Eating Wild Hog

[GregLaROCHE]

I am a farmer. I have problems with wild hogs. I don’t have a lot of land, but it works for us. Here it seems they come in waves. They are here one day and the next they can be miles and valleys further away. For me, the problem is their braking my fences.

When I have a chance I shoot them. I always recover the meat. Sometimes only the best parts. However, it’s all good meat in my opinion. All pork should be well cooked. Today all pork is tested before it can be sold. Years ago, nobody would eat pork that was not well cooked.

Most of the time I marinate the meat for a day in red wine and spices. Then I cook it with onions and garlic for a few hours. I’ve served it to friends who have said it’s the best meat they have eaten.

Bottom line, it’s good meat. If you shoot more than you want to deal with that’s your choice. But the meat is good.

[Winger Ed.]

I've never had a problem with it.

Its common here to wash them off real well, maybe even with plain water in a pressure washer
before ya take their shirt off because their skin & fur stinks so bad.

[dangitgriff]

Damskippy!
I’ll eat a pig from the rooter to the tooter!
It’s illegal to shoot them and not recover them on purpose here in Florida’s state-managed land, what I call cut-and-drop hunting.
(Buzzards gotta eat too, ya know!)

[Smoke4320]

I usually take 3 or 4 a year. 75-100 lbs is good eating . anything over that and less than 200 is sausage
Over 200 its buzzard food for me

[GregLaROCHE]

Thanks for agreeing with me. Seems like others don’t know what good is.

[nagantguy]

Next to elk wild/feral pig is my favorite eating! Yep the young’uns are best. May seem cold to some, two years ago on a hunt I destailed her I took a large sow who’d just dropped piglets- wasn’t to long after the piglets came back and man were they good on the smoker! Friend who owns the land had just spent about 12000 dollars repairing fences and damaged fruit trees and water tanks forbid sheep, all damaged by hogs- he didn’t look the least bit sad to be eating suckling pig

[GregLaROCHE]

I’m going to start smoking some.

[RED BEAR]

This may go against the grain but i don't like wild game. thats why i don't hunt well that and might need a couple people to carry me out of the woods. No piece of game has anything on a nicely grilled ribeye.

[one-eyed fat man]

I usually take 3 or 4 a year. 75-100 lbs is good eating . anything over that and less than 200 is sausage
Over 200 its buzzard food for me

Like a lot of game, feral pig, done right, tastes pretty good to people who not know what it is. All my hunting has been either for food or pest control. On occasion, some pests happen to taste good too. If not to me, than to the buzzards.

[richhodg66]

This may go against the grain but i don't like wild game. thats why i don't hunt well that and might need a couple people to carry me out of the woods. No piece of game has anything on a nicely grilled ribeye.

I hear people say that and wonder. Our venison here eats better than most domestic animals with all the milo and soybeans where I hunt. Most years I shoot two, once in a while three, and if one of my sons gets one or two, it's all good. Bottom line, we eat a lot of venison over the course of a year and I have come to where I prefer it over store bought meat, anything domestic just seems fatty and fake anymore.

I only killed one doe last year due to various things and for the first time in years and years, we will be zero balance on venison for a while before I can hunt again. Not sure how I'm gonna handle it.

No opinion on feral pork. Some people won't eat cat fish either, have to wonder about that one too.

[CastingFool]

Best part of hunting is bringing home some meat. We eat 1 or 2 deer a year, although we do buy some grassfed beef. We also share some of the venison with our kids.

[Friends call me Pac]

I don't generally care for wild hog. I've tried it several different ways and the only time I enjoyed my meal was from a 20#er that I cooked on the grill. I'm not much of a catfish eater either. Guess I'm odd man out.

[Sig556r]

Come Sep. 1, TX will be Feral Hog open season, hunting license not needed...
https://www.click2houston.com/news/hog-season-is-open-texas-gov-abbott-signs-bill-permitting-wild-swine-hunting-without-a-license

[trapper9260]

I normal get a deer a season and sometime 2. We do not have any wild hogs where I am . If there was I would have some in the freezer. I also eat some of the animals I trap and mostly all the fish I catch.I do like catfish and other fish.

