Thread: Wild pork, any good for ham?

When you gut and breakdown the pig, you should be able to tell what it’s good for.

Which usually isn’t a great deal outside of sausages, patties etc.

It takes a very good, fat, pasture fed pig to be worthwhile spending any money on. Wouldn’t even occur to me to take a standard grade feral pig to a butcher.

Your personal norms have a lot to do with what you do with a pig. It’s true that most people who only occasionally eat wild pork will find a typical omnivorous scavenging pig very off putting, they won’t like the taste at all. Then there is the population of rural people who grew up eating a lot of feral pork and will eat pretty much anything that comes their way. Me and my mates caught a bunch of winter pigs not long ago, attracted by dumps of dead sheep and cattle. The cavity smell was horrible and I wouldn’t have touched them with a barge pole, but they were all taken by a couple of local families and turned into who knows what.