Wild Boar

[toetter]

So I had the Yoder going last Saturday and my neighbor, who just got back from a boar hunt in Oklahoma, brought over a roast for me. I had never cooked one before but I thought what the hell, I rubbed it down and threw it on the smoker. I removed it at 180 degrees and it turned out pretty darn good. I was wondering if anybody else has tried one? It didn't get as tender as I had hoped but then again it was a VERY lean piece of meat. It kind of reminded me of a mix between a brisket and a steak.

[Jerod Broussard]

I cook 'em if they don't stink the high heaven. I like to cut strips off that ham, dip in a 1:1 mixture of BBQ sauce and Italian dressing, and grill. Sometimes on shish kabobs.

[mtford72]

I cook them regularly, and desperately want them to taste good. But they are just too lean to be any good in our part of Texas.
The expectation is that they are going to taste and feel like pork, so are always a let down. Which sucks, because they are great in their own right. But you want to be eating pork!
They are also a terrific pest here, so they are given away. I'm trying to find a way to make them palatable.

[HC in SC]

Yep - here too. Those suckers do MILLIONS of dollars of damage here as well. Rooting up landscaping / golf courses / crops, killing and eating other wildlife like fawns - and even dogs.

Many were once farm pigs that got out and went feral. It doesn't take them long to re-develop the bristly hair and those dangerous jaws. I have heard of people bleeding out after getting hit in the femoral artery in their leg after being gored by one.

Many people that kill them as nuisance animals just take em on down to the homeless shelter and drop them off at their kitchen.

[mtford72]

I imagine that they are a bit juicier in SC. Here they are lean and tough due to the hot and dry climate.

[HC in SC]

Oh yeah, they are some healthy suckers alright!! I bet some of those swamp hogs could take out a small gator. No joke.

I'm sure you've seen the pics of hogzilla - that guy was killed just over in GA.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogzilla

[Henrik]

Could you just elaborate a bit on which cut you refer to when you say "roast"? Is it a ham, or what were you cooking?

[Pork Lord]

I have done wild hog roasts before (hing quarter) and I inject with cajun butter, let it sit for 8 or so hours, then wrap that b*tch in BACON! Has always gotten me a tender and not dry product.

[auburnwildlife]

I make link sausage, patty sausage, brats, summer sausage, wet cure hams (used recipe on this site) , and use the front shoulder and slow smoke. A lot depends on the time of year and location. Hogs in Alabama trapped during acorn abundance are wonderful with inches of fat. If you can get some that have been destroying corn fields their great. Maybe the ones in Texas have a different food source, but don't get discouraged. They are great table-fare. They are lean which means you have to use different cooking methods, but I can make wild hog that falls off the bone and as juicy as any domestic hog. Don't expect a domestic hog taste, though.

[Huskee]

Welcome to The Pit, auburnwildlife! Appreciate your words of wisdome here.

Since this is your first post, please check out our homework assignment post for new members here: http://pitmaster.amazingribs.com/for...ork-assignment , it contains lots of how-tos and please-dos! Hope to hear & see more from you.

[Strat50]

I agree with Pork Lord. Adding some kind of fat, by injection, should really help. The mad scientist part of me says to try seasoned bacon fat. Waaay back in the day, when I was first starting as a cook, I used to have to make carnitas. BIG chunks of pork cooked in a pot of lard with orange, lemon, and lime halves. In other words, the confit method. Low and slow., for hours. The old(at least to 19 year old eyes) gentleman who trained me pointed out that this was common on their farm as their hogs were lean and stringy. The confit method turned inside out, to a degree, sounds to be a workable method, perhaps. Just a thought...

[Moscuba]

Sous Vide a long time will make it tender and you can get flavorings into the meat (do not apply oil, just your flavorings and very low salt content). Sous vide to under the desired finishing temp and finish on the smoker. I've never had a bad tasting wild boar, though I tend to make a ragu (Pappardelle al Sugo di Cinghiale). Even my wife loved it and she hates anything slightly game tasting even domestic duck!

[scorched_porch]

I did a whole small one last year on a rotisserie. It was magnificent.

[thhutton]

I always wrap wild hogs in foil, whether I'm cooking them in the ground or on the smoker. That way it keeps what little fat there is from dripping off and drying the meat out. Probably my favorite way it to cube the meat up and can it. This is the last
wild hog I killed:

[Steve Retherford]

I never thought of canning it, thats brilliant. The hogs we get here spend there lives running up and down the coastal mountains so the meat can be very tuff. I use the meat for stews, carnitas, and we grind it up with domestic fat from local butchers in town (my favorite).

[RAmorris]

The meat from wild or domesticated boar will usually be too strong and smell too bad to eat. I won't shoot a boar, only a sow. But I will shoot and eat a barrow, or bar hog as we called them where I grew up. That's a male hog that has been castrated. All domestic male hogs fed for butchering are castrated as pigs. Until the 1970s Florida had what was called "Hog Claims." A hog claim gave its owner the right to catch (with dogs), trap, or shoot the wild hogs on a defined piece of property, usually several thousand acres. But nobody hunted them because the meat on the boars wasn't worth the trouble. What most people with hog claims did was catch the hogs in a trap baited with corn. They would then castrate the boars, put the hogs in a pen, and feed the barrows and sows on corn, other grain and table scraps for about two months, then butcher them. If a hog is castrated after it has grown into a fully mature boar, then fed grain for a few months, the meat is incredibly good, better and fatter than anything you can buy in the store. But commercially, its more profitable to castrate the males as pigs, when they are only 2 - 3 weeks old.

In 1999, I got on a 5,000 acre hunting lease with 11 other members. It was teeming with wild hogs. So I started a program to trap and castrate the boars, then turn them loose again to hunt. A mature boar with big tusks that is castrated will not lose his tusks, so he looks like a boar. The property owner had just started a program to raise dairy heifers from just after weaning at 3 months old to having their first calves, when they would go into his dairy in Okeechobee. As result, there were feed troughs filled daily with grain, and the hogs could reach the feed. The barrows got incredibly fat. My son, Michael killed one that weighed about 400 pounds, and it was loaded with fat. We grilled most of it and it was much better than what you could buy in the store.

In 2002, a couple of days before the 4th of July, my sons Stephen and Michael came over to hunt hogs on our lease, to BBQ for a 4th of July party. I had set up corn feeders a week earlier, and they each killed a barrow. There were smaller, about 200 pounds. They dug a large pit, quartered the hogs, and barbecued them on metal racks over wood coals and charcoal for about 16 hours, taking turns sleeping, and basting and turning them. There were about 75 people at their party. Michael said the barbecued hogs were the best he had ever had. He said people wouldn't leave. They would eat as much as they could, then wait until they could eat more.