Today I butchered a pig- well, a wild hog to be precise. Now, I know this might not seem the most feminine domestic quality to learn, but its practical. And I blame my husband, Jed. One thing to know about my Jed is that he is an avid hunter. Which was great for him in Utah, But in Texas there is no real access to hunting game unless you have lots of money to rent land. So when we saw an ad on craigslist to come shoot wild hogs for 50 bucks (dollars not deer) he was pretty excited, and I kind of just went along with it not really knowing what I was getting myself into. I even promised Jed that if we got one we could mount the head above our fireplace.
We called the hog man, Jesse, from the ad and set up a hunting date. I didn't think that much about it until I started talking to some of my co-workers. Now if y'all didn't know, hogs are mean, and if big enough, can be kind of dangerous. They will just charge at you. When I got home I asked Jed if he really knew what we were doing? He says, "Yeah, I've been watching hog attack videos on youtube." Comforting.
The day of the hunt came, we headed out to Pleasanton, TX, and the name was very fitting. Just what you would expect from small town Texas, and Jesse, our hog man did not disappoint either. When we rode up he was sittin in his front yard holding a beer. He stammered out a few friendly expletives, jumped in his truck and lead us to the hunting ground.
Now this is my first hunting experience. I had envisioned staking out a nice spot in a tree, maybe do a little tracking, you know, a little work for your kill. Jesse walks us over to a corn feeder he has set up with some flood lights above it. About 15 feet away from the feeder is a "blind", a tiny camo tent to hide in. He told us to just wait in the blind, in about an hour the hogs will come. Where's the sport in that? Its just hogs to the slaughter. Anyhow, thats just what we did. Waited about and hour and a half, you hear the hogs snorting in. Jed got all giddy and serious at the same time. He pulled up his shot gun (a birthday present from me, and this was the first time we shot it), drew a line on the biggest pig in the bunch, and BAM we got us a hog!
The problem is now what do I do with it. We took it back to Jesse who gutted and skinned it for us. I did some research on how to prepare delicious wild hog. Most sites suggested keeping the meat in a cooler on fresh ice for 3 days to let all the blood out, that will take away the wild taste. You can vacuum pack and save the meat in you freezer for 6 months to a year. So now I have about 30 pounds of meat that we butchered up today and stuck in the freezer. The next challenge is cooking it. But that is a post for another day.
Oh... and if your wondering about the hog head mounted above our fireplace... Thankfully Jesse skinned the head before Jed told him to save it, so I dodged a bullet on that one, for now...
