Leaner or not ?

Does it taste gamey, or just difference ?

Spot

leaner. the big boars are gamey small ones are the best for eating. i like them around 25-50 lbs. made sausage out of a big boar once and had to give it all away. tasted just like what that boar stunk like

Yes, , very good with proper care after the kill(same with any meat). We like it much better than venison and we like venison.

Very lean, have to add lard to cook it.

Leaner, for sure. I pull it from the grill more quickly than domestic. Even so, it's awfully tasty.

I've been eating on a guestimated 250 lb. boar from this Spring, & it tastes about like the 4 gilts I've brought home before him. Maybe I got lucky on this one.

To be safe, don't shoot the ones with 'nads the size of grapefruit. And whatever you shoot, get 'em skinned & cool ASAP.

FC

Depends on what they're eating. If they've been eating acorns, they'll be pretty strong. On grass or barley, they're awesome unless they're big and stinky.

A 200 lb. dry sow on grass or barley is fine eating. I'd pass up a wall hanger boar to shoot one of them any day. They're leaner, so I have 10% domestic pork fat added to the sausage. The hams are awesome..

I've had good boars, but they were young and below 250 lbs.
A big stinky boar might be good for sausage, usually a 50/50 mix.

Boars that are with sows will be funky. Lone boars are usually still good, but may be tough. Barrs (castrated boars) are usually very good, as are sows. One diffrence that you will discover is that even a fat feral hog is different from domestic in that the fat will be on the outside of the muscles, like a fat deer, as opposed to fat throughout the meat. I suppose this is due to the constant excersise.

Yep & yep, the smaller the better and sows are much better than the bigger boars. If the boar is run at all and excited the meat STINKS!

We don't add lard, but then again we don't put any fat in our deer burger. Just grilled some steaks from a pig I shot last winter in Texas and it had just the right amount of fat, at least in the opinion of me and my wife. We have even used the fattier parts of wild pigs to help make deer sausage. But some people like more fat than we do.

My experience is that wild pigs of any size from tiny to up to 150 pounds or so are excellent eating. How much fat they have depends on the pig, their diet, and time of year. Bigger than 150 and they can get iffy, especially boars.

We only keep and eat the 1's under 200lbs.but that's just us.Skeeter

May be just me, but wild hog tastes more like the dark meat on a turkey than domestic pork......it's good stuff!

this one was about 25-30lbs

Huh.. that's interesting..

you guys are making me hungry

Leaner.
Tastes like pork, but also tastes 'wild'; like quail or dove taste wild (not gamey, just wild).
Same goes for turkey, IMO.

The meat is darker. I just ate some of mine. Did a pork chop, marinated in carribean jerk, Sat. nite. Absolutely awesome! Took boned out ham pieces and marinated them, yesterday. Then at noon, put them in a roaster pan, on racs, added beer/water, and put in the oven at 210 degrees for 4 1/2 hrs. Took it out pulled the pork apart and had BBQ sandwiches! Yummy!


maddog

I find feral hogs to be leaner than domestic.

The big difference in taste though is the result of how the animal is killed and processed. Bear in mind that in a modern slaughter house, death is quick, processing is instant.

Out in the field, death may linger, the animal is pumping adrenalin and lactic acid builds up in the meat.
Throw in field dressing and butchering done in a haphazard and non time sensitive manner, and the meat just won't be as tasty as a commercial pig.

I have raised hogs, bought hogs for slaughter, trapped and kept feral hogs for fattening (don't bother trying to do this), and killed some undeterminable number of wild (feral) hogs. I prefer the wild ones. I would only slaughter sows for my own use. The barrows would be sold and I only kept boars for breeding. Bought hogs had a "taste" to them, presumably from the feed they had been on. I would keep them on straight corn for about two weeks before I would butcher them. Feral hogs on feed gain so slowly that you're better off eating the corn yourself. A good head or spine shot and a quick bleed on an unexcited feral hog, especially if you've had a good acorn crop (down here at least) will give you some fine eating. I killed an "Acorn fat" boar once that was 400# if he was an ounce and I could not taste any wild or gamey flavor at all.

