Thread by @jonst0kes

This weekend I'm taking my oldest daughter on her first "hunt." "Hunt" is in scare quotes, b/c we're going to a ranch where we'll be put in a blind that overlooks a timed feeder. The critters will come, & we'll pick some & shoot 'em.

This is cheaper than buying meat from a farm!

A few weeks ago I went down a list of TX farms that sell whole & half hogs, looking to stock the freezer, sending out emails to find anyone w/ an available pig. I got 1 reply, & he quoted me $5/lb.

That's $750 for a 150lb pig. Our hunt w/ unlimited hogs + 1 buck is $400.

Wild hogs & venison are not as fatty as a farm-raised hog, but nonetheless this is now a good, cheap way to stock a freezer if you have the right gear (thermals + a rifle) & know what you're doing (i.e., shoot the smaller sows & ignore the big boars).

If we score some meat we'll be out more than the $400 in fees + lodging -- they'll charge per boar for processing, and per point for the buck. Still, the meat cost will be dramatically lower than the $5/lb I was quoted.

Also, $5/lb guy never replied when I said "ok take my $$"

This is list of farms I used, BTW. I don't know how many emails I sent out, but it was a lot. As I said, one reply, & that dude ghosted me when I told him I was in. eatwild.com/products/texas…

Y'know, if I'm going to be rigorous about this, I should note the possibility we may come up empty. It does happen, even on timed feeders! So this is not a 100% risk-free meat purchase the way paying for a farmed hog is. It may just be $400 for some memories, which is also ok!

Also in the interest of rigor, the buck will be quite expensive if we get a more desirable trophy one. If she does hit an 8-point buck or similar, that would blow out the per-lb price & we'll be paying for the memories, the trophy, the pix, etc. The hog meat tho is a great deal.

I can ask the guy, but I'm almost certain that the $5/lb price is /not butchered/. That's the price from the farm, which I'd then send it to the butcher. I say this, b/c the farms offering butchered whole hogs are asking $9/lb.

https://twitter.com/lldzne/status/1453377812895866905

When I'm done & I have the meat to the butcher (fingers crossed!), I'll provide a complete breakdown of costs in a follow-up thread. I'll be interested to see how the butchered wild hogs compare to the local $9/lb baseline (for butchered whole/half farm raised hogs).

Of course, the key factor in all this is that I literally could not get a pasture raised whole hog because they're all sold out. So the delta vs. market price is kinda academic here, because there are simply none available around here.