Where does the bacon go?

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I see several buzzards daily. I know where some of them nest. There are plenty of other scavengers around as well and they are happy to eat offal or entire carcasses. I toss offal into the woods after cleaning my quarry. Same with dead animals found on the property. Nothing really sticks around long enough to smell too bad unless it dies during the hottest weeks of the year.
 
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From what I've seen, the edibility of hogs varies by region. In south GA the sows are good up to 150 and even 200 pounds in some cases. The Boars are good up to about 100lbs. The best eating ones are the sows that are around 50-100 lbs there. The farmers down there shoot them every chance they get, and will leave them where they fall in many cases. An odd side affect of leaving them is, bald eagles will often come in and eat the dead pigs they leave in the field. Then there's the coyotes and vultures. Nature will take them back one way or another ;) 

I was just down there last weekend, and saw 5 acres of freshly planted peanuts that they destroyed in less than a week. They cause so much damage to the crops, and the ecosystem too.
 
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Back in the 90's: ranchers in East Texas started stocking their land w/ hogs to supplement their deer leases. I knew one of them. He owned all of the land on the northern end of Lake Nacogdoches. He gave me permission to hike through his land to get to the lake. Otherwise, the only way to get to the northern end of the lake was to use a boat.

VERY big bass would spawn there during January. He wouldn't allow me to hike through his land once it warmed up. Said it was too dangerous and he didn't want to take the responsibility for my life. Poisonous snakes, gators, alligator snapping turtles, ... If Big Foot was in those woods, I wouldn't have been overly surprised.

Largest bass I ever landed there was 12 lbs, 4 ozs. However, I did have a 20 pounder on one afternoon ... briefly ... before she chomped on the hook enough to make a 'V' shape out of it and spit it out.

I digress.....

Point is, every time I would hike to the lake I would see a set of tracks from a herd of hogs (big ones too) going one way and in the evening when I would hike back to my car, I'd see the same set of tracks going back the other way.

Kinda scary....even though in those days I was very well armed. One had to be to hike through those woods.
 
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This is from the Pork Choppers web site:

"We try to arrange for as much of the meat to go to a good cause as possible. Due to the liability risk incurred by many of the homeless shelters and food banks, most wild hog meat is rejected from potential transmission of disease. Before you jump to the conclusion that it's wasted; however, remember that there are thousands of animals in the wild that need food, too, and the meat is most definitely not wasted! Most of the animals that happen to be left afield are gone in a matter of 2-4 days."

My first hog kill was too big for me to drag out by myself (I gave up after a half mile or so) and I had to go home to get knives and bags and back into the swamp after dark to butcher it in place. I was only half done when I got surrounded by coyotes (or werewolves - hard to tell in the middle of the swamp at night) and had to leave the rest. I was back two days later and all I found was a jaw bone and part of a hip.


 
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12lb. 4 oz. Nuclear plant near by? Put the guns away and get out the Stella.

20lb. Bass Wow, I wanna be like you when I grow up. Crow
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Nah. Just a very well managed lake. In 1989 the year I moved to East Texas TPWD biologists determined Lake Nac had more 10 lb bass and up per volume acre than any other lake in Texas. And Texas has some REALLY great big bass lakes too. These days? The minimum length bass that is legal to keep is 24 inches. That's an 8 lb bass. Shorter than 24 inches has to be released back into the lake.

Ever see a grown man cry? That's the guy who has never caught a bass that big in his life and the bass of a lifetime he did catch at Lake Nac was 23.5 inches long.

Everyone wants to be like me when they grow up. Get in line. ROFL
 
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They may be able to take some to a rendering plant or something, but those big boars are not edible for people.
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Have you ever had a big one? I have had all sizes up to 300lbs and they all were good. Yes younger ones were a little more tender.
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As I mentioned earlier, it really does seem to vary by region with the wild hogs. It isn't a matter of tenderness. It's a matter of evacuating the kitchen, if you even try to cook one of the larger boars. No amount of prep seems to remedy it either. Most processors here won't even touch a boar approaching or over 150lbs, because they know it is a waste of time. There are a lot of fat coyotes, vultures, and bald eagles in South GA though :D 

I'm all about eating what I kill, and I feel kinda bad about not being able to eat some of the boars I've killed, but it is what it is. It takes some of the fun away, when I can't eat one, but that doesn't change the fact that the only good hog is a dead hog. A lot of the farmers have resorted to trapping and mass killing them. Some of them will "cut" the young boars and release them. The ones that have ben altered can be eaten at larger sizes, but there aren't many of them. I've never personally shot one that has be cut myself, but I would be more inclined to process one if I did.
 
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