80 lb shoats are a treat to eat-- they're extremely tender. The shoulders aren't really worth the trouble, but there's fine eating in the hams and backstraps. Don't forget the tenderloins. Some like the livers. I don't, particularly. If they've been eating "deer corn", do
NOT eat the liver. (Deer corn is usually high in aflatoxin, which accumulates in the liver.)
I've had some wonderful successes with the backstraps roasted in a shallow pan while half covered with pineapple juice and beer or mead.
Roasted barded tenderloins with garlic, kosher salt, ground pepper and fresh rosemary is a simple treat to impress anyone's pallet. On a small hog, though, they're small.
For the hams, I'm a huge fan of boning them out and freezing them for later use as roasts or sources of chunk pork. My all-time fav-or-ite pork meal is
[sfx: host of angels singing] Green Chile Stew. There are hundreds of variations of this-- look around for your favorite recipe.
I also love fresh pork for homemade chile. I hand-dice it finely before browning it for the chile pot. I just use a variation of the tried and true Wick Fowler's mix, and make a triple batch from bulk spices that I buy from the store, varying only by using fresh spices (onion, garlic, oregano) instead of the dried stuff. When your batch comes out perfect (and it will-- that hand-dicing trick is the secret to great consistancy), freeze it in quart tupperwares. Chile freezes superbly, and you can thaw it rapidly for a no-effort gourmet meal some night in the next year. (I tend to take it hunting.)
SAUSAGE:
It's easier than you think!
Finally, my wife found that they sell these attachments for our old Sunbeam mixer. She got a meatgrinder attachment for about $20 or less, which fits on top of the mixer, and came with a sausage-stuffing attachment. From the internet, she ordered some vegetable-based sausage casings and some sausage spice mixes for cheap. We started cubing up the pork and dropping it into the grinder. Hey! This was EASY! The grinder catches the fascia, too, eliminating a lot of work. Run it once through to grind it, pour in the spices and run it through a second time to stuff the sausage casings. We then smoked some or just froze the sausage to be cooked later. Some we mixed with venison. My wife discovered that there's all kinds of free recipes on the internet for making sausage, so she just buys the bulk spices locally, and we do it even cheaper. We've made bratwurst, itallian sausage, breakfast sausage.... great stuff. That grinder makes it a snap to take care of a big hog. I mean-- what carnivore doesn't like sausage?!?
Only caveat: If you're going to make sausage, be sure to save some of the fat when you clean the hog. Wild hog is surprisingly lean, and you need to add some fat to the meat when making sausage!
I've been thinking about curing my own hams, but need a good place to properly hang 'em.
Damn. I'm making myself hungry, here.