What do you do with a big fat sow hog? You make BACON!

When I see posts about utilizing wild hogs for meat, I wonder why the hogs are skinned as opposed to the time-honored method of scalding and scraping.
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Scalding and scraping is very time consuming. The hog must be scraped prior to gutting. It can't be done in the field: Most hunters lack the equipment to do it at home.

i kill a lot of wild hogs. Takes me 30-40 minutes to skin and field dress a 200 pound wild hog. i skin the animal prior to gutting; makes the skinning a lot easier. Couple times a year i scald and scrape wild hogs for pig in the ground feasts.

Very few wild hogs have bacon. They have a hard scrabble life. Sometimes wild hogs get thick layers of fat like the one in the OP. They are usually eating corn, milo, soybeans or pellets at feeders.

Got a lot of good bacon from this big sow:

 
Some of us old guys survived things that certainly wouldn't be considered proper today. We had a cast kettle as well, but it wasn't big enough to actually dip a hog. We would heat up the water and dump a small handful of lye in it, and lay the hog out on a sheet of plywood over some sawhorses. We would cover the hog with burlap bags and pour the hot water over them to let the hog steam and soften up the hair. Lots of folks had lots of ways of doing it, but they pretty much did the same things in the end.
One old guy that helped with butchering would save the blood in a pot, and stir it until clotting was pretty much over. He would put it in a large cast iron pan and fry it with onions and green chili ( not my sort of thing, but he loved it).
I guess I've gotten lazy in my old age, but nowdays I just keep the hind legs and the backstraps off of the feral hogs...and donate the rest to the critters in the woods. Part of this is because I kill quite a few of them to be doing so much work butchering. I am in my 7th yr. of hunting one property and I've killed 578 hogs off of it so far. Add this to a couple hundred I've killed off of a couple other properties and you can probably see my point.
 
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This sow was from Eastland county and she was fattened on acorns. You know, that is what they fatten those Iberico hogs up on in Italy that cost hundred for one ham. That was one reason I wanted to make bacon out of her. Got to say, it is the best bacon I have ate in my life and everyone who has tasted it agrees.
 
Don't know what changed, but now I can see the pics from the OP's first post. Was a bit disappointed; thought I was going to see actual bacon . . .
 
Think sausage. Lot~~s of sausage. Hopefully you have a good smoker and allot of family to help in the sows eating? ~~Big Pig there johnhoward "yes indeed."
 
Rangerrich99

If you want to see the bacon, just watch the video. If all you want to see is the bacon, skip to the end where I slice it up and fry it. But I warn you, you will get a insatiable bacon craving if you do that! :D
 
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