Wild Game?

[Tufrthnails]

Pushing to up my wild game/store bought ratio. We eat a lot of venison (200#-250#) throughout the year depending on how many I kill here in FL I always get my 4 in KY. prob gonna add some more hog to the mix and got some gator tags this year. We do eat mostly fish that I have caught. very little store bought fish, but living in Florida you could easily expect that. We are looking into raising rabbit in cooperation with the neighbor for meat. I love rabbit. We have chickens for eggs and 8 chickens give the three of us more eggs then we can eat so my mom and her mom are always snagging a dozen from the fridge.

 

[npaden]

We buy chicken and bacon. Usually buy fish, but was able to catch about 40 pounds of salmon and halibut last month in Alaska so that should last a few months anyway. Also tend to buy a turkey or two and a ham or two over the holidays. And one of the local grocery stores has ribeye steaks on sale a couple times a year and I buy some of those.

Always trying to come up with new ways to cook wild pig, I could kill 1,000+ pounds of it a year pretty easy. Right now the smoker gets the nod most of the time as it is easy and I don't have to cut it up near as much. Didn't kill an elk last year so I'm completely out of it and the freezer is already getting pretty low on deer this year. Not sure what we are going to do when we run out.

 

[el unit]

Deer, elk, bear, our chickens, and an occasional trout or two from the river. We'll dine out once every two weeks when we make it to town. Most veggies come from our garden too. We love it!

 

[7mm08mo]

Probably 75% wild here in our house. We by pork from a friend who raises them, beef from the farm. We don't buy store meat except for chicken and lunch meat. I with a wife that hunts and two boys and myself rifle is two deer a piece, not to mention bow and any western game, and waterfowl. We make burger roasts and steaks and love the back straps. Everyone in the home loves wild game. I love a good beef steak on the grill though I can't give that up, and with baseball in the summer we eat out quite a bit.

 

[el unit]

I forgot about bacon. We purchase bacon from grocery store and eat it once per week.

 

[Gerald Martin]

Except for a few ribeyes to throw on the grill a couple times a year, any red meat on our table is wild. We butcher a hog once a year and buy a lot of chicken thighs for baking and grilling. Thinking if I fill my extra cow tag this year a trip to Texas might be in order. I wonder if there is anyone in Texas who would swap elk meat for wild hog?

 

[Tufrthnails]

Except for a few ribeyes to throw on the grill a couple times a year, any red meat on our table is wild. We butcher a hog once a year and buy a lot of chicken thighs for baking and grilling. Thinking if I fill my extra cow tag this year a trip to Texas might be in order. I wonder if there is anyone in Texas who would swap elk meat for wild hog?

Dude I would trade you hog for elk at a 4 to 1 ratio 4 lbs of hog for every pound of elk every day and twice on sunday. Seriously I don't kill many hogs, because one does me for the year on the little bit of pork sausage I like and mix meat for venison burger. Anytime I shoot more then one pig in a season I give them away. When we had a ton of hogs on our lease in 2012 I gave away over 30 hogs to the locals. There are not as many hogs overall where I hunt, but if you wanted to put in the work you could get a pig on the local WMA it might take 3 days of hard hunting if they are really hard to find. Most days I can walk in (let me get you straight on this it is nasty Fing swamp) a mile or two and find them.

 

[Tufrthnails]

Except for a few ribeyes to throw on the grill a couple times a year, any red meat on our table is wild. We butcher a hog once a year and buy a lot of chicken thighs for baking and grilling. Thinking if I fill my extra cow tag this year a trip to Texas might be in order. I wonder if there is anyone in Texas who would swap elk meat for wild hog?

Dude I would trade you hog for elk at a 4 to 1 ratio 4 lbs of hog for every pound of elk every day and twice on sunday. Seriously I don't kill many hogs, because one does me for the year on the little bit of pork sausage I like and mix meat for venison burger. Anytime I shoot more then one pig in a season I give them away. When we had a ton of hogs on our lease in 2012 I gave away over 30 hogs to the locals. There are not as many hogs overall where I hunt, but if you wanted to put in the work you could get a pig on the local WMA it might take 3 days of hard hunting if they are really hard to find. Most days I can walk in (let me get you straight on this it is nasty Fing swamp) a mile or two and find them.


I'm sure there are plenty of Texas guys that are in the same boat.

 

[HSi-ESi]

The bulk of my families protein (at home) comes from wild game. I went for roughly 17 years without buying meat in a store (save cured meats, which when I was single was just bacon). The only thing that changed for me after marriage was access to ranch beef. We supplement with some of that throughout the year - and we do support 4H and buy a pig at the fair. I think the best is to know where it comes from, teach our kids this and not be hypocritical (we do eat out as well). Pound for pound I would estimate between 80-90 percent wild game at the house.

