Soaking wild pork in ice water

[BucksnDucks]

This may be obvious but I feel the need to point out there is a difference between brining meat prior to cooking for 24-48 hours and letting freshly skinned quarters or carcass soak in a watery ice bath in a cooler.

 

[BucksnDucks]

and please do not age pork or pronghorn

 

[Boarmaster]

This is my standard way of handling wind hogs. In Southwest Florida you generally dont have a lot time to waste due to the higher temp. We butcher them within a hour or two of killing them. we mostly bone them out but regardless of how we cut them up at the cleaning station we put them directly in the cooler packed in ice. We usually drained the water off before we drove home and then added ice and did not drain once we were home. They soak in the ice water for a few days until the meat is whitish.
I never did it but I think you could brine them at that time as well with good results.

Over the many decades of hunting hundreds of them we cooked some fresh before soaking and they were not as good as the ones we soaked.

 

[Mark1970]

This is my standard way of handling wind hogs. In Southwest Florida you generally dont have a lot time to waste due to the higher temp. We butcher them within a hour or two of killing them. we mostly bone them out but regardless of how we cut them up at the cleaning station we put them directly in the cooler packed in ice. We usually drained the water off before we drove home and then added ice and did not drain once we were home. They soak in the ice water for a few days until the meat is whitish.
I never did it but I think you could brine them at that time as well with good results.

Over the many decades of hunting hundreds of them we cooked some fresh before soaking and they were not as good as the ones we soaked.

Wow, OK, that supports what some other hunters have said.... that by doing some type of ice bath (either with water, or water drained, or with salt) seems to help.

In CA we are not as humid as FL, but get a lot of hot hunt days as well. My hottest was 105'F by the time I got the pig out of the field (that day put me into heat exhaustion). Being fast is super important. On that day, I had some meat loss. As the meat started to spoil, it basically became unbearably gamey. The parts that had cooled off faster from the same pig were fine.

I think it is what also makes it hard to determine what causes a pig to be bad. Big boars have mature glands which can be stinky, but also, being larger means it takes longer to break them down and on ice.

I have yet to shoot a big pig to see if I can get good meat if I handle it properly; dont let the oil from the hair or from the glands touch the meat, and also shoot it on a cool day and process it fast. Then do an ice bath.

Its really valuable to be able to compare notes with other hunters as it helps separates out some of these uncertainties. This is great.

 

[Boarmaster]

Wow, OK, that supports what some other hunters have said.... that by doing some type of ice bath (either with water, or water drained, or with salt) seems to help.

In CA we are not as humid as FL, but get a lot of hot hunt days as well. My hottest was 105'F by the time I got the pig out of the field (that day put me into heat exhaustion). Being fast is super important. On that day, I had some meat loss. As the meat started to spoil, it basically became unbearably gamey. The parts that had cooled off faster from the same pig were fine.

I think it is what also makes it hard to determine what causes a pig to be bad. Big boars have mature glands which can be stinky, but also, being larger means it takes longer to break them down and on ice.

I have yet to shoot a big pig to see if I can get good meat if I handle it properly; dont let the oil from the hair or from the glands touch the meat, and also shoot it on a cool day and process it fast. Then do an ice bath.

Its really valuable to be able to compare notes with other hunters as it helps separates out some of these uncertainties. This is great.

We learned a lot thru the decades and a few hundred hogs. Back before the internet when information was pretty much learned from experience. Our ice water bath method I learned from accident. I came home with a hog in the cooler on Sunday and got busy at work and just plain forgot about that hog until Wednesday. it turned out to be one of better eating hogs of that size we had killed. So we just started soaking it as a general practice. We learned that there were a lot of factors in how they tasted. One thing is for sure if you got 20 hogs hanging and 20 hunters you will have 20 different variations of how to handle and cut them up. LOL.

 

[Mark1970]

We learned a lot thru the decades and a few hundred hogs. Back before the internet when information was pretty much learned from experience.

So, from your experience, what are your thoughts on shooting a big (>=175lbs) boar? Are they fundamentally nasty? Or could it be a handling issue: harder to get cooled down fast enough, mature glands that dont get properly removed? Will icing help to fix it up?

I have let a couple big pigs walk by because I was not sure how they would eat.

I have been working on a strongly seasoned chorizo recipe, figuring I could sausage out the whole pig if it is stinky, but perhaps I need to better emphasize proper meat care.

 

[Sam Colt]

1 small cube of fat in the skillet tells the tale. If we get a whiff of the funk, the whole hog gets canned for dog food. Toss in a bit of rice and any older veg laying about. Our setters love it.

 

[publichunter1]

I was raised in a family where we soaked the meat in a cooler of water with ice for a week. Twice a day we would drain the water off and refill it. Once again the water wasn't from ice melt, we would literally cover the meat with water and then add ice. I done this with mostly whitetails and hogs. It never hurt me or the meat. It does tend to pull more blood out of the meat and the people who didn't like wild game found it more palatable.

I stopped doing this and now put a couple layers of ice, then meat, then ice, and leave the drain plug open. I only swapped as I actually like the flavor of the wild game and didn't want it changed. Also it creates less of a mess when putting it up. I still leave it in the cooler for 3-7 days to let the blood drain and to fit it in my schedule to work up.

 

[Boarmaster]

So, from your experience, what are your thoughts on shooting a big (>=175lbs) boar? Are they fundamentally nasty? Or could it be a handling issue: harder to get cooled down fast enough, mature glands that dont get properly removed? Will icing help to fix it up?

I have let a couple big pigs walk by because I was not sure how they would eat.

I have been working on a strongly seasoned chorizo recipe, figuring I could sausage out the whole pig if it is stinky, but perhaps I need to better emphasize proper meat care.

In our experience a big boar can be ok or not. Sorry I cant be more specific. We had some over 200 that were ok and some that were not that good. I cant remember any healthy hogs 150 or under being unedible.

One thing I can say is any that showed signs of infection from injury or bites from other critters including dogs we trashed the whole hog not just the injured area. How they taste i would be dependent on geography and what they was eating.

Some of the older guys always said that they were better if shot feeding or bedded rather than shot on the run or after have been chased. Not sure I ever noticed a difference but worth mentioning.

I never hunted them anywhere other than Southwest and South Central Florida. My lease in Alabama has a few but I havent really hunted them there. The guys up there will eat a sow or a young smaller boar but they toss the bigger boars. Im always cautious of local customs as they can be full of old wives tales. I go with my own experiences when possible.

To answer the question you asked on icing I always felt that the quickier you got them skinned and cut up on ice the better off you were.

if your not limited I would kill anyone you wanted to kill and give it a go but if your limited and just looking for meat then shoot the 150lb’rs and below. Two 90 lbs would be great.

 

[ImBillT]

Getting deer meat wet isn’t as big a deal as everyone acts like either. Dry aging and wet aging give different flavor profiles, but I wouldn’t consider it something that can ruin meat by any stretch.

Meat will last significantly longer without spoiling if it is dry. That is more important the warmer you’re storing it.

Dry meat is drastically easier to butcher. I have started hanging meat to dry for a while even if the temperature is far to warm to let it age for days. If you want to soak your hog, go for it, but hanging it for 4-6hrs before you butcher it will make butchering a lot easier.