I won't bother with any hog that has been run by dogs. I've had some people tell me that they couldn't taste anything gamey in the meat but I can.

Alan

As was pointed out earlier - by another Texan I might add - a small boar running with sows will be inedible where even a large boar running alone will be OK . Tough -- but OK .

I've quit head shooting with small calibers and started heart shooting with .25's or 270 cal. They bleed out better than head shots since - unlike butchering - you can't stick 'em quick .

When I shoot a hog , I walk up to it from down wind .If I can smell it , I just walk on by . I've killed 150 lb boars that stunk to high heaven and 400 pounders that didn't smell at all .

I've never killed a sow of any size that wasn't OK .

Exactly! If the hog stinks like piss thats how its going to taste.

I even tested that theory a few years ago. I shot two small boars (50# or so) out of the same group, one stunk and one didn't. I went ahead and took the loins out of both and took them to camp. Washed them good and cooked one off each hog that night. Wasn't hard to tell which loin came off which hog, the one that smelled out in the field, he tasted just like he smelled!

Proved it wasn't just in my head, which I had wondered about before.

Bill

My youngest son and I recently whacked a couple of larger boars. Made breakfast sausage, jalapeno/cheese links, a couple of hams and tenderloin steaks out of it. All have been very fine and very lean.

Good technique.

Some folks are simply trying to justify having all that freezer space taken up by meat that's tougher than the boots you hunted them in. Maybe something under a 150 pounds can be very good, Pat proved that to me but,anything over 150 pounds?,I'm sorry but domestic pig meat kicks it's wild cousin's ass.

The big difference between the two - practically speaking - is that you can feed domestic hogs to sober people .

You knew that many people that you didn't like? Or did they just not have a sense of taste? Or smell?
Sorry couldn't resist. Someone I once thought was a friend gave me a bunch of pork one time that was so bad the dog wouldn't even do more than sniff it. All of it wound up in the trash. Knowing the idiot he bought a boar from someone because he could get it so cheap. And then found out why it was so cheap.

gave to a worker that was helping me at the time that was on hard times. he didn't care that it was gamey he was just thankful to have it

This man knows what he's speaking about.....head shots only, and anything over 200 lbs is seldom seen unless hunted at night. 15 lbs or so are hard to describe how good they taste. Much leaner than domestic.....

Heart shots are better . And corn fed beats acorn fed .

Leaner and from my experience with pigs under 150 or so pounds have been better than any domestic pork I've eaten.

but you sure don't get to hunt as long....

And that would be because -------------- ?

OK! But, head shot hogs don't leave the scene!


And we do feed our piggies corn 1/2 the year!

We will be hammering some pigs this year. I'm out of hog sausage.

Well, there's wild hog and there's wild hog. What most call wild hog is really feral pig. I've hunted both. Real wild hogs taste pretty much the same as feral pig, assuming they've been eating the same type of diet. These two species are really the domesticated vs the wild version of the same animal, sort of like the difference between a wolf and a feral dog. How lean they are is determined strictly by their diets. Gameyness has more to do with how the meat is handled after the kill than anything else.

Where have you hunted wild hogs....that weren't feral?

I head shot 'em for years . Then one evening an eatin' size shoat came up to the feeder and I had my 270 Roy with 130XXX in front of some 7828 . I could have head shot him easy enough since it was only 120 yds and I was in a blind but he offered a perfect broadside shot .

I remembered how we stuck hogs when I was a kid and reasoned I could duplicate the sticking with the Barnes . I waited until I had the right angle and tried for the top of the heart and he dropped right there .By the time I walked down to him , the heart had stopped beating but it had pumped a bunch of blood out before it did .

I've had 300 lb hogs flop for a long time from head shots . I remember one that , I swear , turned half a dozen complete flips with his hind feet getting at least five feet off the ground and he was still jerking when I had walked the 200 or so yards to him . He was a " Walk on by " .

I shoot eatin' hogs at my corn feeders so I can be selective .Others are targets of opportunity .

That pig fits the grill perfectly! That's the best size to eat in my opinion. I've tried to eat a big old boar once, it tasted fine but was a tough chew.