I am glad that my daughter (now 6) can identify elk (by far her favorite), white-tail, mule deer, sheep, beef, pork and bear (her least favorite). She likes the taste of bear (I can sneak it in sausage or hams) - just not the thought of bear. My son (now 3) still has a less discernible pallet.

It would be a fun challenge to get to 100% in the home. After I build my walk-in cooler and cutting room

 

[1_pointer]

Like many here, by far the majority of the red meat we fix at home is game meat. Heck, at Donuts with Dad's day at school when filling out the questionaire about his dad, by 5yo listed elk as his dad's favorite food!! Yes, his was the only one with that as an answer... What really gets me is how some folks have the time to cook some of these amazing meals that the post about?? That's not something out schedule currently allows...

 

[FishN4Eyes]

Pretty much any red meat we eat in the house is either elk, deer or antelope.

We eat chicken a couple nights a week and pork rarely.

Almost all fish is either walleye or perch with the occasion Costco bought Copper River Salmon.

About the only time I eat beef is if we go out to eat.

Pretty similar to everybody else on this thread.

Great minds think alike! Or something like that.

 

[mplane72]

Pork, chicken and some fish come from the store. Usually make it to right about this time every year before we run out of venison but this year we went through 4 deer way to fast. 3 growing boys put a hurting on the supply. We then supplement with beef from a buddies farm. As someone else mentioned, I think the biggest thing is knowing where it came from and how it was processed. Funny thing is my wife used to wrinkle her nose at the deer steaks. Now she prefers them.

 

[jryoung]

Except for a few ribeyes to throw on the grill a couple times a year, any red meat on our table is wild. We butcher a hog once a year and buy a lot of chicken thighs for baking and grilling. Thinking if I fill my extra cow tag this year a trip to Texas might be in order. I wonder if there is anyone in Texas who would swap elk meat for wild hog?

California is closer

 

[NoWiser]

With a freezer full of elk and antelope, my wife and I haven't bought beef since last September. If lady luck is with me this fall, we won't need to buy any in the next year, either. She wants me to skip the elk and whitetails and just shoot more antelope, though. It's her favorite meat. It's also not hard for me to keep the freezer full of walleyes, perch, crappies, and lake trout. Last winter we were lucky enough to get cold weather to freeze Lake Superior enough for me to walk out and catch coho salmon, so that has been a great treat for us on special occasions. I brought home some salmon and a steelhead from Lake Michigan last weekend and am headed back on Friday to hopefully get a few more. I'll make it out a few times and stock the freezer with chanterelles so that we have no need to buy mushrooms for a year.

About the only thing we get from the grocery store is chicken and, on rare occasion, pork chops. It's satisfying opening the freezer and seeing that almost everything in it was caught, shot, or picked by myself.

 

[airlocksniffer]

I think that's always my goal but I usually don't harvest enough to have game as our sole source of protein. Now that my son is able to hunt this year hopefully we can put away 2 or 3 elk and an assortment of deer and antelope. We do eat some chicken and pork but venison is our only source of red meat. I've never been a very good fishermen but I'd love to be able to stock up on trout, walleye and perch too. Grouse, pheasants and huns are always good too, as well as some cottontails.

 

[Bowhunt2live]

Reading the above posts reminds me of the confliction I feel for wild hogs. Their terrible for the environment, but what a great source of hunting opportunity. Plus, the 10 adult hogs I've killed this year means an extra 150 pounds of sausage, plenty of pork chops and tenderloins, pork ribs, and cured hams. That, in addition to the elk, white-tails, sandhill cranes, ducks, and geese, no grocery store red meats for me, period. Rabbits are my chicken, but I underestimated how many I'd want... so I've bought some chicken. Point is, wild hogs are a great way to complement the freezer. I wish I could help you northern folks out.

 

[hank4elk]

Reading the above posts reminds me of the confliction I feel for wild hogs. Their terrible for the environment, but what a great source of hunting opportunity. Plus, the 10 adult hogs I've killed this year means an extra 150 pounds of sausage, plenty of pork chops and tenderloins, pork ribs, and cured hams. That, in addition to the elk, white-tails, sandhill cranes, ducks, and geese, no grocery store red meats for me, period. Rabbits are my chicken, but I underestimated how many I'd want... so I've bought some chicken. Point is, wild hogs are a great way to complement the freezer. I wish I could help you northern folks out.

I do miss CA's abundant wild pigs,turkeys & fishing.......but one elk can make way more meals now. Just not the variety I used to have access to.
Going to a steakhouse for neighbors B-day tonight and having a Hannagan Meadows beef steak.