Monty Python, Season 2
Let’s see:
Diseases of feral hog:
Leptospirosis
Tuberculosis
Psuedo-rabies
Hepatitis
Tape worm
Prion diseases
Brucellosis (MSP)
And many, many parasites.
Mmmm, Add a nice wine and salad. Dinner is served.
Yum yum.
And not even listed any where I can find is the skin disease they carry.
Y’all listen up, it is the grossest most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen or smelled. And I have 2 grandsons living in this house at the moment.
I think it might be a bubonic plague thing.
I saw one piglet whose whole face was a huge seeping boil. It’s eyes were bugged out and infected.
I’ve had nightmares about that piglet.
And people want to eat that??
Nope.
Soooooo cool! A new horror pic for Hollywood, maybe a Halloween sequel?
Screaming, bumbling, scantily-clad teenagers shoot (with lots of "accidents), kill, cook, then EAT feral pigs!
They’ll be puking in the aisles!
~VOW
Wouldn’t you know it, we’re having pork roast for dinner tonight!
~VOW
@VOW, me and you could take over the world if given half a chance.
Mmmm! Pork roast. Enjoy that.
C’mon Beck, it’s not instant death. I’ve eaten them and am still here. I’d bet they’re as safe as other wild game, and I can say they’re quite tasty. IME, all animals in the wild are covered with ticks and stuff, and look nasty until skinned and cooked.
In case anyone’s interested; I’ve hunted them some, but only with professionals using trained dogs (they let me hang out with them and help). The pros use 5-6 large dogs who are trained to snag their individual part of the hog. Only one goes for the head, and his goal is clamping on the pigs jaws. For some reason, they call him the “catch” dog and these tend to be large pit-like breeds. The others each go for a leg. Each dog has an armored vest and a GPS enabled tracking collar.
Once the dogs are released, the hunters follow them on an iPad-like display showing each dog’s location, speed and track history. We follow on 4 wheelers as best we can. When all the tracks speed up and converge we know the dogs have zeroed in on a hog. This display is remarkably similar to the nav displays in airplanes, and even shows each dog by name. Usually they all converge and stop moving, and we drive the ATVs there as fast as we can. If the dogs have the pig held and clamped, one hunter straddles and cuts its throat. No bullets allowed due to the dogs. After that, the hunters make clever use of lineman pole spikes and ATV winches to hoist the beast onto one vehicle and return (if the intent is to eat it).
In one case, the dogs had it so securely the pros lashed its jaws and returned it unharmed to a pen. It was pit-barbecued a few weeks later. On another hunt, the pig jumped in the river to escape (Hey Beck – it was the Saline. 
). The dogs followed it and took turns climbing on its back until it ran out of breath and returned to shore – with the inevitable outcome.
In olden pre-GPS days, I went with hog hunters using those Jetson-looking handheld antennas to track the dogs (like old timey tracking stuff rangers used in the 70s). They would release them, then pull out their antennas and wave them around while listening to headphones. Apparently there’s an art to this, as they could pinpoint the direction to each dog pretty well and detect when they were converging on a point. One antenna/operator per dog.
Sorry for the long post, but I thought it might be interesting to those who haven’t hunted them. Again, I’m no expert, just gone with pros several times and mainly tried to stay out of their way.
Did you say knives?
You don’t live near a nuclear power plant, do you?
Arkansas is known for nuclear incidents.
And y’all thought it was inbreeding.
Interesting.
I don’t think using dogs is a big thing in Texas.
Well, not where BigWrek goes.
As far as eating feral hog YMMV, but I ain’t cleaning, butchering, cooking or eating none of it.
They eat each other for crissakes.
Nasty.
Huh, I tested the link when I posted it (removing the spaces) and it worked (I thought) but maybe that was because I still had YT open in another tab. Tried it just now and it took me to a YT list of hog shootin’ vids of which the first one listed was the one I intended. In any event, thanks for telling me how to do it easier and better! Appreciated.
Yeah, not instant death,
Do you understand what that is? Spongiform Encephalopathy? It literally turns your brain into casu marzu. You get clumsy, then stupid, then you eventually stop breathing. You get to watch yourself die. There is not way to stop it, and there is no way to cook out the prions.
So, yeah, if that sounds like a picnic to you, tuck in.
I suspect that @pullin knows what that is…as well as the importance of proper preparation and cooking of the meat. What is your experience hunting, @eschereal?
One way to reduce, but not eliminate, exposure to Spongiform Encephalopathy-causing prions is to avoid eating the eyes, brain, or spinal column of wild game.
Proper way to prepare it?
Umm?
Have you ever seen a bunch of redneck hunters cleaning and butchering meat?
Cleanliness is not top of the list of things to have. Food safety is not even considered.
Plus they’re all drinking.
Nope.
Ol’beck will not be eating.
I like my protein to come from the refrigerated section at the Grocery store with a nice purple stamp reading USDA.
Regardless even the redneckiest of the guys around here wouldn’t eat feral hog.
All you gotta do is smell the reeking garbage rot, that is essence of feral pigs, once and you’d get it.
Not edible.
My hunch is that hunters know. I was watching an episode of “Man, Woman, Wild” and the survival guy wanted to eat armadillo. I didn’t realize those were edible—and I’d make the distinction that I did not say “tasty.” Enjoying it is irrelevant…f you’re starving, could you eat it without getting sick?
I’ve also read that some roadkill is edible.
Some feral hogs are inedible, certainly. If you’re a hunter and you shoot it from a safe distance maybe you walk up to your kill and realize that it’s diseased and you can’t consume it. Other times, you shot a good one and you can. At least once in recorded history someone ate it and survived. That doesn’t mean it’s always 100% safe but it shows that some feral hogs can be eaten.
But even good meat can be dangerous if improperly prepared, so killing a suitable one isn’t the end of the story. I assume they know how to deal with the carcass etc. because it’s what they do…they’re hunters. If they get drunk and screw up, that’s on them.
Zillions of fast food hamburgers have been consumed…but Jack in the Box once served E. coli hamburgers, so I don’t think anything is foolproof.
Ever hear of durian?