Dustin, that was an awesome write up! I will hunt them tasty suckers one day ....:d Does the time of year have anything to do with the taste? I have heard that deer shot in the summer (nuisance permits) are not as good as those shot in the fall and winter.....
Great info there Dub wish i had em to hunt here. One question, do you drink the beer when your mixing the rest of the ingrediants?? dont waste it on the hogs!! :d
Hmmm...never even thought about that until now. To be honest, I've never really killed and eaten one during he heat. All of mine have been in the winter. With summer coming up I might be able to lt you know though. I have an uncle around the corner from me with hogs coming in on his feeder. He wants them gone but I can't get the time until this summer.
Thanks for the info Dustin, but I HOPE I never have to hunt em on my Property!! However, trying to rid someone elses property of hogs would be OK.
Great post Dustin. Some of those hogs are nice sized. I'm still trying to get out to that land we talked about. Thanks for the info, very helpful.
Thanks guys... As for the eats, I've had them a lot of different ways some were excellent... some were not. As with any wild meat, it comes down to preparation... take your time and you'll be pleased. The meat is generally a little more lean than a farm raised pig but can still be super tasty. My personal favorites are smoked and cooked in a pit (basically a hole filled with coals, a grate laid on top of the coals, pig on the grate and then covered with coals). I forgot to mention that hogs are somewhat migratory. They'll hit an area really hard for a while and then disappear for no apparent reason. Be patient and they will return.
One of my favorite tricks while hog hunting is to play a recording of hogs feeding. Its like a dinner bell. I went down to the local high school 4-H barn one evening at feeding time and recorded the hogs when they were being fed. What a racket! Crank that up in the ol' boombox and pigs literally come running. I guess they are greedy little bastages and when one hears another eating wants some for itself. I'll have to make a new tape soon mine is getting rather worn. I have bowshot at least a dozen hogs using this method.
Hog hunting here in HI is about as good as it gets on Oahu. You would think since we are on a island the hogs would have to return to spots a lot quicker than usual. I've been hunting them out here for about a year now and have never had a bad tasting one. The meat on the pigs here has a very powerful sweet taste to it because of all the mangoes and other sweet local fruit they eat. I think hogs are definitely smarter than most people give them credit but sometimes with the right bait it's almost easy. Good write up and appreciate the effort.
Increadable write up, has my blood just pumping, man I'm really going to have to double time this fall and winter. I really want to KILL one of these things and eat the sh!t out of it. Being stationed at fort polk it's starting to sink in that I may not have another opportunity to take one. I have a few places I've seen where they feed and another where I heard them screaming under my stand in the dark. I have this hunting season, I'll be hitting the ground running.
Dubbya, Would you mind going into the way you cook the pig in a pit. I would like to know how deep the coals on the bottom would be and the time it takes to cook one. Also, are there any tricks to testing to see if it is done while it is being cooked that way. I have heard they cooked pigs in a similar way around where I live. They would put coals in a pit they had dug and then lay tin on top of the coals. Then they would put the pig on the tin and then cover the pig with more tin. Then the tin on top of the hog would be covered with coals. I don't hear of this being done anymore - I guess it is a lost art. It always seemed like a good way to cook one to me. I guess we don't have the problem with pigs in my area like they have in other areas. I guess it is because hogs don't like to eat pine cones.
Cool, I am headed on my 1st hog trip between Christmas & New Years. With a handgun instead of a bow, but I expect shot distances and hunting approach to be very similar.
Hog hunting is one of the funnest hunts you can experience in my opinion. You definetly don't want them on your property but people that have them are usually more than happy for you to hunt them. I go down to Texas every and hunt them. We cook them in a pit. have a hole about 2-3 ft deepby about 5 ft long 2-3 ft wide. Gather mesquite branches to burn to get our coals going good. We wrap the meat in foil mixed in with peppers, onions, jalepenos, Tony Criole (sp), etc. Then wrap the foil in burlap. We wet down the burlap (using wire we wire the burlap to keep it together & for retreaval purposes) so it doesn't burn and place the burlap on the coals. Then cover the meat with a piece of tin. After the tin we cover the pit with the dirt used to dig the pit. Let it cook for 18 hours then pull it out and have a party. The most important thing you can do when skinning is get all the fat off the meat. The fat will make the meat taste bad if not removed.
My Avatar pic shows a boat in the background. We are hog hunting on the Choctawhatchee River with dogs (Rhodesian Ridgeback's). No guns knifes only.
