Smoking Whole Hog Hanging?!?

[jnyswlhngmeat]

So....The boss has asked me to smoke a whole hog. We use a large vertical smoker that we wheel a large truck into. Dimensions approx 5ft tall, 3 ft wide, 4ft deep. We cant fit anything larger than a 60lb pig on the racks horizontally. So im now trying to find a way to hang the hog vertically from the top bars of the truck while smoking. My concern here is once the pig starts to cook and become tender the animal will start to separate and fall apart. Has anyone ever tried to do such a thing? Short of trussing the entire animal, is there a way to securely hang it so it wont fall apart? We are talking about at least 100# plus. Thanks for any help!

- Johnny 

 

[jirod]

I have seen people who have done them and have had the hog sitting on some kind of like chicken wire to keep it from falling to the bottom of the smoker (assume stainless or some other non-coated material).  Could you wrap the hog in some kind of finer wire like that, fasten the bottom and side to close it up, and then hang from top?  Would that be too much weight for that type of fence/wire?