To Gut or Not to Gut?…that is the question.

If you plan to have a Luau you are going to want to gut your hog. If you do not want the whole hog, and just want it quartered, you don’t have to gut it. There is a clean way, I call it the “blanket way” to skin and quarter your hog. My career has covered years of taxidermy, commercial fishing and professional hunting and trapping. I have made all kinds of cuts, with all kinds of knives, on all kinds of critters. I have found a good way to quarter and backstrap your hog and I call it the Blanket Cut. Just lay them on their side and use a gut hook to cut the skin 3 times. The first cut is straight down the back. The second cut is from the top of the first cut along the front of the shoulder. The third cut is from the bottom of the first cut down the back of the ham to the hock, skinning from top to bottom taking it off like a blanket. Next lay that old stinky hide over and use the inside skin like a table cloth. Take the backstrap first because it is on top. Then you take your quarters and hams from top to bottom. Flip it over and repeat. A big trophy boar covered in mud and skinned right, without gutting can be plenty tasty.

Fresh, clean Wild Hog backstraps, quarters and hams