Question for a hog hunter who gets around

[jlwilliams]

My wife and I were talking about pigs and the diferent qualities of meat you get from different feed.  Talking about clearing enough land to really pasture raise some.  Stuff like that.  We got talking about wild verses domestic hog flesh.  Thankfully, we don't have wild hogs here yet.  I'll kill all I can when they do come but I'm happy raising pigs in the summer and hunting whitetails in the winter.
  Here's the question I have.  Is there a noticable difference between the meat of hogs from northern, cold winter climates verses that of the southern, mild winter animals?

[Empty Quiver]

A friend who has owned a butcher shop for quite some time swears by Canadian hogs. He feels they are meatier and make for superior bacon. This is hog country right here S. Mn., Iowa area. When he could, he would specifically get the Canadians. Not sure if this answers your question though.

[jlwilliams]

It does in part.  I should have phrased my question better.  I'm wondering in speciffic about wild hogs, but info on domestic pigs does interest me and factor into the whole conversation.

[Empty Quiver]

I do know that hogs will taste of what they have been eating. Our neighbor would try his best to finish hogs on the pumpkins he could buy from the cannery. The meat was sweet and you could tell by the smell when cooking that there was some sort of difference.
 
You might well find that the most recent diet and what is available locally for the month before you kill one is more important than the location. Now you want some pork with character get yourself a big old boar.

[Ranger99]

"character" ?


is that what they call it?

[Land_Owner]

You might well find that the most recent diet and what is available locally for the month before you kill one is more important than the location. Now you want some pork with character get yourself a big old boar.

That is probably the best way it could be stated.  I have killed hogs straight off of the flood plain that tasted like river bottom mud the way some fish do.  I have killed them after only two weeks of a smattering of corn in their diet and the mesentery, or internal "skin" that hold the organs in place, has changed from gray to yellow, a fat layer has been started and the meat tastes like corn fed hog.  I shot three brothers that had gorged themselves for days on fermenting wild grapes and that meat was as if it had been marinated in grape wine - best tasting wild hog I ever ate.  So the last two to four weeks (in some cases days) of diet are sufficient to "finish" the meat's flavor.

Some folks "bleed out" a wiley old boar hog by quartering on ice for three to four days before completing the butchering.  I am told this works.  I have yet to kill a "bad tasting" hog from the wild.  You can ruin one by not getting all of the musk glands out before roasting.  Whew...that'll put you off of pork for a good while.

[Ironwood]

Back in the late 60s and early 70s "the thing to do" was open the stomach of a deer to see what it had been feeding on.  In the fall and winter down here most of the deer had acorns in their stomachs.  One day after I had killed a rather nice feral sow I thought I would see what she had been feeding on.......Well I gotta tell you!  Don't ever do that with a woods hog!  The liquid in there was black, and really reeked.  I saw some grubs, earth worms, roots, lizards, toads, and a snake.  The snake is where I stopped!  Couldn't eat wild hog for sometime after that.    Up until that day the feral hogs were much better eating than farmed pork.  There was little fat on those hogs along with well built front shoulders and smaller hams.  Some processors wanted to add beef tallow to the sausage but I wouldn't allow that. 

[Land_Owner]

Considering they eat a ton of dirt and vegetation to every grub, worm, snake, toad, lizard, etc., meat they eat, and you can tell this by the acreage they destroy while rooting, it is not unusual to discover the meat can taste like river bottom dirt.  That is why my feeder goes 24/7/365, plus the law says it may not be hunted if it hasn't been established more than 6-months in advance of the hunt. 

http://www.eregulations.com/florida/hunting/general-information/ Resident game and wild hogs may be hunted in proximity of year-round game-feeding stations on private lands, provided the feeding station has been maintained with feed for at least six months prior to taking resident game.

Individually, each animal doesn't get much.  Maybe a gallon of corn total is slung per day.  That's all.  It is shared by deer, hogs, coons, squirrels, birds - especially turkeys, and periodically, a bear.  Still that tiny amount over days and days does a remarkable job of flavoring the meat and producing a slight fat layer in hogs.  At 300#'s per 55-gallon feeder replenishment and about 2-months between replenishments that's about 2000#'s of corn annually or about $500.00 annually including tax, so those harvested free range hogs are not "free" - per se.  The "price of admission" to my guests is a couple of bags of corn, then kill all the hogs you want when they participate, and there is no guarantee.

[Lon371]

 Land_Owner How many gallons of grapes do you go thru? 
 
Lonny

[deernhog]

They luv dead armadillos. I've seen them eat on shell and all. The ranker the better seems. This is for the original poster. Why clear the land. Fence it turn them in on it and before long they will have it torn all to heck and then clear it.

[Ironwood]

Those hogs also like dead coyotes.  I once killed a large coyote.  I left him for the buzzards.  I was back that way a couple of days later.  The only thing left of that coyote was a few tuffs of hair.  Plenty of hog tracks all around the spot where I had left the coyote.