Hogs while fishing..........

[bswiv]

Louann and I were running down the St. Johns river Saturday morning ( 25 miles or so south of Jacksonville ) when we spied this guy out doing what pigs do.

He was rooting up the tubers that form the root system of the water plants we call "dollar bonnets"......don't know what their real name is.

We often see deer and hogs out in the shallows of the river munching on various things. And when we are up along the bank scavenging for interesting wood and the like it's the norm that tracks will be encountered.

In fact yesterday we counted not just deer, hog and raccoon tracks but also bobcat and turkey....all had been foraging along in the inter-tidal zone.

I should mention that the river is tidal, usually having 1-2 feet of rise/fall in this area.....sometimes a lot more.

Got to figure more than occasionally a gator gets a fine meal of pork........

[hooligan1]

Louann needs to bring her hog shooter and just tuck it down in the rod locker, heck a big mess of crappie and a hog would be a nice fishing trip man....

[SavageSniper]

Should have brought your gator pole. If it could handle an 800 lb lizard it should handle a hog.

[farmerboy]

Would have been fun to bust a cap on him but I wouldn't want that one, look at the nuts on him! He'd stink up the house for weeks. Haha. But it would have been fun.

[hogdogs]

That is a super healthy lookin' pig and would yield some fine eatin' pork!!!

Brent

[nickE10mm]

Cool picture! That's why I always keep my 10mm on me, even when fishing. Never know...

[buckit]

There is some monster hogs in that river swamp. My best friend has been catching them there, down to Hastings for 30 yrs. Terrible place to drag big hogs out of. He loses a couple dogs a year to just gators alone.

[JerryM]

Do many people eat those hogs?
Feral hogs are spreading here in NM. The info the game department put out indicated they carry various diseases. I do not doubt that. But it would seem if you used care in gutting and cleaning, and cooked thoroughly they would be OK.
Jerry

[Wild Bill Bucks]

I fish a lot on the Mountain Fork River at Broken Bow, Little River at Piney Creek Lake, and the Kiamichi River above Hugo Lake. I rarely take a trip to any of these rivers without seeing hogs along the bank. Most Lake restrictions in Oklahoma do not allow hunting them from a boat with a firearm, but I'm thinking this spring, I might try one on, with a crossbow. Sometimes they will let you get within a few yards of them because you are in a boat, and should give me a pretty good shot.

I don't know if shooting with a crossbow from a boat is legal or not, and can't seem to find anyone who knows, so I quess if it is, I may be posting my next post from the county Jail.

[hogdogs]

WBB, In Florida, If hunting from boat is legal, you must stop forward progress (some similar wording) to shoot... Shooting from the boat is legal in some areas for some species here...

As for eating them, these in the southeast have a decent diet for the most part and are the tastiest pork I have ever eaten...

Possibility of disease is present but as stated... Proper handling and cooking mitigates the risk plenty... As a matter of fact, the Dept. of Ag and/or FDA has recently lowered the "WELL DONE TEMP" on pork and this lower temp makes for some juicy-azz meat on the plate...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/25/di...s-lowered.html

Brent

[SavageSniper]

I would rather take the minimal chance of catching a bug from a wild animal than to ingest hormone infused, geneticly altered domestic livestock

[slow944]

I like to shoot the ones that run around 80-120 lbs. Man they make for some gooooooooood eating.

[Keg]

There are hogs up and down the Trinity here....Yes I figure gators munch on em...here and there.....

[farmerboy]

Isn't that the truth Savage. Lol And yep I also like em from 80-150 pounders. Good eating for sure!

[Wild Bill Bucks]

Like mine in the 20 to 40 lb range. My smoker is just the right size for them. Poke holes in the meat all the way to the bone, stick a piece of onion, bell pepper, and garlic in each hole, smear the hole carcass with strawberry jelly, smoke for about 2 hours hanging, take out and wrap in aluminum foil with a can of mushroom soup, place back in smoker for about 12 hours at 200 to 250 degrees. Meat falls off the bone tender so if your going to get a bite, you better be there when it first comes out, or everyone will have it eat up.

[dwright1951]

Some of the worst meat I ever ate was a wild pig (about 200 lb boar) some of the beast was a roughly 50 lb sow piglet. I always tried to shoot the sows and little ones for eating, most people want to shoot the big old smelly boars with tusks, I figured out a long time ago that you can't eat horns or tusks.

[1tfl]

Best pig I've ever had was a little 20 lb. piglet that was standing behind a 150 lb. sow. I shot the sow in the head just below the ear with a 6.5x55mm and the bullet exited the sow's head and hit the piglet in the neck... killing both. I gutted and skinned that little one and let it soak in icechest with water, salt and ice for two days and then wrapped it up in foil with garlic, pepper and lemon. Three hours on the grill over low heat and it was done. We attacked that little piglet and an hour later there was nothing left. It was great!

[hogdogs]

1tfl, a little one like that needs zero "soak time"... Just grill that'n up!!!

Junior suffered "pork overdose" cuz the little suckler was so succulent he ate about 6 pounds of meat (piglet was about 12 pounds hoof weight) in one sitting then tried to go to bed...



He learned you can nap while sittin' on the john that night...

Brent

[Mike / Tx]

Do many people eat those hogs?
Feral hogs are spreading here in NM. The info the game department put out indicated they carry various diseases. I do not doubt that. But it would seem if you used care in gutting and cleaning, and cooked thoroughly they would be OK.
Jerry

There have been warnings posted on the different bugs carried by the feral hogs. The best advice is to use the disposable surgical type gloves when gutting, quartering and handling the fresh meat. When cooking, use common sense and bring it up to a proper temp just like any other pork. By the same token, there have been warnings about the bugs found int he stagnant waters back in most of the areas we hunt as well. Some are bad and some are fatal if not dealt with. The worst is one of the types of flesh eating bacteria, so we take time to clean and cover any wounds encountered while in those areas.

As for the hogs being boars or sows, we shoot them all and sort them out when we get to them. I don't sweat the issues of boar verses sow thing one bit, as I have had both that were totally awesome and both that were simply putrid. Either of them, when rutting will be bad, and it is pretty easily detected when you get to them. I usually have quite a bit of feral pork stashed away in the freezer all year long. In fact we just ground up some last weekend into jalapeno flavored pan sausage.

As for their diets, the better tasting ones are in, or around, grain production or in areas which have high concentrations of, peaches, grapes, pecans or similar type fruit or nut bearing foliage. The ones we have found to be worse tasting are the ones which have been in the bottoms eating god knows what. They seem to taste just like that musky moldy river bottom smell you get when around a heavily overgrown swamp.

We have found the best thing is to get them gutted, and on ice as fast as possible. This reduces the gamey taste quite a bit. Also the ones which are shot and drop in their tracks are better than the ones which have been able to run after the shot, been chased and caught by the dogs, or have been in a trap and are stressed. When they crank up the adrenalin, or have time to stress out while in a trap, they build up some kind of funk in the meat that simply will not go away when soaked in an ice chest for a few days.

[Deja vu]

That sounds like a heck of away to spend an afternoon!