Prolly should have let them walk!




Not!


ya!

GWB

Nice.

Are they as good eating as a hog?

IMHO,

no!

I've had them processed into jalepeno cheese smoked links and they were not my favorite.

I did not eat these two. They were targets of opportunity while deer hunting.

In addition to my hunting license I buy a trappers license. I take different critters to my taxidermist and give them to him. I am keeping the skull from the boar to boil and do a "Eruopean".

ya!

GWB

If handled and cooked properly, javelina are not that bad.

They are as good as feral hog, not better, but they are not inedible.

whistle pigs -- giant rats!

yes, if you degland them, while wearing gloves, and then replace gloves and knives, and get the hide off, cleanly, the meat could be made into something edible -- tamales and smoked pepper sausages are of the better choices -- i don't care for these or aoudad meat, but i know people that love it, so, they often get a treat ...

the hides are gorgeous.

Glad you got the pair, GW -- those two were likely a lifelong bonded partnership, and i've seen the survivors waste away, unless they find another lonesome rat

and from days of yore!

A lil' sumpin' to feed the fire, and a heart's desire!







308 Win!




325 WSM







Dale Howe, Howe Mountain Knives, Custom Brisket Breaker!

ya!


GWB

Well done, GWB! That's a great way to break the monotony of waiting on a buck!

and a buck I did get!



and on my birthday, the 21st to boot.


I keep six game cams set out 24/7/365. The first time I remember seeing "The Claw" was around October of 2015. He was on one of my game cams. Over the next two years I have numerous photos of him on several of those cameras, and with the exception of 1, maybe two instances, always at night. Never in the day. A couple of my buds that run game cams also had him on thier cams at night. Each of these guys are over a mile from me, and about a mile from each other.

It was about 15 minutes before dark-thirty when I saw him behind a 30'x 30' hog panel pen, walking west to east. I was actually hunting this 10 pt. that stops by on occasion.



Anywho, "the Claw" gets to the east back corner of the pen and he alerts. I was hoping he would walk around the pen and give me a broadside shot. But, no such luck. The wind was in my favor, but something triggered the buck. He turns and starts walking back the way he came. Decision time. I'd never seen him in "real time", or at this location, nor in the day-time. The hog panel on both sides of the pen was between me and him. So in about two heartbeats I had to decide whether I could thread a bullet between bot panels and hit him in the vitals. If I hit a cross wire of the panel that would be all she wrote. He stopped to take another look and turned almost to quarter at me. I was shooting a 6.5 x 55 SE and a 156 gr. Norma Oryx. I let fly and heard the "whop". A bit of recoil and I regained my sight picture almost instantly, but saw nothing that looked like a deer that was not down. I put another round in the chamber and watched for a few seconds. I figured I better get to the point of impact quickly as I was losing light fast. I took my rifle, strapped on my pistol and got my camera. When I got to where I believed the point of impact to be, I found three good ovals of blood and gore about 2" x 3"
about six inches apart. Due to the color of the blood and the gore I was confident he was hit hard. Over the next couple paces I found a few more blood spatters and that was it. I took off on a trail to the left. No blood, went straight ahead on the original line of sight track, no blood came back to the last blood spatter and went right, no blood. I put my rifle and camera down and ran as fast as a fat old man can back to where I was sitting and where my headlight was. Grabbed it and ran back. I was losing light fast, but I've recently acquired an excellent headlamp. I started over and did the same routine. Other than what I originally spied, no more blood. By now I was getting despondent, I hate to lose game. I was walking back toward the point of impact, feeling desperation creep in when I happened to look to my right into a brush pile which would be on my right as I was walking back. The light illuminated the buck laying there stone dead, not 10' from the point of impact. I'd been so intent on tracking the blood that my tunnel vision had blinded me. I'd passed within two foot of the buck on at least three occasions. Was I jazzed. After two years I got him on my 66th birthday! He's a cull by anyone's standards, but a personal trophy to me. Plus one does not eat the horns.

What made things even more nifty, that morning I found a knife that I'd carried and took pictures of in 5 states that I had lost two years before. It was laying in a creekbed where floods will move 200 lb. boulders like they were ping-pong balls.


ya!


GWB

Well, belated Happy Birthday and CONGRATS on the amazing -- and I am sure unexpected -- find of your knife. The buck was icing on the cake. It's even more special when you take a specific animal that you've been after. I hope you had a good drink and cigar at the end of that day!

you know it!



ya!

GWB

quote:

yes, if you degland them, while wearing gloves, and then replace gloves and knives, and get the hide off, cleanly, the meat could be made into something edible -- tamales and smoked pepper sausages are of the better choices -- i don't care for these or aoudad meat, but i know people that love it, so, they often get a treat ..

And that right there is where people mess up.

Unlike a skunk, the scent glands on a javelina are in the hide. All a person has to do is pull the hide off, just like skinning a whitetail and there is no problem. The musk glands are on their back.

I am not, nor ever ha3ve claimed that javelina are better than other game meat, but if handled properly they are not that bad, and I have butchered probably as many javelina as anyone on this site, if not more.

Javelina will stay in the brush and keep the deer off the corn! Then come in after dark! I have eaten one and would rather have feral pig. I don't eat many of them either yet! Drop and drag and hope javelin don't get started here!

Is that legal to waste them in the field like that?

I thought they were a game animal?

They are a game animal and several folks over the years have found that out the hard way and got ticketed for such behavior.

The only thing wrong with Javelina is Bad Press by a bunch of misinformed "Hunters"!

Many hunters here in Texas have very little real knowledge concerning Javelina. They are not destructive like feral hogs they can and will run deer off of a feeder but they can be fenced out from a feeder.

TP&WD really needs to change their attitude and create and add two Javelina tags to the license and actually treat them as a game animal like Arizona and New Mexico do.

I hear you, common misconceptions ruin things.