One guy out here told me his hogs stink when they eat acorns. The one we had that stunk was full of them. Any truth to it ?
Our hogs eat acorns from Sept-Nov. sometime a little later but we have only had 3 rank hogs and none of those were killed during prime acorn season.
The musky "wang" smell is hormonally related. Actively breeding/fighting boars will be very strong smelling and tasting. We have killed some 300-400 pound solo boars that tasted no different from sows. We have also had some 125-150 pounders that would make your eyes water to clean, much less try to cook and eat. This is why commercial farms castrate the boars and slaughter houses mix culled breeding boars 1:10 with sows in ground products like sausage to cut the smell/taste
The smell is evident when you get to them. If they are strong I prefer not to try eating them. Evaluate each one individually and don't toss a big boar that doesn't smell strong. Don't waste time on a really strong one either.
Diet has a much less pronounced effect as long as pigs are healthy and carrying a little fat. A fat May sow that has been eating wheat for two months is hard to beat though!
The statement above is dead on the money IMO. My wife and I have killed well over 100 hogs. Only 3 have been what we call "rank". This rank condition can be smelled from a distance if you are approaching the dead hog from down wind. It has absolutely nothing to do with how the meat is handled after the kill. If you touch the hog with your bare hands or get up against it with your clothes, the smell is very difficult to get off.
he was a breeder, they smell really bad. He would have tasted fine, but the meat would have stunk just like he did while cooking. You wouldn't have been able to cook him in the house.
I have too have eaten really big boars over the years. WE now generally only save the sows.
The above statement, sorry guess but IMO is partially wrong. The taste would also be bad. We tried to eat the first rank one we killed because I didn't want to waste it. Not knowing what was in store, we cooked some inside in the oven, then shortly after, weeks about the time we stopped gagging from the first go around, we tried again on the grill outside. I believe my wife when she said she could still smell it in her oven 3 YEARS later. I tried steel wool scrubbing, pressure washing and I think finally time just cured the outside grill years later lol. We still laugh about that hog today and my wife does the sniff test to every hog we kill. We have eat way more boars than sows because we give most of the sows the pass and primarily target the boars. Most are really good eating but when you find a rank one, and you will know as 944 did, feed the scavengers. Just for the record, coyotes don't care and will gladly feed on a rank boar.
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