[trapper9260]

Come Sep. 1, TX will be Feral Hog open season, hunting license not needed...
https://www.click2houston.com/news/hog-season-is-open-texas-gov-abbott-signs-bill-permitting-wild-swine-hunting-without-a-license

More states should do that with the hogs. I hear that some time in the 2020's that they will be up to Canada line. I do not how true that is but they say how fast they are move north . Here in Iowa is shoot on site.

[poppy42]

When I lived in Florida quite often when I wanted to do a big barbecue and send the youngsters out with catch dogs to catch me at Hogg. If it was a boar hog id nut him first. Either way Boar or sow I’d grain feed them for about a month to clean them out. The biggest thing I learned was you don’t cook a boar or a sow that’s in season in your oven in your house. But slow cooked on a grill I found no difference between wild and domestic pork. No matter when or how it was dispatched . Having raised plenty of domestic hogs for the freezer I can state these things with certainty .

[jeepvet]

Come Sep. 1, TX will be Feral Hog open season, hunting license not needed...
https://www.click2houston.com/news/hog-season-is-open-texas-gov-abbott-signs-bill-permitting-wild-swine-hunting-without-a-license

You might want to check this out. I have always read my "Texas Hunting Guide" to say that feral pigs are not a game animal and no license is needed to hunt them. There is no season and no bag limit and you can hunt them at night with spotlights. I could be wrong, but if I am there are sure a lot of people in Central Texas that are headed to jail. I really don't know how much I would trust Houston News about anything to do with hunting.

[gpidaho]

I grew up eating kosher meals and so even though I'm not strict with it a good elk stake is a lot more appetizing than eating a pig. I would enjoy shooting a few feral hogs in a depredation hunt but would leave the eating to the buzzards. Gp

[stubshaft]

I usually soak it in Teriyaki sauce for a day and then smoke it. Great eating.

[Sig556r]

You might want to check this out. I have always read my "Texas Hunting Guide" to say that feral pigs are not a game animal and no license is needed to hunt them. There is no season and no bag limit and you can hunt them at night with spotlights. I could be wrong, but if I am there are sure a lot of people in Central Texas that are headed to jail. I really don't know how much I would trust Houston News about anything to do with hunting.

You prolly misinterpreted the TX Hunting Guide...hunting license is required to hunt them & spotlights are allowed only if local warden are notified beforehand...not my words but excerpts from TPWD
https://tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild/wild/nuisance/feral_hogs/#hunt
Won't blame you not trusting Houston news if you're not from here, I wouldn't trust any Central TX news either...

[EMC45]

I have eaten everyone I have dragged out of the woods.

[Smoke4320]

I have eaten everyone I have dragged out of the woods.

consequently I have eaten no one I drug into the woods :)

[KCcactus]

You might want to check this out. I have always read my "Texas Hunting Guide" to say that feral pigs are not a game animal and no license is needed to hunt them. There is no season and no bag limit and you can hunt them at night with spotlights. I could be wrong, but if I am there are sure a lot of people in Central Texas that are headed to jail. I really don't know how much I would trust Houston News about anything to do with hunting.

You might want to check again. No license is currently required for a landowner or the land owner's agent to kill feral hogs while they are causing damage. A license IS required to hunt them. I have no idea how strictly it is enforced. It used to be that a license was only required if you kept the meat.
https://tpwd.texas.gov/regulations/outdoor-annual/licenses/hunting-licenses-and-permits

We've just about finished all of the meat from the 14 pigs I got in my trap in November. It tastes like store bought, just leaner and darker colored. The ones in this group were between 50 and 150 lbs. It's the only wild game my daughter will eat. That might have something to do with the sounder that got within 10 yds of her while we were fishing at our pond last year. They ran off when I yelled, but it spooked her.

[geezer56]

Hunting in Georgia, I killed four deer and 14 pigs last year. None were wasted. The ones I didn't fix myself I had plenty of takers for.

