In Australia we have a chiller box (well lots of them all over the place) where properly accredited hunters can sell dressed feral pigs. These are then sent to be processed and sold to Germany. Do you guys have the same type of thing over there?

No, as a general rule, wild game is not sold in the U.S.

No, we don't have anything like that.

The big deal is deciphering the actual status of feral hogs in each state.

Some states consider them game animals and have established seasons/licenses/bag limits etc. etc..

In Texas they are considered pests/livestock and can be shot at any time in any numbers as long as the hunter/shooter has permission to be on that particular piece of land.

The problem, and one that I used to have, is that unless it is frozen and shrink wrapped, like in the store, lots of folks won't even take it when offered, let alone pay for it.

In many ways, much of American Society has become a POS, in that people in many instances have stopped being willing to accept fresh killed game meat, especially if they are going to have to finish the processing.

It would be nice if we could have a program like the one you describe, but it ain't happening here in the states.

I South Texas (Refugio & Goliad for sure) I know some people who trap FH and sell them to someone who comes around and buys them. I think they sell them to markets in Asia somewhere.

Well thats interesting. With your pig population I thought you guys would be all over it. Down here you have to be accredited, your vehicle has to comply with a set standard (tray made of stainless steel or aluminium with no corners etc, fresh water, place to sterilize knives) and off you go. You kill a pig, gut it but leave in the lungs,heart and such and take it to the chiller. They will pay you whatever the going rate is.

I don't have any problems finding someone to take a carcass off my hands--got a standing order from one family, and my hunting buddy will almost always take a good one too.

When we were on the S. Tx lease, we could shoot a big one, call a lady friend who would come get it, do all the butchering (less gutting which we did), and make home-made tamales. We got half the output--and it was nice to go to the ranch, knowing there were dozens of fresh tamales in the freezer.

Dustoffer, you are lucky.

Get up around the DFW MetroMess, and folks won't take them if they are skinned and ready to cut up.

Getting folks to take a gutted but unskinbned pig is impossible.

Hell, I know of folks that the only way they will take a mess of fish from you is if they are already filleted and ready to cook and they are not bashful about telling you so.

Used to be you could sell them (although that may have just been the live-trapped ones) but I read that the swine flu scare had dried up the market. Don't quote me on that as I did not investigate it myself.

They are not game animals here (Texas) so the rules about selling wild game did not apply, but there were other rules relating to the meat if I recall correctly.

TPWD Page for Exotics

Charles:

Without trying to reseach it, there was an active market for live feral hogs in Texas a few years back and they were mostly going to Germany and Europe. However as I understand it the transport, holding, and other disease related requirements/regulations put on them by various Texas bureaucrats became too onerous, for the practice to continue. In short, at least in Texas, to my knowledge, there is no current legal outlet for sale of FRESH live feral hogs for slaughter, nor can live feral hogs be transported very easily, meaning meeting the legal requirements is more trouble than they are worth in most cases.

I've been feeding pigs to our church custodian for about 8 years now, and he's never turned me down--even at 2 AM. When I was on the S. Tx lease he always said "Don't even gut 'em, just bring 'em on." Well, July in Tx and a 2-hr drive made that impossible, so he got lots of pigs already quartered, but in cool weather, they were just field dressed. Now, I meet him at WalMart and hand off a freshly killed (less than 30 minutes) pig carcass--don't even have to field dress them.

There was a licensed Hog buyer up at Jermyn Texas for a few years, and the Public can go to those places and buy live pigs out of the holding pens.

But, for the pigs to leave the property, the pigs had to be killed on the property, no live pigs were allowed to be moved from the site.

This man had a contract with Bel-Tec a.k.a. Frontier Meats I believe, and they bought all of the 100 pound and larger hogs that the guy could gather.

They would show up on a weekly basis from Fort Worth with a refridgerated trailer and a crew and they would process a big number of those pigs.

You can/could by wild boar chops at Central Market in Fort Worth and at other such high end markets around the state.

Last time I talked to the man, about a month back, he still does custom order pigs for the Public, so much per pound live weight, but they still can not leave his facilities alive.

We have not had a problem getting rid of pigs between neighbors construction crews working on our jobs and employees.

It would be nice to be able to sell some to cover gas and food.

I know that when Broken Arrow harvests wild game for their commercial meat business, they have a USDA meat inspector travel with the shooter/processor team to inspect each carcass. Their products are shipped across state lines and internationally. But I don't recall boar being an offering on their web page. I think there are some swine disease regulations in the USA that make certifying wild boar more expensive than the current demand will bear.

Wild boar has a cultural attraction in Europe that never devloped in the US. Folks here assume a feral hog is somehow inferior to commercially raised pork. It a shame, really.

A good friend and I trapped about 20 a few years back on the red river in an attempt to sell them, the local buyer wouldnt take any that weighed under the bonus weight with out a penalty on the price. We kept them penned for a couple months, fed them out while butchering a couple, and took them back. The guy ran our hogs over his scales and I knew something was wrong, we raised hogs as a boy and the weights werent right. After we got paid and the buyer left we stood at the pens and griped, and I got a good look at the scales. I noticed the dirt under the scales was built up til it kept the scale from registering the correct weight. We came back by a few days later to say something to the buyer and noticed the dirt had been shoveled out from under the scales. I told my friends about it and vowed not to trap more for him. Then the practice was stopped.
Eterry