Have a problem with wild hogs?

[Mayhaw Man]

Guinea hens are delicious fried as you would chicken. I would think that grain fed guinea fowl would be even more delicious.

[fresco]

I'd be curious to see what would happen if the membership of PETA were required to live with flocks of wild geese crapping all over their yards, and herds of wild pigs rooting around.

[Mabelline]

Ah, you must have read my mind. We contacted the owner who was actually letting them out because he was too cheap to feed them properly. He starts getting a genuine case of the ass with me and my sister. At any rate, we went down to the neighborhood CO-OP and invited anyone with a shotgun to come to that field at dawn. It sounded like a Dick Cheney pheasant hunt. What made me sooo mad about the alfalfa was that it had been cut and baled about 1 1/2 weeks before. We were irrigating it at that time, so the alfalfa was real susceptible to non- recovery at that point.

[tighe]

Out here in Washington state, it's the geese who have become a problem (they don't like to migrate anymore because the pickin's are so good in our mild climate) and have to be gased or frightened away or just hated.  Aren't geese considered a delicacy?

We actually have our own feral pig problem here in Washington State too. They were introduced by Russian traders back in the day and now do a lot of damage to the landscape in the Olympic National Park. I heard on the radio last year that the Park Service was paying a bounty on pigs. They're also trying to get rid of non-native Mountain Goats in the park too....

I think there's good reason people don't eat the Candian geese that are commonly found in urbanized area. They have so much funky stuff and pollutants in their diet that I would guess they neither taste good nor would they be very good for you.

Edited January 17, 2004 by tighe (log)

[Mabelline]

This is kind of OT but you see that unrelenting population of sparrows everywhere; they stem from 18,gads 18!! that were brought back to America by an industrialist who liked their song(??) and set them loose in a park. I cannot, however remember if it was Central Park or somewhere else like Baltimore or Boston. 18 lousy little birds! Grrrrr!

[Jason Perlow]

As with many things, the key to solving the population problem is to get diners in the Northeast to start chowing down on them. The population will quickly drop as we ship them up to our Northern neighbors who are convinced that they are really missing something.

A fine example of this would be Paul Prudhomme's use of redfish in the early eighties. Demand for what had previously been a fish of second rate value on the market (we ate them, but they were not really popular in other parts of the country) went through the roof and in a very short period of time the population of Gulf Coast Redfish dropped precipitously close to zero. Blackened redfish, that one single dish of questionable origin and quality, just about caused the end of the species. Blackened boar steaks anyone?

Now if we could just do that with wild hogs and geese..........

I see a huge opportunity for making Louisiana Prosciutto, Brooks.

[Mabelline]

Yep,and if you can't eat the geese, you could always use them to patch blown-out tires!

[tighe]

This is kind of OT but you see that unrelenting population of sparrows everywhere; they stem from 18,gads 18!! that were brought back to America by an industrialist who liked their song(??) and set them loose in a park. I cannot, however remember if it was Central Park or somewhere else like Baltimore or Boston. 18 lousy little birds! Grrrrr!

My understanding is that its basically the same story with the starlings that are such a nuisance. Don't think I could bring myself to eat a starling, too greasy looking.

[fresco]

This was the guy who wanted to bring to America all the birds mentioned in one of Shakespeare's plays or sonnets or whatever. He's also responsible for the starling plague.

[suzilightning]

That's funny, I was just inquiring on eG about buying wild boar.  Wild Boar  Are these Georgia pigs related?

This is an interesting web site about wild boars. The population here in Louisiana is out of control as it is in many parts of the South. I see them often in the woods when we are deer hunting and sightings are becoming more and more frequent in suburban areas as the animals search for new sources of food.

We better start eating these things in a hurry.

maybe varmit can have a wild pig roast next time

[suzilightning]

Furthermore, I've heard that Canada geese are lousy eating. Can anyone confirm or deny this?

we tend to "breast " them out and leave the rest for the local turkey vultures or wintering eagles to feast on - our version of tv dinners

[Kent Wang]

Countryside Farms is selling feral hog at the Austin Farmers Market for something like $3.50 - $4.50 a pound, any cut, including ribs, shoulder and ground. It's so delicious, the absolute best porcine meat I've ever had, even better than the other farmer with the Berkshire pigs. Juicy, very flavorful, a slightly darker color.

The other VERY IMPORTANT POINT was that the always must be cooked WELL DONE as the majority were likely infected with TRICHNOSIS.

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Does anyone have more solid stats to back this up? Certainly I believe they're more likely to have it than domestic pigs but the CDC reports that "From 1997 to 2001, an annual average of 12 cases per year were reported in the United States."

[MarkinHouston]

I believe I read in Charcuterie that freezing the wild boar meat for a few weeks would eliminate the possibility of trichinosis. My supply has been frozen for two months now, and I have over sixty pounds of young boar meat waiting to become sausage, etc. As Kent mentioned, the flavor is extraordinary.