Sounds good to me, but I want to be able to use the meat from the hog for food. Some have said that the meat is tough or strong flavored or smelly ( ? )
Hog hunters, what do YOU do with the meat of feral hogs that you shoot?
Can you have bacon made? or pork chops etc? Obviously a younger or female hog is preferable.
We put just about all of them we get in the freezer in one way, form, or fashion. The only time I don't is if it's hot, and I don't have time to deal with the skinning and dressing more than one out. The smaller they are the quicker things go, but sometimes you can have more than you can deal with depending on the temperature.
We usually skin, and quarter them as fast as possible after they hit the ground. Most if not all of the gamey taste comes from one, having one jacked up on adrenalin or two not getting it in the cooler ASAP. IF you shoot one and it makes a run for it, depending on how load before it is actually taking a nap, can put a LOT of funky taste in the meat. The quicker they take a dirt nap the better. Once they are on the ground the quicker you have them out of the woods and cooling the better the meat will be.
As for what we do with ours, we make ground from a lot of it since it can be used in so many different ways. The back straps and tender loins we make cutlets from, I also on the bigger ones will take a small pair of limb loppers, and snip the ribs out right along the backbone. Depending on the size we will either cut and wrap the shoulders and hams or bone them out for cutlets or ground. Most of the trimmings are tossed into a bag to go through the grinder as well.
If you don't have a grinder, you might contact a local butcher shop, or someone who processes deer locally. You can quite possibly get them to grind for a small fee. We did have a place close that would do it for a flat rate of $10. He would take up to a 72qt cooler full for that. Sure was nice since we didn't have to do anything but trim it out and wrap it once we got it home.
We have tried it just about every way you can cook it. Most of the time we do like mentioned above, grill it for a short period over some post oak to get some flavoring, wrap it in foil, then set the oven for around 225 - 250 and let it slow cook through the day. I mostly use a dry rub on it that permeates the meat and gives it some kick.
With the cutlets, we pull out the bigger muscles from a ham or shoulder and cut them across the grain, and package. You want to be sure you look for and remove the small raisin sized glands as they can really mess up a meal. You will find them in between the muscles, and they look, well, like a swollen up raisin. If your cutting ham steaks, you just be sure to look for, and remove them as you go. We usually cut our steaks into about 1/2" or so thick slices as they seem to cook up a bit more tender that way. For grilling them we will go a bit thicker.
When you get to cooking, just remember to cook slow using a low heat or it will dry out quick and be tough. Just make sure you get it up to over 200 or so for at least 10 or so minutes to kill off any micro critters. I think that 185'ish if recommended, but I know that 225'ish has worked for a long time for us.
I have never tried to get bacon off any feral hogs, but I have wrapped plenty of it in bacon on skewers and grilled it. Throw a few veggies in along side it with possibly a half a good sized shrimp and your asking for a full belly.
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