take much. Around here squirrels, snapping turtles, etc are easier to come by, and tasty. :)

Gee_Wizz01
02-20-2012, 02:54 PM
In my younger days, as a broke and hungry college student we bar b qued a couple of Armadillo's. We gutted them and peeled them out of their shells. They were quartered up and marinated in BBQ sauce and bourbon. We then placed them on the grill till they were well done. They tasted pretty good, but that was before we knew they could carry rabies.

G

a.squibload
02-20-2012, 05:45 PM
...marinated in BBQ sauce and bourbon.

The bourbon was from the medicine cabinet, right?:bigsmyl2:

TXGunNut
02-21-2012, 10:14 PM
The bourbon was from the medicine cabinet, right?:bigsmyl2:

Of course, during Prohibition we all kept our bourbon in the medicine cabinet, didn't you?

Guess somebody needs to start a Possum on the Halfshell recipe thread in the proper place. :mrgreen: