Rewilded Roadkill Cuisine, Hog/Wild Boar/Pig, Forest Of Dean, UK

We drove out to the Forest of Dean at dawn and found a young pig dead on the road. Hit but not run over. Perfect for roadkill cuisine.

Chucked it in the back of the car, set off quick, and almost immediately passed a black pickup with spotlights. They had to wait for us at a junction and gave us suspicious stares. They may have been on their way to pick up the same pig. The Forest of Dean pig population is a money spinner for some.

Took the pig home, skinned and butchered it in a private part of my garden. Not much of the meat was spoiled by the injuries, I got a fair bit, most frozen now, some roasted over a fire in the woods last night. Good wild meat, my first real taste of rewilding.

I haven't had time to prepare the skin. I just salted it. But if I don't get it done today I'll have to throw it out.



The rewilding lobby are prone to see traditional sheep farming as the enemy.

. . . get rid of most of the sheep from our “sheepwrecked” uplands, as Monbiot advocates . . .

www.thelandmagazine.org.uk...

Sheep provide material for the manufacture of life enabling clothing, without needing to kill and skin animals and prepare the hides.

I'm now experienced at trying to find time to prepare one measly little rewilded pig hide. It's easier to spin a couple of ounces of wool, and you don't have to deal with freshly dismantled animal innards.


Rewilding.

It's all about bringing nature back to life and restoring living systems

www.rewildingbritain.org.uk...

Bringing nature back to life. Like Frankensteins monster? This is deluded thinking. Nature will and does come 'back to life' every time there's a space to be filled. We don't need underhand reintroductions without public consent, as has happened with the tame 'wild boar' in the Forest of Dean.

There isn't a great deal of danger from the pigs in the forest. Road collisions are an obvious risk. I've seen a very large, lone adult male and he was big enough to potentially write off a bus. Dog attacks can be confined to "the boar rolled him along with it's nose like a football, but it didn't bite him". A dog that corners a pig may be badly slashed, and a grumpy pig may attack random dogs. Scared horses may throw their riders.

Other than that, walking in the Forest with its overpopulation of deliberately introduced 'wild boar' isn't likely to bring you into conflict with the pigs. They just grumble and amble off.

The pigs are well established and spreading. Odd sightings are reported in many parts of the country. Over the next decades pigs will become a part of life for many of us. They aren't particularly dangerous, except in traffic collisions.

It's a lot to get used to, it's clearly sanctioned a some level, and we can expect more rewilding shenanigans.

agrilife.org...

I would only eat our wild hogs if there was nothing else.. Only because there are a lot of diseases they carry. Including Mad Cow. Also I read that you can cure a hide with the animals brain. Yuck but I guess you just spread it all over the hide and process. www.offthegridnews.com...

www.drday.com...

www.organicconsumers.org...

a reply to: misskat1

This is how it's done properly here. www.wild-boar.org.uk...

I just went on intuition that this one was healthy and I believe I'll be safe as long as I follow basic rules for preparation.

I though about the brain, then I remembered a pig brain is very small.

a reply to: Kester

We drove out to the Forest of Dean at dawn and found a young pig dead on the road. Hit but not run over. Perfect for roadkill cuisine.

You sound more of a southern USA citizen than I am .And I live in the great State of Georgia . My hat is off to you.

Wild pig is one of my most favorite meats out there...

Love the flavor, the texture... soak it in a prep, slow cook over a flame while it soaks in bbq sauce.. fantastic...

I want to go hunting now..

a reply to: misskat1

Off topic. I met a man who advised farmers on Mad Cow. He said, I just do this job because I have to provide for my family, but I don't believe the advice I'm paid to give to farmers. He said his fathers farm was the only one in the area not to get Mad Cow. Yet his father fed the same feed. The only difference was he never gave his cows antibiotics.

I love boar flesh- quite tasty. We have a lot here, and they often get too numerous and have to be killed even outside of hunting season sometimes.

Though contrary to your experience, the ones here are very dangerous! They kill many dogs each year- just disembowel them with one stroke. I have a friend who had his leg sliced open from knee to hip by one.

The other day I was on the patio in the evening and heard some in our field, next to the river, sounded like they were fighting. Luckily my dog had heard them and come running back to me. He knows to stay away from those things.

a reply to: Kester
I read that every animal has exactly enough brain to cover the hide. Ive never tried it, but my head is just full of useless information. lol