What’s the Best Way to Cook Wild Pig?

I am somewhat jinxed when it comes to hunting wild pigs. I don’t know how many times I’ve gone on quote-unquote “slam-dunk” hog hunts that turned into the standard “you should have been here yesterday” affairs with nary a swine in sight. Now I’ve broken the curse with a successful east Texas hog hunt at the Circle WC Ranch near Cuthand, Texas.

I spent the weekend as a guest of Bill Wilson of Wilson Combat fame. Wilson is a renowned competitive pistol shooter and maker of custom 1911s, ARs and firearm accessories. He’s also crazy for hog hunting and has created a swine-centric utopia that he opened up to me for a few days.

The hunt got off to a good start when I shot my first pig, a 220-pound trophy boar before I even climbed into my stand. Wilson had cautioned me to ease into the bait site just in case the pigs were out feeding early and sure enough, there was a blond boar rooting through the mud. The big boar dropped where he stood with one round from my Wilson Combat Tactical Custom in .458 SOCOM. This round is built for special-ops forces, but has proven itself so deadly effective on really big boars that Wilson requires his hunters to use it when trophy hunting.

On spot-and-stalk hunts for smaller meat hogs in the 50-150 pound range, Wilson had me carry a Wilson Combat AR chambered in his 7.62 x 40 WT. That’s what I shot this 80-pound sow with. Though my bullet placement was a bit too far back on the shoulder to get the same DRT (dead right there) performance I’d seen on the boar, she only ran maybe 20 yards before piling up.

So, despite my past bad luck with wild hogs, I now have a plethora of pig parts in my refrigerator waiting to get processed when I find time later this week. Much of it will go into sausage, but I’ve also been working on a number of pig recipes for another project, including my beer-braised take on a choucroute garnie recipe.

I am looking for suggestions from those of you with more experience in the realm of hogs. What do you think is the best way to cook wild pigs?