what can i get from a pig???

[californiacoyotes]

if i shoot an "average" size pig and take it to the butcher what can i expect to get? i want hams, porkchops, ribs, ect.. is a boar or sow better? and i remember reading that with the bigger the pigs you can only get sausage, why? i don't really want a pig that will only give me sausage!

 

[Boggy Creek Ranger]

I don't know about your California pigs so I will just tell you about Texas pigs but pigs is more or less pigs.
First forget pork like you get in the meat market. Wild hog ain't the same even though it is pork. On a nice sow say 90 to 120 pounds you will get maybe six or seven pounds of loin. It will be small about half or less the size of ones you could buy. Hams will weigh maybe ten pounds or less each. You might just as well forget the ribs cause wild hogs don't carry the side meat like tame hogs do.
The meat will be a lot redder and leaner than domestic. Also you probably won't want to use the fat to make sausage. Wild hogs eat what they can and if it is a good acorn year that is what they are fat on. It is soft fat. It will shrivel up to nothing in the pan and taste bad to boot. If you get one that happens to have been feeding on carrion the whole thing will taste bad. With hogs it is pretty much a gamble what it is going to taste like. If you happen to kill a sow that is sucking pigs or one that is in estrus it is pretty much a lost cause. A boar hog over about 100 pounds ain't fit to eat unless you are extraordanry hungry. The meat stinks and it will run you out of the house trying to cook it.
The best eating you can hope for is a shoat. There ain't much of it but what is there is good.
On a big old hog you make sausage because generally the thing is too tough to chew unless you have filed teeth. Wild hogs are not soft like domestic porkers. They don't carry fat in the meat to speak of just solid muscle and it is tough as a boot.
Good luck now
BCR

 

[californiacoyotes]

BCR thanks for the info!!

 

[hntrjohn]

I usualy get pork chops, front shoulder roast, and the rest sauge. I gues those Texas hogs are the same as the ones here in CA. Also a 100 pound hanging wild hog is alot older than a domestic hog.

 

[Tom]

A friend of mine and I hunted a hog for meat to add to our deer meat for sausage. We got a 400 lb. Russian boar. The shoulder was bloody from the shot, so we didn't put that in the freezer, we soaked it in salt water over night and had a roast the next day from this bloody shoulder. It was so good, we didn't make any sausage out of that big old boar, none. We were overjoyed. The ribs have been consistently great from many hogs! We just put them in a turkey bag with some spices, to keep the moisture and slow cook them to the side of a fire in the barbeque. These hogs have been from around San Antonio, northwest and south. Lots of people say hogs are better meat than deer. A jackrabbit, that's hard for me to eat, but not hogs, even the big ones, they've been great, but we barbeque them.

 

[Calif. Hunter]

On none of the hogs I've gotten here has there been enough meat on the ribs to use it for anything other than sausage. I still think the quality of the meat has to do with the size and age of the pig together with what it's been eating. Spring pigs, when barley and alfalfa is the main items in their diet, seem to be better tasting than fall pigs, when they're eating mainly acorns and such. Everyone is telling the truth when they say that wild pork is nothing like store-bought pork. It's much redder, leaner and usually tougher than domestic pork. I have gotten to the point where I bone out the hams and shoulders and use the rest for sausage with pork fat added by the butcher. I slow cook the hams and roasts with a lot of moisture to tenderize them.

 

[Boggy Creek Ranger]

Mr Tom,
Did you for sure kill a Russian? The hogs we have around here sometimes show some Russian but I have never seen one that was pure. Maybe they taste different but I will from more than one experience tell you that a piney wood rooter boar hog will stink you out of the kitchen.
BTW I am about three hours north east of you, the other side of Bryan.
Wild hogs are built like a wedge. All head and shoulders and the eating meat isn't a whole lot even on a big one.
Let me put it this way, when I barbeque it will take two wild hogs to feed the same number of people that one domestic will feed.
This is cooking the whole hog the old time way.

 

[Tom]

I'll find a picture of that hog, scan it, and post it. He has a lot of Russian in him, long thick hair, long snout, black. He was shot in Helotes Texas a little north west of San Antonio. We'll see what you think?

 

[Duster]

Ranger that was a fine howdy do on the lesson of cooking pig in the kitchen. I ain't never heard it put that way, but the smell is all the same. It sure is nice if you can find one that's been chewing in a corn field for a month or so before you lay him to rest. The eating is more to my liking.

 

[Boggy Creek Ranger]

Duster you sure should know what we are talking about. You are right on the corn deal too. Best way is to trap the durn thing and put it in a pen for a month and feed it good. It is still wild hog but it does sweeten up the meat doesn't it.

BCR

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A .45 BEATS 4 ACES EVERY TIME

 

[Duster]

Ranger the best pork I ever had was a couple of strays that wondered to close to the farm years ago. Grand Dad showed me how to catch em! He just put out some sweet corn darn near everyday and they came right into the barnyard (tractor yard) we just then closed the fence on them porkers and tamed them some for the table.