Do you think these figures are accurate? I have read that some people simply take the loins and quarters and leave the rest. Is that wasting anything yummy like ribs etc? Not that I'm into pigs feet or ham hocks

Typical live weight 250 lbs.
Carcass weight 180 lbs. (72% of live weight)
Saleable retail cuts 145 lbs. (58% of live weight)
Fat, bones and skin 35 lbs.
Saleable retail cuts would be approximately:
Ham 44 lbs
Loin chops 36 lbs.
Cured or fresh picnic roasts 12 lbs.
Boston butt roasts or slices 13 lbs.
Bacon 28 lbs.
Spareribs 7 lbs.
Feet, tail and neckbones 11 lbs.
Sausage 12 lbs.


http://www.askthemeatman.com/hog_cuts_interactive_chart.htm

Granted, this is for commercial raised hog.

Unless you have hogs that live where you feed year around and along with your neighbors, a wild hog can't be compared to the domestic bred hogs.

They are a lot leaner, although some will come close, but most won't yeild near what an average domestic hog will.

Lora and I figure a feral hog dressing out at almost 50% of live weight.

A 100 pound feral hog will dress out to a 45 to 50 pound hanging carcass.

Out of that, by the time you take out all the bone and the trimmings of stuff that won't even work for grinding, you should end up with about 35 pounds + or - of edible meat.
JME.

That seems to be one of the hardest things to get many hunters to understand.

Yes, a 140 pound live weight deer or 200 pound live weight hog does seem like a big animal, until you start dismantling the things and see how little actual edible meat, not counting the organ meats, there is on an animal.

It is like the shanks of an animals legs, that part above the hoof and below the big joint not connected directly to the body.

It can be cooked slowly and comes out really good, but there is way too much connective tissue for it to be ground easily, it clogs up the grinder due to all that connective stuff.

Then you look at the neck of deer and elk. You can make roasts out of it, if you like such things and like the shanks, most of it is just not worth the effort of trying to grind.

The ribs can be handled 2 or 3 different ways, but there really is not a lot of meat on them.

Once you start removing the bone and guts, you strat losing weight fairly quickly.

Even though Lora and I use the 45 to 50% dress out weight for pigs, that figure is for a bone-in carcass/hanging weight carcass.

When you look at other animals the weight % between live weight and dressed carcass weight drops a lot more than it does for pigs.

Figures we use and have seen listed other places, list deer and elk at 30 to 40% dressout, beeves at around 45%.

That is why many folks get upset when they take their deer to a processor and get back one box with 20 or 30 pounds of meat in it.

One other side note, and it is why I use Barnes bullets for most of my hunting, is the amount of meat lossed due to tissue destruction and "Blood Shot", caused by the more destructive projectiles.

A person that only takes neck shots, just looses the neck.

Persons taking body shots where say the shoulder bones are hit lose a lot of meat.

Heart/Lung shots if placed properly will lose ribs, which for most folks is like the neck , no great loss.

I have found that after a person processes an animal or two, they become more accutely aware of just exactly how little meat there actually is on most of our game animals. JMO.

Yep, it's ridiculous how much the head and cape weigh.

I process ALL my own animals. And all the theories are correct depending on when, where, and how you harvest.
Here in Missouri I find almost every one of my deer to be loaded with fat (which for most people is inedible- including me). A 200# deer will give me about 75 to 80# of well trimmed boned out meat with all factors optimal. Last year my son & I had 217# of boned out meat from three deer (two bucks & one doe). Not much of that is left right now- maybe 10# of burger and about 15# stick sausage. Our deer season opens Nov 15th & I plan to be out refilling the freezer.

Not just the weight of the head and hide, look at those skinny legs and that big gut.

Goats are built the same way they have a big gut and skinny legs.

When a person processes their own kills, yes they can salvage meat from an animal that a processor is going to not even mess with.