I kill every hog I can but only eat the younger ones. I guess they are stealing enough corn out of my feeders because they taste just like farm hogs.

I shoot them in the head and get them skinned, quartered and on ice quickly.

You ain't makin' any sense .

I've shot one high on the skull cap, knocked ALL the gray matter out (found it) and watched her spin in a circle....twice! We quit shooting 'em in the chest cause we like cooking the shoulders.

this site has lots of good info on hogs http://www.texasboars.com/hunting/

Yeah . Hogs ain't like a deer when it comes to body heat and decomposition . You can kill a hog in 20 degree weather , wait 4 hours to gut him and the heat will almost knock you over when you open him up . A butcher friend told me that decomposition starts in a hogs innards within ten minutes in warm weather and 25-30 minutes in cold weather . You can see his flanks start to fill out from the gas .

It's obviously better to get 'em on ice as quick as possible , but once the guts are out the danger of spoilige is gone unless it's just real hot .

And there is your solution.

Here's a recipe of mine to try.Pecan smoked boneless wild boar ham.I used Morton's Tenderquick Curing Salt and let me tell you they came out awesome.I used 1/2 oz. per lb. of meat.Dissolved the salt cure in a cup of water,used an injection needle and injected the meat,this helps get the curing process started on the inside.I then put the meat in a large plastic bag and poured the cure solution on the meat.Make sure the meat gets mixed around good so the cure can go to work on the outside.I keep the meat iced down in the bags for 2-3 days,then I rinse the meat and let it soak for several hours in fresh water to help remove the excess salt.I repeat the fresh water rinse and soak three times and it's OK to let it soak overnight.I've found that soaking the meat three times gives me a light salt taste where soaking the meat twice will give you a fairly salty taste.So it's really a matter of how you like yours.When I get ready to smoke it,I take the meat out of the bags,run some butcher twine through the meat so I can hang it in the smoker,then sprinkle the outside of the meat with med. ground black pepper.I set my smoker temp at 130-140 degrees,hang the meat and smoke for two hours at this temp.After two hours I quit the smoke,but kick the temp up to around 160 degrees for two hours.Then after the two hours at 160 degrees,I kick the heat up to 180-185 degrees for around eight hours,depending on how thick your meat is(I use boneless meat around a couple of inches thick.What I do on the hindquarters is,break them down into the four large muscle groups).Anyway,just keep it at this temp till you reach your desired dryness.After your drying is complete,take meat out of the smoker and let it cool.Wrap the cooled meat in butcher paper and store in the refrigerator for a day or two if you have room,if not just go ahead and freeze what your not going to eat now.

As many have observed here, hogs can be either excellent table fare or absolutely terrible depending on all the factors mentioned, so I won't go over all of that again. I would only add that, assuming you've shot "tasty" versus "trophy," and field dressed/processed properly, I would almost always opt for a moist cooking method to prevent the lean meat from becoming dry or tough. I'm famous among my friends for my own "wine country boar roast" dinners. I won't give away ALL my secrets, but it involves slow cooking, completely submerged, in a crock pot... and served with a hearty, tangy gravy. (Think basic "hunter sauce" plus basalmic vinegar, white wine and herbs de provence in both the crock pot and sauce...) Get it right, and folks will be lining up at the door.

OK, one more trick for the roasts I mentioned above. Trim all fat and connective tissue the night before cooking. Coat in olive oil and hand rub chosen spices and quick-brown the roast in a skillet. Chill overnight in the fridge before crock-potting it the next day.

This thread is really making me question why I'm potentially paying almost 1k to go to TN and shoot something that I'm not going to eat when I can go to low country of SC and shoot all I want and donate to the locals.

I don't gnaw on them at all. Nasty bunch of eat everything in sight creatures.

BUT, they are fun too hunt!

'Cause it will be great fun aside from the hog huntin', I don't even hunt when I go to that one.

Yep, same here as they can really tear up a pasture of garden. Side's buzzards & worms need to eat too.

That's kind of where I am T. Just go, cook , drink, meet and watch you break down a 1911 in 5-10 seconds. Or so I heard!

Heh, heh, no big deal after ya been doing it for fifty or so years.

Story of my life.