My wife shoot about a 150lb or so young boar hog last week. I spent the time processing it and decided to make some trial sausage. I had noticed a different odor than the deer being processed which I figured was normal. When my wife cooked the sausage it ran me out of the kitchen----the same smell. Now I've been told all the meat will smell this way. The last pig I killed was about a 90lb gilt and was sooo tough we couldn't eat it. All I've heard from men I work with is how good wild pigs are. What's up????

did you soak it and drain it in an ice chest for a few days? keep adding ice and draining every day?

Been hunting hogs for a long time now and have never had a bad tasteing one.But i do mine like this.Hang the hog and spray it off good before starting,skin the whloe hog,spray off good.I never use the same knife i do for skinning,cut the legs off where you want,cut the head off,gut the hog,wash out real good and trim the loose meat off and get all the little marble glands (gray looking oval shaped)that are attached to the inside cavity.Quarter and lay in cooler and cover with ice,drain everyday for two or more days,if i am going to smoke it i take it out and inject with tonys butter and jalepeno and use my rub to cover the out side and wrap with foil and put in cooler with ice leave cap off drain for a couple days and cook at 275 - 300 for eight hours or until done......Just cut back strap for fajitias or chicken fry and tenderize.

It was in the cooler iced and drained for 6 days. It has an "old pork" smell and taste.

Sounds to me like something went wrong during field dressing.I've killed and eaten 100's, and never had one smell bad or be tough.

Did it have a funny sweet smell when you killed it? If it was a dominate breeding boar, their meat is never worth eating. They typically have a funny order to them. Regardless of the size, a breeding boar will have meat that smells bad when cooked and tastes bad and too strong a flavor when eaten.

I killed a boar that weighed in at about 230 last January. He had fresh cuts on his neck, face and shoulders from fighting and he STANK while I was cleaning him. It was a weird, musty smell - almost sweet but gave me a vague urge to gag at the same time (I'm pretty sure that's the same smell Capt. Craig is describing). I tried to grill his tenderloins and while they were edible it was still gross. I brined his whole hams and slow cooked one in a crockpot with a "cuban pork" recipe. Absolutely disgusting. I ate it, but I couldn't get my wife to help - I needed a 60/40 mix of sauteed pineapple to meat just to choke it down. That's the only pig (boar, sow, shoat or piglet) I've had that was actually bad table fare. While you're processing, my experience has been that the color of the fat will give you a good idea about whether or not you'll be able to eat it. Yellow fat = nasty. White fat = tasty.

Don't despair, they're usually quite good. Pop a little one next time if you need to ease yourself back into it.