Beware the new boar is coming via Canada.

[Shule]

What about the females? What if you soaked the meat in BBQ sauce?

That's a good idea, if it would work. BBQ sauce masks many flavors pretty well. So does peanut butter. I wonder what peanut butter chile BBQ tastes like. My guess is it tastes like peanut butter (unless maybe you cook the peanut butter).

I think in medieval times they used nutmeg (and stuff like that) to mask flavors.

I've heard the way you slaughter an animal (and how soon after it dies) has a lot to do with how it tastes. I know elk hunters of male elk around here can be pretty anxious to take care of them as soon as possible so something or other doesn't spread. I think they have to remove a certain part of the animal (in it's neck or something like that).

[Shule]

@worth1
I think I can imagine the kind of smell you mean (I don't mean the way it smells, per se, but the class of smells you mean). I think I've had the equivalent in lamb before, although I imagine the lamb is more palatable.

[Donnyboy]

I've shot and eaten a lot of wild hogs over the years. Most I've eaten as sausage or backstrap. Ive eaten a lot of wild boar, but only if I know how the animal was killed. They must be harvested in a manner which prevents the fight or flight hormones from entering the bloodstream or when they are lusting after a sow, Most people who enjoy eating wild boar capture them as young piglits and neuter them, Some pen raise the piglets after neutering them and they taste like any other hog. Other neutered piglets are released into the wild after their tails are cut short so they can easily be recognized by hunters. The neutered hogs are the prime pigs for the table after growing up on the natural foods they eat.

I've eaten some very expensive medallion of wild boar backstrap meals in expensive restaurants. Delicious!

[Donnyboy]

A friend and I field dressed a 300 lb. wild boar I had shot at twilight. When it was fully dark, I had to track him in the dark on my hands and knees with a flashlight. After field dressing him, we transported him to my friends house where we hung him up on a tripod and butchered him. He then went from the tripod to a very large cooler almost full of ice which I then carried to a butcher shop where I wanted the parts to be converted to sausage.

The next morning, I went to the butcher shop to pick up the sausage. The butcher couldn't handle the meat because it smelled so bad, it smelled his shop up. I hauled the meat back to where I shot the hog and dumped it. The next morning, all of the stinking meat had been eaten. Wild hogs are cannabilistic.

[Donnyboy]

I don't remember which year hurricane Rita occured. My wife and I were living deep in the piney woods of east Texas. Residents of the area were warned to evacuate for the Hurricane. I had a one ton diesel pickup with a large camper on it. We drove the pickup/camper to Oklahoma where we stayed until the hurricane passed. We returned home one week later and found Rita had passed over our house at 117 miles per hour without damaging our house. We no longer had any electricity or water to our house. We were told no electricity would be available for one month. We had a freezer full of deer meat and wild pork whick had been without electricity for one week. It smelled pretty bad. I dragged some fallen trees and brush into our back yard and tossed all the spoiled meat on top of the pile and ignited one heck of a nice bonfire.

[svalli]

Goof grief.
Sounds like the spread of the African killer bees. I watched a Monster Quest show about those evil things. Animals/wildlife are dangerous, and most people don't understand that relocating stuff that's not native is really asking for it.
I get so mad at people the way they do animals, wild or not. Another monster quest show featured a semi-abandoned town in Illinois that had packs of feral dogs (descended from abandoned pets) roaming around and some were known to attack and kill people for no reason. What's even dumber is that people are leaving the dogs to roam, not killing or capturing them.
People do not know how to handle animals, they're dumber than the animals themselves.

During centuries people have a lot of stupid things by relocating animals and plants from another side of the world.

In 1934 Finnish immigrants in Minnesota gifted white tail deer to Finland, because the native wild forest reindeer, roe deer and moose were hunted to almost extinction. One buck and four does survived the trip by boat and were taken to a farm. In 1938 the deer escaped to wild. In 1948 the population was already about 100 animals and then few more animals were flown to Finland to get more genetic diversity. Hunting was allowed 1962, when the population was about 1000. Now the population is estimated to be about 98 000 and it is listed as invasive alien species.
There are many other introduced species which are now listed as invasive, for example American mink, Canada goose and Asian raccoon dog populations have grown to cause problems.

Wild boars are considered native, since there are 8000 years old boar bones found in Finland. Cold climate and hunting wiped out the boars from Fennoscandia, but during last 50 years they have been coming back. Population is still quite small, but enough to cause havoc in potato fields and gardens.

[Cole_Robbie]

My cousin is raising red wattles. We are one electric fence failure from establishing a wild herd here. They have amazing survival instincts. He has them on an open field, and in the polar vortex weather when it was below zero I thought for sure they would freeze to death. He gave them a big round hay bale, which they shredded and dug themselves underneath to survive the cold. I'm not sure humans would have done as well.

