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And a good time was had by all (except the hogs, of course).

Sorry I was so long winded in this reply.

Abraham wrote:Flintknapper,

Is he small enough to eat?

Lately, on my bike rides well out in the country, I've come across hog remains where they only harvested the hams, and left the rest to rot, kinda sad.

They (who ever they are) didn't bother to skin or gut them, just cut off the hams and left the remains on the side of the road.

I've seen this ugly spectacle roughly a half dozen times on different rides in different places off in the ditch/side of country roads.

Part of me understands this approach as one whose killed, gutted, skinned, and butchered these critters. It's a hard, miserable job, so yeah, harvesting the hams only and perhaps the back straps is understandable. The waste though is painful to witness. Plus, why not simply bury the remains rather than leave the balance of the carcass to stink and create an ugly scene for the public to bear witness to?

Handling hogs this way makes hog killers look like ignoramuses.

Maybe, but it is common in some parts to let them lay where you shoot them.....reason being that if the vultures or coyotes haven't cleaned up the mess in 48 hours, the other hogs will do it. They are cannibalistic. And a big boar may not be worth eating, so inedible meat isn't really wasted. I've been hog hunting with a friend on his property.....which is strictly a hunting property some ways off the highway. When you shoot a hog there, unless you intend to eat it, you just let them run off to die.....or die where they're shot. If he shoots them near one of his feeders, he'll drag it off away from the feeder a little ways. But either way, he just lets them lay. The first time I was there, we went by a spot where he had shot a hog with his bow a week before, the arrow passing clean through, which had run off a 15 or 20 yards into the brush and gone down. When we walked to the spot a week later, there was nothing left but part of a jawbone, and some pig droppings with coarse hog hair in them.

Perhaps it is kind of ugly right by the side of the road like that, and perhaps the presence of the road scares off some of the animals that would otherwise dispose of the carcass. But under normal circumstances, unless you're trying to keep a feeder odor-free, or there's a dwelling nearby or something where the smell would be objectionable, that carcass will be gone soon enough.

I know that Flint uses a front end loader tractor to haul off the ones he nails.

Flint, did you have to go to the blood donor zone to get him?