Hog Wild 
Texana
Hog Wild
They’re really ugly. They destroy crops, spread disease, tear up land, and run off deer. So what’s to like? Their meat, which has a deep, beefy flavor.
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Farmers have numerous reasons to dislike them. Whether wallowing in the mud or rooting for food, wild hogs tear up the land; they destroy ranch roads and muddy other animals’ drinking water. In much of South Texas you can follow the path of their rooting right up to the edge of the highway; Taylor once drove his truck into a hog-made hole three feet deep, and it had to be winched out. Though they eat all kinds of grasses, roots, insects, snails, reptiles, and worms, 90 percent of their diet is made up of vegetation, often agricultural crops—from corn to peanuts to potatoes to melons—and they can wipe out whole fields overnight. In the Hill Country they’re the number two predator (after coyotes) of lambs and kid goats. They spread diseases, especially pseudorabies and swine brucellosis, when they force their way into the domestic hog population to breed. And they run off the deer around hunters’ feeding stands.
Though wild hogs won’t win any popularity contests, they are somewhat redeemed by a couple of positive attributes, which Sabinal rancher Maurice Chambers was one of the first to recognize: They are a challenge to hunt and a pleasure to eat. In 1967 Chambers “fenced a pasture, threw them hogs in there, and put out our shingle for bow hunters,” he says. Because feral hogs aren’t classified as wildlife, they’re fair game year-round and thus can provide steady revenues for ranchers or outfitters, who can also charge hunters more during deer season if a wild hog or two might be bagged as well. Bow hunting is an increasingly popular method of hunting wild hogs, and some outfitters won’t allow rifle-bearing deer hunters to shoot them. After letting their dogs bay a hog, a few hardy souls kill it with a knife, while trappers catch them in cages, usually baited with corn or milo, and then take them to a slaughterhouse. Boars are more desirable to hunters than sows because they are larger.
Today Chambers offers a variety of hunting packages, ranging from $75 a day (for wild hog alone) to $150 a day (for one blackbuck or aoudad sheep and one wild hog) to the four-day, $550 Safari Package (with a five-animal limit). He attracts hunters from as far away as Australia and Europe (where the boar figures in several national mythologies). As an outfitter, he sets out 20,000 pounds of corn a month as bait and provides hunters with lodging and, sometimes, guiding services and a vehicle. He figures he makes about $500 for each wild hog shot, far more than he could make raising calves. He has helped Pete Denney at the nearby Rehm Ranch and Phil Lyne at the Lyne and Baylor ranches near Cotulla establish similar outfitting operations. When he’s not leading a hunt, Lyne, who was the all-around national rodeo champ in 1971 and 1972, likes to lasso hogs from his horse and wrestle them to the ground.
Taylor considers the increasingly organized hunting industry to be the only thing that keeps the animals from getting completely out of control. “Financially and ecologically, it’s a win-win-win business,” he declares. Says Chambers: “I’ve booked $20,000 a month for wild hogs, and I’m just a little guy compared to all of Texas. I don’t think anybody realizes how much money comes into this state from wild hogs.”
They are a challenge for hunters because they are smart and dangerous. “They’re probably the most intelligent animal in the woods right now,” says Taylor. “You can train them to do anything, just like a dog, and they know how to stay out of people’s way.” Able to hit up to 30 miles per hour in quick bursts, they can easily outrun humans. They won’t attack people, Taylor says, but “they aren’t one bit afraid of you. If you wound or corner one, he’ll do to you whatever it takes to get loose.” They “read” hunters’ patterns and change their own habits accordingly; for each one caught in a trap, several more learn by its example to evade traps.
The successful hunter will be rewarded with meat that has a deep, resonant, almost beefy flavor. Texas is home to several wild hog cookoffs, including two every March—one in Sabinal, as part of the Wild Hog Festival, and one in Cotulla, as part of the LaSalle County Fair. As a frequent judge of the latter, I’ve had my share of tough, jaw-wearying meat—the animals have sinewy muscle and almost no fat—but the cooks who do it right do it so right that I’ve lost my taste for most domestic pork. In addition to dressing, skinning, and cleaning the hog quickly, Taylor says the key is to hang it where it can cool for a couple of days before cutting it into large shoulders, hams, and loins and smaller chops and ribs. Because wild hog meat has little fat, it tends to dry out more than domestic pork; the more slowly the big pieces are cooked, in a Crock-Pot or a smoker, the more juicy and tender they’ll be. In addition to barbecue, the Cotulla cookoff has an “exotic dish” category, and I’ve enjoyed delicious wild hog tamales, stroganoff, carne guisada, and morsels wrapped in bacon and cheese. Allan Schulte of Agua Dulce, who has won the exotic category twice and the overall prize once, grills shish kebabs that have been marinated in a teriyaki-style sauce.
Three exotic-game slaughterhouses and processing plants in Texas—Frontier Game Company in Morton, Diamond K Game Meats in Ingram, and Southern Wild Game in Devine—accept live wild hogs from trappers and also handle other specialty meats, including deer, antelope, and emu. Southern, the largest, has 65 buying stations around the state. Most of the meat, marketed as wild boar, goes to Europe and Asia. The rest is shipped to distributors who supply a few gourmet delis and restaurants in the United States, including the Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas, the Hyatt Regency Hill Country Resort in San Antonio, and Hudson’s on the Bend in Austin.
By the time an entire, average-sized hog has been sold, it has earned the processor about $350—on top of the $500 that an outfitter like Maurice Chambers makes. Not bad for an animal that nobody wants.T
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