[RogerDat]

There is a commercial protein meat bar that states on the package made from wild hog. They have mostly non-game meat but for pork I can see where it would make no sense to ignore the cost of procuring wild vs. buying farm raised.

Pretty sure Michigan still has a food bank donation system for wild game. I know when they cull the herd that overruns a local metro park they use bows and the meat all goes to a local food bank.

Preparation matters, some folks know well how to field dress and prepare game animals. Others I swear I thought they were serving me a piece of the sole of their shoe. Venison can be a tough, lean cut of meat. Or not. Depending on the cooks knowledge and ability. Mine on game cooking being fairly limited I stick to what I know. I use to cook a fair amount of fish. Not liking catfish is just weird. Mess of bluegill is good eating as far as I'm concerned, catfish is even better.

I get hogs are a pest, vermin and all that. I do sort of have a difficult time with wasting food but I guess if the point is to eliminate a pest the time spent packing the game out or field dressing would greatly reduce the time to devote to killing them.

[Walks]

California, back in the 1960's, '70's, '80's and '90's before I got busted up,
and unable to hunt.

It was one pig a day, one in possession. Hunting License was required. No Season, year around. Don't know what It's like now.

We would take the Ham's and grind up the rest for sausage. Had to get pork fat from the Butcher. My German bred Grandmother would make the sausage. The German Butcher would smoke the Ham's. There was no bacon to speak of.
Once the cooler weather set in We would hunt them.

One a piece for 3 or 4 of Us, We had plenty of pork.

[rking22]

The one I shot this spring was good. Finishing up the ribs from last weekends grill for supper. We eat a deer a year plus the squirrels and other small game. Actually the feral hog is my second favorite behind squirrel. I eat catfish, prefer black perch from the creek but cats are fine. I used to love a good rare ribeye, but recently they are not so impressive. I suspect it is the “factory farming”, but now I prefer wild game to ANY store bought meat. And yep, cook the ferals fully, and slowly!

[Abert Rim]

Now that I "live next door to Texas," I pay a lot more attention to wild hog posts. Seems folks hunt them for one of three reasons: depredation/damage control, which includes using feeders and traps and many if not most of the hogs except the small, young ones cut open and left for the buzzards; trophy -- we're talking the biggest hog with the longest choppers and if it's a 500-pound boar, I can't imagine it is any kind of table fare; and meat hunters who are looking specifically for animals of 100 pounds or smaller.
I personally would love to hunt a couple of smaller ones for the table but would have no problem at all helping a farmer/rancher with depredation culling while I was at it. Seems to me a 60-pound hog, quickly scraped, dressed, washed, drained and chilled and then injected with a tangy Cuban-American garlic and sour orange mojo marinade would cook up just great on the pig roaster.
I used the Three Guys from Miami recipe on a commercial hog about 65 pounds -- and built their cinder block pig roaster -- and my friends are still talking about it 15 years later.
https://cuban-christmas.com/pigroast.html

[PHyrbird]

I really support Invasive swine management, maybe there is some limited federal support too.
https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2014/04/04/we-cant-barbecue-our-way-out-why-feral-swine-management-requires-national
Still we need to do our part without ending up on the menu, I mean a Russian boar cross hog is a little more than feral. I'd love to help, bring home some of the produce. But, my days of climbing a handy tree to get away from an irate sow or boar are over. Anybody needing some help (legally) with local pests let me know. Also know the stand must be high enough no hog will bother us.:lol: I'll even bring a cooler to transport produce.
By the way the federal budget for this problem is only $20M to cover half the continental US states, probably less than a Mill per state. Good plan.[smilie=b:

[castalott]

A foolish question... What if you trapped one ( a ~150 pounder comes to mind) and wormed it and ran a course of antibiotics thru it? It might takes a few weeks...might feed it some corn too... Just a dumb question......