[worth1]

I've bought bacon that had that distinctive smell and taste.
Its been years though and it was one particular brand.
As far as killing animals to eat I'd like them to think they've won the lottery or something and peaceful when they get shot.
Not scared half out of their minds.

It's the way I was raised and the reason I'm not into bow hunting.

[worth1]

I also watched a program where the wild hogs will slowly evolve back into the wild species they once were over time.
I think they were talking about the Russian boar.
Not for sure how true this is because you can't believe everything you see or hear on a program.
The Spanish turned the hogs loose in America on purpose for food to eat later on.
The darn things destroyed the Indians gardens and corn fields.

[TomatoNut95]

I also watched a program where the wild hogs will slowly evolve back into the wild species they once were over time.
I think they were talking about the Russian boar.
Not for sure how true this is because you can't believe everything you see or hear on a program.
The Spanish turned the hogs loose in America on purpose for food to eat later on.
The darn things destroyed the Indians gardens and corn fields.

That's what happened when you relocate animals or don't keep their numbers under control.

I've come across so many wimpy people that don't even believe in killing an animal for control. Maybe they'll learn their lesson when a pack of animals come up and rip up their property or worse yet rip them or a family member to shreds.
People don't understand that even the animals can have problems when there are too many in a territory and food gets scarce for them.
Worse yet I've known some people that don't believe in killing anything, including bugs, period. Good luck having a garden. People like that wouldn't have lasted 5 minutes out on the prairie or in an Indian camp where they'd sooner starve than kill an animal to survive or protect their property.

Sorry that's off-topic, I just get so mad at people for the way they do animals and treat them as equal to a human life.

A thought popped into my mind: a smokehouse. Would hanging a hog in a smokehouse help the flavor any?

Why am I craving bacon?

[worth1]

No a smokehouse won't kill the flavor.
It's something you just have to experience.
I think people that like the taste can't taste anything because they're too drunk.

[TomatoNut95]

I wish I had a hunter in the family that helped me experience that stuff.
What does rabbit taste like? And deer? Is it similar to chicken or pork? Can you brown deer or rabbit meat like you're cooking a beef patty for burgers? Can you roast it? Fry it?
Hmm. I wonder what spaghetti and deerballs or rabbitballs is like.

[worth1]

Wild cottontails taste nothing like tame rabbit.
But I wouldn't say the taste like chicken either.
Nothing tastes like pork but pork.
To me comparing meats is like comparing metric system to imperial us system.
They're different.

[TomatoNut95]

Wild cottontails taste nothing like tame rabbit.

I wonder if it has something to do with the food they eat?

[worth1]

Wild cottontails taste nothing like tame rabbit.

I wonder if it has something to do with the food they eat?

Two totally different species.
It's been years since I've had either.

[Kurt]

Did have a chance to eat but not buy.

https://www.google.com/search?q=most+ex ... e&ie=UTF-8

[worth1]

Did have a chance to eat but not buy.

https://www.google.com/search?q=most+ex ... e&ie=UTF-8

Yeah I shut some braggart down with that ham.
He was horrified at the price.
I tried to get him to go in with me on one.

[Ken4230]

[quote=worth1
Wild boar smells like urine.
It's horrible.
[/quote]

worth1 is absolutely right on the taste of a full grown wild boar, they are just unpalatable and I know of no way to make them edible. I have eaten several 30 lbs. piglets and they are decent tasting. Tried a 60 lbs. once and it was a little bit too strong for me. If you are going to consume a small piglet, it needs to be shot instead of trapped. Trapping gets the harmones flowing and fight or flight sets in. Hunting will not control the wild hog population, right now trapping is the only solution. Several colleges are looking for a solution, but no luck yet.

We have a small oxbow lake in the Barlow Bottoms which floods from the backwaters of the Ohio/Mississippi Rivers. In one day, we pulled 32,000 lbs. of Asian Carp out of that 100 acre lake. At the next backwater, it was full of Asian Carp again. Sports fishing is ruined, in my youth, a 16 inch Crappie was pretty common. I commiserate with all the people who are having hog problems. Invasive species has cost my family a lot of money, and there is no answer. Billions of dollars will be lost when the Asian Carp get into the Great Lakes, I think they are already there, just not in great enough numbers yet.

[worth1]

Lest we not forget hydrilla.
The lake next to my house is infested with it.
It's almost impossible to bottom fish.

[bboomer]

Bad news all around. I thought that wild hogs could be controlled via hunting. A Texas Monthly article a few years ago said hunters loved the taste and would never go back to commercial pork. A business in South Texas flew hunters around in helicopters to harvest the pests. It was called "Flying Bacon."
Asian Carp is just bad, bad, bad. I thought that some control could be achieved via harvesting--despite many bones the fish is supposed to taste good. The other mode of control was to use the darned things as fertilizer or pet food.