Are wild Hogs safe to Eat?

Mtns2hunt

Mtns2hunt

Member
Been thinking of a Hog and Alligator hunt. The only thing stopping me is that I hear wild Hogs carry a lot of parasites and can be very detrimental to one's health. Don't get me wrong I like hog but if I kill a wild hog I want to know its safe to eat. I have heard that 165 degrees will kill most anything bacterial or virus. What say you?
 
I have eaten a ton of it. Like any pork you want it done and not rare.

Hogs can also carry pysdorabies and swine brussilosis that humans can get from contact with blood and body fluids, however some surgical gloves will help prevent that and wash up afterwards.,

You don’t want pig blood up to your elbows like you see some people do with deer.
 
My wife is a veterinarian. She told me in NO uncertain terms that if I ever brought a wild hog home I would be sleeping in the barn .........

Seriously, they are fine IF and only IF they are handled with care while the meat is raw and are cooked to the well-done point. As was mentioned above, they carry disease that can easily be contracted from the body fluids. Yes, there are folks that dress them routinely and get blood and innards up to their elbows with no ill effects. But if you roll the dice enough times you're going to lose eventually.
 
Go kill a 25-pounder and slow-cook it whole on the smoker. Lip-smacking good! If you can hang a hog and basically pull the meat off the outside (hams, shoulders, backstraps), you can minimize contact with potentially infectious bodily fluids and pull down some darn fine meat. This applies to sows and smaller boars. My experience with larger boars isn't as positive...
 
Wild hog is just fine, and can be really good. But, take precautions. Wear gloves (which is actually a good idea when messing with any wild game, coyotes, anything) and be sure and cook it good. To me the mid-size boars are the worse, 140-200 lbs. They are like high school boys, seem to revel in being nasty and stinky. They are usually rank. Sows are generally good.

I don't clean and eat many of them just because I am usually in a pretty big hurry and don't have the time. None of my hunting partners are into eating wild pig and are usually ready to go to the next coyote set or find the next batch of pigs to kill. So we just drag them out of the field and roll on. My oldest son eats them quite a bit though. He likes wild game of all types and is a good cook.
 
I’m glad my farm exposure as a youth, taught me to walk away from a boar, when you walk upon one you unknowingly shot. It’s been comical to see some of these city boy/ drugstore hunters think they’re in for some fine eating, because they don’t know better, or even think all they need to do is change gloves, and keep the skin away from the meat.
 
I know a guy who was from Alaska and came to Texas to hunt. He and his wife would spend all winter in Texas at the deer camp and go back home in the spring. He would rather shoot hogs than deer.

He would bring down salmon, halibut and stuff like that from home, but would ship pork back home in fry ice.

He could hunt moose, bear, caribou and all kinds of stuff in Alaska but he liked the boar meat. Go figure.
 
Down here coyotes won’t touch them and most of the time buzzards won’t either. When you can smell them as you’re walking up to them, just snap a pic, turn around and go look for more.
 
A hog won’t last a day/night around here between the coyotes and buzzards. After 2-3 days you are lucky if you can find a bone or hair.
 
Yellowhammer said:
A hog won’t last a day/night around here between the coyotes and buzzards. After 2-3 days you are lucky if you can find a bone or hair.
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I’ve had others tell me that. Not sure what’s different about these but we sometimes have to cover them if its during quail season and nothings touched them.
I’ve had people tell me they use hog meat as bait trapping. That doesn’t work here either. I’ve stuck cameras on several and get hundreds of pics of buzzards “when” they want one.
 
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