[jeepvet]

The link that you sent does say that a hunting license is required, so I stand partially corrected. However, I called TP&W and was told that the regs were changed in about Oct last year and a hunting license is no longer required to hunt Feral Hogs on private property with the owner's permission. I placed a web page and quote below.

https://tpwd.texas.gov/regulations/outdoor-annual/hunting/


Outdoor Annual Hunting, Fishing and Boating Regulations


Feral Hogs And Coyotes

Hunter Education requirements apply.
A resident or non-resident hunting license is not required to hunt depredating feral hogs or coyotes on private property with landowner authorization.
Transportation and release of live feral hogs is unlawful, unless in compliance with Texas Animal Health Commission (TAHC) regulations. The TAHC regulates the movement of feral swine for disease-control purposes. For more information please call TAHC at (800) 550-8242 or visit tahc.state.tx.us.
Feral Hogs And Coyotes

As to the spotlighting, the reason to contact he Game Warden prior to night hunting is so if the neighbors call about shooting at night the Game Wardens know what is going on. That way they don't get all excited and worked up about possible poaching.

Also, I apologize for the comment about Houston News. I just don't trust any news these days and I especially would not trust city news people about things that go on out in the country. I admit that I was not totally correct with my comments, but I think we have the correct information now.

[davidheart]

We've got a serious hog problem here. A friend of mine traps the hogs for local farmers, kills the hogs, and distributes them to local friends and family. I'm one of the benefactors and the wild boar is much different than farm raised pork. Also, at the end of last hunting season deer stopped visiting my deer stand. Turns out a pack of boar pushed them out. I killed four hogs in one night spotting in the woods. One of them was 250+ lbs.

On top of that our deer season is 10 doe and 2 bucks.... I can't remember the last time we bought meat in the grocery store.

[WinchesterM1]

Luckily I live in an unlimited tag for whitetail in my so I usually kill 5-6 a year but this year I got 8, we have already eaten 4 this year. Since my wife and I got married we have only bought chicken, we raise pigs and catch plenty of catfish and we run rabbits and squirrels for other meat

[jwlegal]

If you are looking for a place to hunt, that is a great way to get onto someone's land. Pigs are really tearing up a lot of property in Texas so a lot of landowners are willing to let you hunt them on their property. Take care of the place and be polite and you may have found a good deer hunting property as well. The last time I shot a really large hog I was not feeling well so we left it. Next morning it was gone. Not even hair left. Pigs will eat anything. That is one reason why some question eating wild boar. I will only eat it if it is really well done. Too old to take chances. By the way, they will eat people too so be careful when hunting them. Around here they can run in groups of 30 or 40 and can hurt a man if he gets in their way or makes them mad. Makes hunting them more of a challenge. Look at some of the utube pictures showing pig hunts. They can be a real hunt.

[bluejay75]

I only eat the little ones. Anything over 100 pounds tastes like armpit to me. Don’t ask how I know what armpit tastes like.

[woodbutcher]

[smilie=s: How about"Tastes like armpit smells"?;-):lol:
Good luck.Have fun.Be safe.
Leo

[OldBearHair]

Sorry if this offends you Sig556r. That is not my aim. Point is that it seems that you are saying Feral Hog Season opens Sept. 1st.. In reality this is when the no hunting license required becomes law. Open season in Texas is all year long already for legal hunters w/license. Your statement doesn't actually state that but, just need clarity keeping someone from thinking the season opens.

[OldBearHair]

Oldtimers used to trap pigs, castrate all the boars, put their mark in the ear and turn loose. Later when a big barrow was killed, it didn't taste like armpit. As for penning a wild pig goes, they had a post with gunny sack tied around it inside the pen doused with diesel or kerosene which killed the vermin on the skin as the pig rubbed on it. (hog lice for one) Next would be to feed the pig all the charcoal from a wood fire the pig would eat. That cleans toxins from his insides. Be sure to have a very strong pen. Note: Never eat pork jerky or any other pork that has not been heated to 150 degrees through and through. They used Morton's Sugar Cure or Tender Quick on the pork loins, bagged and in refrigerator two days then Hickory smoked well and then it is Canadian Bacon.. Cook all pork well.