Yes and No.
Years ago, approx 17 to be exact…I shot my first 3 wild hogs. I was very excited and thought of sausage, hams, bacon, BACON is fruit for men! I field dressed all 3 hogs and tried to hold my nose as I did. I took them to a local butcher shop who does meat curing. I went home and proudly exclaimed that I was bringing home the meat for the family! My wife rolled her eyes but my kids had my back.
I finally picked the meat up and immediately wanted to cook it up. So my wife made pancakes and wild hog sausage for dinner. I happen to be out in my shop working on a project when she came out and said that dinner was ready. I looked at her and sheepishly asked if she tried it and she said ” That meat is going to be terrible!” As usual she was suspect to eating wild game as I had ruined her on a very old buck years ago. I thought no way she was just being a city girl.
I came in and immediately got my pancakes all doctored up and threw everything into the microwave. As I walked proudly to the table an aroma fluttered thru the air into my nostrils and damaged my eager taste buds…was it true….was it going to be terrible?
Apparently one or possibly two of the hogs had not been desirable for cooking. The one she cooked was one of those! The meat tasted fine but the smell, oh the smell! As I sat at the table by myself, kids and wife nowhere in sight I tried to eat that sausage thinking about all that BACON in the freezer. I had to admit, she was right. I tried cooking other cuts of meat with mixed bag results. Some was fantastic, and some was smelly. I told a friend about it and said I was throwing it all away rather than playing Russian Roulette every time I stuck my hand in the freezer. Guess what? He took every bit of that meat and either fed it to the dogs or possibly ate it.
The bottom line is:
I never butcher a hog over 200-250 pounds if its a sow. I will not butcher a boar hog for any reason. If the hog has an extremely pungent odor I will not butcher it. All hogs smell bad but some are much worse than others. As I am field dressing my hogs it should smell like a deer on the inside of the body cavity, it should not smell like the outside of the hog. If it passes the sniff test then I will butcher it and find that its extremely tasty if cooked properly.
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