A guy I work with shot a hog in his hunting club in Trinity Florida. He gave me 2 shoulders to smoke. I've been told these can be gamey and have an could unpleasant smell. Now this hog is <125 lbs and was a head shot and hunted without dogs. I'm being told it should be ok but is there anything I can do to prevent having a gamey, less than appetizing finished product? I have heard soaking in milk will help with this.
I'm assuming the meat was on ice and allowed to drain for sometime before being frozen, if so then that is a good start. Anyhow with a hog that size I think you won't have any issues as long as the meat was handled well before you received it.
I would recommend you look over the meat and you cut away anything odd looking that you know you wouldn't eat.
Also this guy is going to be LEAN so if you have any sacrificial pork fat or flap skin or anything like that to lay over the shoulder while it smokes that helps keep it from getting too dry. When I have done them I had the whole animal so I saved the flank flap and neck flap tissue specifically for covering the shoulder meat and ribs while smoking to keep them from drying out and it works very very well as a sacrificial extra layer that just burns/crusts up.
As mentioned above, you MUST hit 165F on these wild pigs to kill off all the microscopic baddies they carry (parasites, bacterica, etc.).
You mention you want to "pull" the meat, well you may not get to a high enough temp for pulling before it may want to dry out and wrapping a whole hog shoulder with the shank on in foil is a hell of a challenge.
I have found that I can reach above 175-190F and the meat is tender but may not shred. You simply just remove it from the bone and hit it with a knife to chop it a bit and you are in business. Trying to take it to 205F or higher on such a lean animal might just dry it out too much. I would start doing some tenderness and dryness checks around 175F and go from there.
I would remove the shanks and save those for braised dishes. You would be surprised at how amazing a pork of venison shank is braised in the oven for about 3 hours or more with some wine, tomatoes, onions, and some beef stock/bullion!!!!
Well that is about all of the experience I can give you on small wild pork shoulders. Oh, be prepared to enjoy AMAZING flavor! Wild pork is soooo much better than farm raised. It has such a meatier flavor! The farm raised pork meat flavor is so muted compared to the wild pork meat flavor. It is almost like two different animals where the wild one is the more flavorful of the two.
Enjoy!
