Butcher's Cautionary Tale for Harvesting Hog Head

Butcher’s Cautionary Tale for Harvesting Hog Head

Safeguarding Meat Quality from Bullet Shrapnel

Follow along as Lindsey harvests a hog’s head with cautionary tales and insider tips, ensuring no bullet goes unnoticed. Learn the intricacies of harvesting a hog’s head, and how to avoid bullet shrapnel contamination and maximize meat value.

Transcript:

Lindsey Fulton: Alright, welcome back to Blondie’s Butcher Shop. What are we looking at here? I’m sure you’re thinking this is awkward and probably a little disgusting, but let’s talk a little bit about hogs. This is the backside of a hog head. You’ll see right here. This is where the tongue sits. The brain sits right here. And for reference, the hog brain is about the size of a golf ball. It’s absolutely tiny. So when you are euthanizing and harvesting a hog, this is gonna be kinda gross, I’m gonna warn you. I’m gonna turn it around.

When you’re harvesting a hog, you really have to watch your shot, your bullet because you need to penetrate that extremely, extremely small spot. So this is a head that I removed off the hog before cutting it for a customer, but I wanted to show you something else. If you’re like me and you’re using live ammunition, you really got to be careful. This little piece right here that’s falling, looks like a blood clot. It’s actually my bullet.

So if you’re doing anything with the head, deboning it, always watch for bullet shrapnel so you’re not putting it through your grinder. Trust me, it’ll be the first and only time you’ll ever do that.

But yeah, you always want to make sure for that any bone fragment because this is really a lot of valuable meat. This is the jowl cheek here, jowl cheek over here.

These are some lymph nodes here for the hog, and then the pull of the hog’s head actually comes to a point with a lot of cartilage, and there’s a lot of good muscle on both sides. So, if you’re euthanizing with live ammunition, this is a long rifle, high velocity, 22 long rifle bullet, actually. So it’s gonna have a broader head, a 40 millimeter. So just make sure you’re really watching for any of your bullet fragments, so you don’t put it in your meat.