Ole Fashioned Hog butchering

[indaswamp]

With Covid, a lot of the medium sized processors have been shut down or have just reopened and demand for service is off the charts. With waiting lists over a year, people are having to revert back to doing it themselves this winter.
Good video...

 

[chilerelleno]

Yep, a good video.

If you can process a pig or a deer you can handle any critter.

Everyone should at least have the knowledge, if not the practiced skill, to slaughter and butcher a mammal, fowl or fish.

A lot of people thing you need a hoist, knives, saws and other tools to break an animal down into usable cuts.
All you really need is a heavy knife and a mallet of some sort, a hatchet would be a plus.

 

[BGKYSmoker]

Yup

Thats what my dad used when we butchered cows and hogs.

Couple good sharp knifes. sharp hatchet and a saw. We used the oak tree out back for hanging.

 

[tallbm]

Great post indaswamp

I found some really good videos with a professional instructing how to butchering a deer, which is almost the same as a pig (unless u want skin and fat but that's kinda intuitive).
It was almost an act of God to wade through all the crappy videos out there so when I found them I saved the links and made a post with them for others to benefit from.

Here's the post I did containing those links as I think it applies and man it is no BS and just a professional being filmed and instructing while doing it. Very good videos.

Great Venison Butchering and Processing Videos and Info!!!

I promised I would do this post as a result of a conversation in another thread where the info was asked for. So here it is! If you've ever looked for a youtube video on butchering a Deer or a Wild Hog you will know how hard it is to find a decent video containing any quality information and...

www.smokingmeatforums.com

Finally, I learned all my "proper" processing from the videos in my post coupled with doing it with what the family knew how to do when we would kill an animal. I can tell you the professional videos introduced the proper practices and cleaned up a lot of functional but poor practices I learned from family members.

If a person has never butchered an animal (field dressing and skinning not covered) then I firmly believe they could do it all simply from watching your video and the videos on my post and then as with most things... doing it over and over.

Thanks for the post and I hope all the info helps people out there thinking of doing these things on their own :)

 

[Winterrider]

Good watch. Lot of hard work to processing.

 

[Millberry]

Yup

Thats what my dad used when we butchered cows and hogs.

Couple good sharp knifes. sharp hatchet and a saw. We used the oak tree out back for hanging.

Grandpa used our oak tree for hanging.............uh................uh............no comment.

 

[Brokenhandle]

Was a good video! Informative for sure! Sure glad I found this site to teach me alot, and safe practices. But sure am glad for the car hoist in the shop... makes it much easier, especially if I'm by myself!

Ryan

 

[Gonna Smoke]

If you've never taken the manhood from a boar or scraped the hair off of a scalded hog, you don't know what you're missing. Comparatively, skinning a deer is child's play....

 

[SmokinEdge]

Yup, good video. I grew up a hay seed farm kid. We butchered all of our own meat. We once in a while scalded but not often. We were more about getting the meat in the freezer. As I grew and became about 13 or 14, dad just handed that off to me for pork and lamb. That was my job. Slaughter on Friday afternoon, hang then butcher on Saturday. Everyone helped with butcher. Beef was though was a team effort. And those damn chickens. Everyone helped with those too.

What he says about the small farmer is true. We are almost gone.

 

[mowin]

If you've never taken the manhood from a boar or scraped the hair off of a scalded hog, you don't know what you're missing. Comparatively, skinning a deer is child's play....

I've done it many times. Definitely not a fun job. Never looked forward to it.

 

[poacherjoe]

Around here if you took it to a butcher you wouldn't get all your meat back after they processed it but they would definitely charge you for it !! The price is based on the weight when you bring it in. I personally know people that worked at said processors that told me about how much Tenderloin etc that they took home .. AKA stealing. So I learned how to do it myself and I don't have anything to worry about now.

 

[Fueling Around]

A chainsaw speeds up the process to split a carcass and safer than using an ax with a human backstop.
Scalding and scraping is tedious. I found a blunt machete blade is a great scraper.

 

[forktender]

I've processed more hogs than most people have seen in their lifetime at the ranch I worked at for 25+ years.
All I used was an old Buck #119 knife a sharpening stone and a drywall hammer that had the hatchet end sharpened on a bench grinder and stone. All you really need is one good knife, but two is better one for cutting while the other is being sharpened by the little lady holding your beer. The drywall hatchet just made parting out the ribs off the spine go much quicker.

 

[pineywoods]

If you've never taken the manhood from a boar or scraped the hair off of a scalded hog, you don't know what you're missing. Comparatively, skinning a deer is child's play....

And if you've never cut that wild boar caught in a trap with other ones then released it you really don't know what fun your missing Part of the extended family used to have the job of catching and cutting them on about 45,000 acres it was always fun helping lol
When the population got to high we were instructed to go kill x number of them from an area that's when the butchering got real fun as in 15-20 at a time, I must admit when that happened we did process most of it into fresh sausage

 

[Gonna Smoke]

And if you've never cut that wild boar caught in a trap with other ones then released it you really don't know what fun your missing Part of the extended family used to have the job of catching and cutting them on about 45,000 acres it was always fun helping lol
When the population got to high we were instructed to go kill x number of them from an area that's when the butchering got real fun as in 15-20 at a time, I must admit when that happened we did process most of it into fresh sausage

Wild hogs are very prevalent around me. All of the hunt clubs put out corn to hunt them year round so most of our wild hogs are truly corn fed. They can even be legally hunted at night with rifles.

We would trap them and had a trailer that we'd back up to the pen and load them up. Get them back to the farm where we could deal with them more easily. Seeing wild hogs charging and ramming the side of the trap will make the uninitiated jump.

Smaller ones, 150 lbs. or less, we'd sometimes feed out and process, but usually just process. Larger ones were for sausage. Boars were always released minus the family jewels, nothing else was.

It still goes on, but I haven't participated in a long, long time - getting too old.....

 

[indaswamp]

Wish we could transfer live wild hogs so we could feed them out, but in the state of Louisiana it is illegal to transport live wild hogs. We have to kill them at the trap site. We do feed corn, and most are corn fed, but every now and then we'll get one that is funky....

 

[Gonna Smoke]

Wish we could transfer live wild hogs so we could feed them out, but in the state of Louisiana it is illegal to transport live wild hogs. We have to kill them at the trap site. We do feed corn, and most are corn fed, but every now and then we'll get one that is funky....

In SC, we're allowed to transport them alive within the county where they were trapped. Many are trapped and released into enclosures for pay-to-hunt purposes.

 

[indaswamp]

Ah...
WEll, people here were transporting them, and then releasing them into the wild to have a place closer to the house to trap and hunt wild hogs...dumbazzes... That's why the state shut it down.

 

[HalfSmoked]

Wow Thanks for this post Indaswamp it took me back to my younger days. For real that's the way we did it except we didn't have the lift on tractors and did the chain roll as mention in the video. Would go farm to farm to help neighbors and sure had some good eats doing that time. Thanks again for bringing back some great memories.

Warren

 

[SmokinAl]

Great video, but also sad that the real farmers are a disappearing breed.
Al