Homemade Sausage Making

About five years back my hunting partner and I got removed from the small ranch we'd leased for fifteen years for deer, turkey, and hog hunting. I sold my jeep and trailer, traded my Swarovski binoculars in for my Pro 100 smoker, and was happy to just go on a couple of very successful hog hunts with a old friend who just happened to be a hog guide. That old pal is now retired and over lunch a few weeks back my partner and I decided that it was time for us to pony up for some exotic hog hunting due to the fact that we're old and gimpy and incapable of dragging a dead wild pig up out of a canyon. Between my partners knees and shoulders and my back and hips it seems tough enough to just get out of bed and get dressed some days. Ah, but with age comes affluence! After extensive investigation and the recommendation of two trusted friends who`ve hunted there my partner and I have booked a hunt at a 76,000 acre ranch where the guide will ride us around in a 4WD stake-bed truck that has bucket seats bolted down to the bed. Once a hunt is booked there the entire ranch will be ours exclusively for that weekend, the two guys who recommended the place said we`ll see more hogs than imaginable, and be real comfortable. We`ll be staying in a 3-bed 2-bath ranch house next weekend with full kitchen and shower, TV-DVD, and even a big walk-in cooler and rifle range.

http://jackranchwildpighunts.com/

As usual, the menu will be left to whatever I feel like pulling off. Ribeye steaks and hipshot burgers are a no-brainer, so I decided to pound out some wild hog sausage ravioli yesterday and a batch of rolls to bring along.



Thursday night Ill assemble a artichoke fritatta to bring

Some smoked Kolbasz for snacking and Canadian bacon for eggs Benedict each day should just about fill out the menu. Maybe we'll have a drink! RAY

We`ll be staying in a 3-bed 2-bath ranch house next weekend with full kitchen and shower, TV-DVD, and even a big walk-in cooler and rifle range.

Wow! That's really "roughing it" eh Ray? How ever will you manage?

Roughing it was for a much younger day CW, if I could lift it into the back of my truck I'd bring my massage chair. My partner and I are exchanging e-mails constantly and refining the menu, he's in charge of the wine list. Heck, who knows, maybe we'll even get in some hunting! My partner and I have been hunting together for over 35 years. killed maybe 130 hogs and about 35 buck deer total between us, tons of feathered stuff. We figure the guide is more of a chauffer and retriever than someone who would be teaching us how to kill a hog. Heck, if he's a good kid and things work out he'll get a nice tip and maybe invited to dinner. RAY

good luck on the hunt and the food looks excellent !

We're off to Parkfield, the wild hog hunting capital of the western United States of America. Somewhere a hog is waking up this morning thinking "this seems like a fine day to die". RAY

What did you do with that smelly old boar?

What caliber you shooting and what distances.

I'm impressed with that spread. The ravioli looks amazing! Never even considered doing that. (me and dough don't get along)

Bean we have to work on the relationship you have with dough. . Somehow I don't think that Ray and his friend will go hungry.

I used to be able to make the best bisquits in a dutch oven on a campfire but somehow I lost the knack and I always screw up dough. My daughter is pretty good though. I may have to enlist her help.

As with everything we have to keep our knives sharp.

"What did you do with that smelly old boar?"

I ate it

"What caliber you shooting and what distances?"

270 Wby. Mag Ultralight with 4x16x50 Swarovski scope, out to 450 yards

This years victim, three year-old boar, nice layer of fat, best hog was saw out of more than 150 pigs sighted in ten hours of hunting.. Saw him wallowing in a mud dam a quarter mile away and crept up to within 40 yards, goodnight Irene. We had to wash him off with a hose before gutting and skinning, he needed to tidy up for the photo-op.




Between last night and this morning we filled out and decided to head home to process some meat, tomorrow morning means work, dead tired right now. RAY

There is some fine cured and smoked meat in your future.
Ray is there a substantial difference in taste between a feral hog and a domestic hog?

Ray, ole boy, I wish I was there with you skinning that hog!

ssorllih wrote:There is some fine cured and smoked meat in your future.
Ray is there a substantial difference in taste between a feral hog and a domestic hog?

There can be quite a difference in taste Ross, depending on what the wild hog has been dining on. The autopsy revealed my boar hog had recently been spending all of his time in a barley field, stuffed to the gills. He's got a nice thin layer of white fat covering the entire body, he should turn out to be excellent tableware. The expensive Spanish hams that folks rave about, Jamón ibérico, are just pigs that are started on barley after they are weaned and then left to roam and eat mostly acorns until they come to slaughter size and age. We were both out of wild hog meat and would have waited for a acorn drop but one never knows when that's going to happen, or if it's going to happen at all that year. My partners little sow had also been in the barley fields and had a much thicker layer of fat, as sows usually do. In a hour or two I'll get to work butchering and brining the hams. I'll cut out the hog tenders and everything else on my hog will be deboned and cut up for sausage grind at a rate of 14lbs wild hog meat to 8lbs fatty domestic porkbutt. The hog tenders marinated in teriyaki and grilled over coals are a rare and special treat. I'd better get to work! RAY