Is it safe to eat 400-800 pound wild hogs?
 

I was just wondering if it was safe to eat a huge wild hog and if it is safe how do I make sure it does not go bad?

Big hogs are usually best made into ground sausage, especially big boars that are pretty rank! I have no idea what you are asking as far as being safe to eat and how to keep it. Get it dressed out and cooled properly ASAP and then have it processed, including being properly wrapped and quick frozen before you store it in your home freezer.

The problem with big boars is they are rank in both smell and taste because they were not cut when they were piglets. Some people swear that soaking the meat in cider vinegar and water right after killing and skining takes the rankness out, I cannot attst to that. However, a big sow if you see one that is not feeding young will tast very good.

Unless the hog is showing signs of being sick, or you are sing evidence of parasites. Than a decent recipe should hold all the answers you need.

There are some things a decent recipe will not fix. Did you ever smell a rank boar hog? It tastes the same as it smells!

That is true! I once shot a big boar down in south Texas that probably went over 300# and he was so rank we couldn't even dress him out he was so nasty. We rolled him over to the side of the sendero and the coyotes and other critters wouldn't even touch him over the next week or so before we headed home!

No Bless the Lord, I haven't.

We are not infested with those things here in the north woods, yet...

I've heard that if the large boars smell so bad that you can't stand to be next to them, then you shouldn't bother to skin and cut them up. So far I haven't run into any that fall into that category. We've killed several that weighed between 230 — 300 Lbs and made sausage or ground meat out of all of them without any complaints from the folks who've eaten the meat.

Neither have i. Since early October last year we have trapped and hunted 175-200 wild hogs. A few of those were boars that weighed over 350 pounds. Yep, some of them boars stunk; big boar hogs are supposed to stink, they wallow in all kinds of crap and urinate all over themselves. The stink is on the outside of the hog.

We've never gotten a bad hog. Except for a few we keep for ourselves, every hog we kill goes to some family who needs the meat. We've discarded a few hogs because of festering wounds from arrows and bullets.

IME: Every complaint of "strong tasting" hog meat i've ever encountered, and there have been many, were because of contaminated or rotten hog meat.

I routinely see guys drive around in 90 degree heat for hours with hogs that have not been field dressed in the back of their pickups. You see them contaminate the meat when field dressing hogs. You see guys get dirt, crud, semen, poop and urine all over the meat. They cut the intestines and get that stuff all over the inside of the hog.

In the back of my pickup are several milk jugs full of water for washing out the body cavity after field dressing hogs. Sometimes my buds and i take really dirty hogs to the car wash before field dressing.

Wild pork for dinner
 

I don't shoot really big hogs, I like them somewhere between 130 to 140 lbs. I will shoot a big sow if she isn't nursing but so far my boars between 120 and 150 have been delicious. Here is a picture of a wild boar butt I am making today for labor day. Just getting ready to foil it, then back on the heat until 205 degrees, then wrapped in a towl and put in an icechest for 2 hours, then enjoy. I also made a batch of Carolina style vinegar Bar-B-Q sauce to go with it.

You can eat the big ones but if you want pork for the freezer you're better off with a couple of 150-200 pounders than one big one. Biggest I ever shot was about 375 and I made him into sausage and ground pork. He ate just fine that way.

you can live off of it but it tastes like sh!t
RR

Ridge "Crocodile" Runner,

How long have you been waiting to use that line?

But, it is good "****".

I think some folks are more sensitive to the flavor issues than others.

With that said, there is no safety issue based on size unless it falls on top of you from the skinning hook.

The odds of killing a 800 lb wild boar are slim, and 400 lbs is a big wild hog.

We ate this one. He didn't smell rank but then again it was soggy flooded lowcountry so maybe it cleaned him up or something. He was mild tasting and delicious! I pressure canned him, he wasn't even tough. Maybe just a tad chewy but very edible. Not sure how much he weighed. Not 400 lbs though. Still the biggest one I've gotten.



Here they are in the truck. Got a little one too. You can run but you'll just die tired!

There is a condition in farm raised boar hogs called "boar taint". Breeding boar hogs lie around and get very fat. Yep, the meat stinks. The "taint" is in the fat. In pepperoni making all the fat is removed from the meat. That is why old domestic boars were formerly sold to the "pepperoni man". Now the meat packing plants are butchering old boar hogs and folks are getting domestic meat that is not fit to eat.

Folks who have never seen a big wild boar hog often condemn their meat as bad. i've trapped and shot many hundreds of wild hogs; some weighed 400 pounds, and numerous boars weighed over 300 pounds. Have never seen a wild boar hog with "boar taint", mainly because wild hogs have a hard scrabble life and they seldom get fat.

I ate this one, it tasted great, a little tough but tasted great and this feral hog was well over 400lbs.

That is a sow, the bad taste is with big old boars. Sows do not produce the things in their body that boars do after a certain age.

You are right, it was a sow, but the OP's question was.
"I was just wondering if it was safe to eat a huge wild hog and if it is safe how do I make sure it does not go bad?" He didn't ask about boars and sows, he asked about huge hogs in general.

There are some things hogs eat that will make their pork some pretty rough stuff, as table fare goes. And it often shows up in hogs from certain areas. On the other hand, some orchards produce some fantastic wild pork. Think nut orchards. Peanut fields(?)

There's a place I know outside of Hilo, that has boars with awesome tusks, but nobody will even chance'um for eat. They scavange behind a beef slaughterhouse.

For over two months most of the wild hogs in this area have been dining on corn, milo, soybeans, livestock pellets, creep feed and blackeyed peas from deer feeders. They are also on the wheat fields.

Today my hog trapping partner took a big boar from one of our traps. That hog field dressed 312 pounds and was moderately fat. The hog was cleaned and scraped. He will be cooked in the ground on New Years day.

All the bad tasting hog meat i have ever encountered was contaminated and/or rotten hog meat.

This hog weighed 384 pounds on the hoof.

http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/l...qr/Osama-1.jpg


The wife of the man i gave that hog to made some of the best stuff i ever ate from that animal.

Not exactly sure what your concern is here but I've wondered about wild hog myself, so did a little research and this is some of what I found:
http://noble.org/ag/wildlife/feralhogs/disease/ .
As w/any wild game, proper preparation is wise.