Homemade Sausage Making

Every summer there is a constant war going on in the backyard to keep the rodents from eating our planted tomatoes. We've been in the ground for a little over a month now and I decided to gear up for battle early. This fellow completely ignored the dish of D-Con that's screwed down to the bottom of the planter box, but there's just no way they can ever seem to resist Skippy's Super Crunch. I've fired the first salvo, the war is on! RAY

Nice hide. How much tallow can you render from the rest of the carcass?

ssorllih wrote:Nice hide. How much tallow can you render from the rest of the carcass?

I was thinking I might be able to get the little fella a starring role in the remake of "What Ever Happened To Baby Jane". RAY

Maybe you could try looking at the road kill recipes on http://deadfood.com/ I don't see a category for "mouse" but there IS one for "moose." ...close? (That's a big guy what you got there.)

...and at last, there's new competition for sheep casings in the "under 5 mm" casing category.

I suspect we'll need some addition details from our resident bacteriologist, CW, on other items like plague, black death... and things that IMT probably won't be sufficient to handle.

I guess in Texas that would have been considered a fair-sized mouse, here in California we call it a rat. My original thought was to skin the beast out, brine and smoke the hams, grind the rest for sausage. When I came to my senses I just tossed it into the yard waste can with the lawn clippings and dog poop. The trap went untouched last night, good sign. RAY

Hey Ray, Maybe you can start a business and export them, hell we export all our jobs overseas! Price went up 4 fold probably by now it it is 10 fold. Just for some BAD news today, went to my store here in Sarasota where I got real good prices on pork. Well, well, ALL cuts of meat I use (butts, pork loin, pork cushions) everything is up $1.00 a lb from last week and THAT was at a all time high. I know about the piglets issue BUT we all know if it costs them $.30 more they will charge you $.60 a lb.

Just in case
Spicy field rat dishes with garlic increasingly seen on menus as boom in sales increases rodent prices four-fold

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/aug/27/cambodia

I hear ya Krakowska, the price of everything seems to be going thru the roof. I'm hoarding the 100 pounds of porkbutt in my freezer that I copped for 99≠lb in December as though it were gold. My partner and I are booked for a hog hunt at the end of this month that'll have me set up for sausage for at least the next year to eighteen months. Up until a decade ago I ate fillet or ribeye steaks 4-5 nights a week, now I might have one every couple of weeks at most. Must be tough for youngsters to make it these days. RAY

Ray I know if I "Got up on the wheel" and put the pressure on one of my VFW friends down here I could get into a hog hunt down here in Florida (nuisance down here) . Had and made young wild hog a couple of times done in a Chinese cooker http://www.bbqaddicts.com/blog/recipes/ ... pig-roast/. Not at all gamey to me, but they were 80-100 lb range. OK the question is Ray, If I used wild hog and I make smoked and fresh Polish sausage quite a bit can my friends and I get the same results as a domestic pig? Obviously, a 150 lb wild hog and a 300 lb I can see. I also know not to use the wild pigs fat. Could You please set me straight on what I can do and cannot? Or, set me in some direction to do some research? I can put up with some mild game taste but I I take it over to My VFW and the boys "pig out" when I bring in the smoked. Also how much chance is there with the trichinosis? The 137 degree work for wild boar also?
Thank You Ray, Any info would help. Fred

These are the last three hogs I've killed in the last three years Fred


I've killed right about 70 wild hogs in my hunting career and it's been about a decade now since I've whacked a boar hog. I like to wait for a nice fat young sow in the 160-200 pound range, tells me they aren't too old. I use every bit of meat on the animal including the nice white fat. My standard practice is to smoke the hams and grind everything else on the hog, get some quality cuts for sausage that way. Once the hams are brining I cube all the meat into about two inch pieces and stuff the load into two-gallon Ziploc freezer bags, then double bag it. It's a tight fit to seal and each one comes in weighing right at 14 pounds. I take one 14 pound bag of wild hog meat and combine 8 pounds of domestic porkbutt in the grind for a 22 lb batch. The 22 pounds is what fits perfect in my meat mixer and my 20 lb vertical stuffer, and I just add the whole pack of seasonings that I like which are recommended for a 25 lb batch of sausage, along with some extra garlic and maybe a bottle of decent red wine. These last three hogs I really felt I wouldn't have needed to cut with domestic pork at all, the cubed meat from them and the porkbutt were identical before going into the grind. I do think it's critical to whack them at a time of year when I know they'll have a nice layer of white fat covering them.

End of spring is good because they've had tons of new growth to eat, Oct-Nov after a nice acorn drop. I think out here in CA. a lot of the wild hogs will starve to death this summer due to the drought, only the strong will survive and by Aug-Sept they will be struggling to find food and fresh water. I've never had a health issue come up from eating wild game meat, I'm kind of a stickler for adhering to sausage-making and smoking recommendations set forth by Rytec and CW. Heck, CW has probably saved more lives than most paramedics! Call your buddy and go kill a large wild animal, make you feel good all over. RAY

Thank You Sir, Very much appreciated Ray for the time and pictures. Going to see my buddy soon at the next meeting. Got a .270 and a 243 (Too light?) Now I got the picture and it will be very helpful. Will hope you guys get some rain. Again, thanks, Fred

The .243 Win. is the smallest caliber rifle recommended for wild hogs. The .270 Win. fitted with a 150gr. bullet should be fairly effective depending on the shot placement. I hunt with a 270 Wby. Mag, 140 gr. bullet, the extra velocity of the Weatherby cartridges seems to shock them to death. I used to hunt with a Browning A-Bolt 30-06 till 1999 when I center-punched two different big hogs that just ran away never to be seen again. That's when I got my first Weatherby rifle, a Accumark in 300 mag caliber. The next year I killed nine wild hogs with nine shots, the year after seven hogs in seven shots. About five years back my partner and I lost the 2500 acre ranch we used to lease, so I kept the Swarovski scope and turned two Weatherby rifles into a new 270 Ultralight. The little sow from last year was the only hog that I needed a second shot to bring down since I switched to Wby., and of course that shot cost me a ham (320 yards and limping out of my life). It took me awhile but I finally came to realize that the biggest hogs weren't always the best ones suited for the table. Early on I shot a bunch of huge smelly old boars, now my wife won't let me have any more of these. RAY

Best mouse/rat trap I saw growing up was a 55 gallon drum with a tilt lever on top, filled with 1 foot of water topped with some waste oil. The tilt table was loaded with peanut butter and grain on the heavy side. Rats or even mice would walk out onto the tilt table, it would dump them into the oily water and they would drown. Clean out every few days. Bait would last for a couple weeks.

Worked great.

Wow, some good shooting Ray. Thank You so much for the advice. I got tons of time down here just trying to get a fellow Vet to go out and do some hunting and He was a Marine sniper in the Nam. Thanks Man, MUCH appreciated, Fred