Javelina encounter

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Tonight , just after sunset my wife and I , and our little dog were taking our usual walk through the neighborhood and we encountered a family of Javelina. Three adults and two juveniles, just like this group
( photo from the internet )
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Our neighborhood is all desert landscape with no fences between houses and wildlife is free to move between the houses.
So we were walking down the street and about 50 yards in front of us we see this herd emerge from between two houses and they are running straight for us. Something had spooked them. Their eyesight is poor and they couldn’t see us. Our dog started growling at them, and I’m thinking oh crap! The presence of young ones made them a lot more unpredictable and I didn’t want them running right into us, so I hustled us down a side street, where we stopped and watched them run right by. I never get tired of seeing something truly wild living right among us. This is the first time I’ve seen young ones
 
They are normally shy peaceful creatures, mostly nocturnal. They have on occasion attacked people, but it’s usually because they’ve been surprised and feel cornered. Like I said they have poor eyesight, but their sense of smell and hearing is keen. They are naturally protective of their young, and they have some wicked big teeth.
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Very, between them and the feral pigs not a good day at redrock if you encounter them especially at night. Here in Texas most hunting leases require you to shot pigs on sight. I hit a Javelina in my jeep one night at about 60. It rolled about 10 times. Got up and started ramming the front of the jeep. Tough bastards.
 
Vickie and I encountered a group of about 12 of them 2(?) yrs back at a State park. Kept our distance of 100 ft or more and watched them. Left them alone and they recipriated. Cool to watch nature doing it's thing.
 
if you leave fido tied out at your campsite, you will return to find only a bloody collar..
Yikes!!! :yikes: I used to work with a guy, whose brother lived in Las Vegas. When he visited, they'd hunt javelina. Dunno. Are they tasty? A species of wild pig, I'd imagine they'd make for some fine barbeque?
 
Yikes!!! :yikes: I used to work with a guy, whose brother lived in Las Vegas. When he visited, they'd hunt javelina. Dunno. Are they tasty? A species of wild pig, I'd imagine they'd make for some fine barbeque?

When I was a kid, my dad used to love going Javelina hunting . He bagged a couple, even had a head mounted with a snarling, teeth bared pose that used to scare the crap out of our cat. :laugh2: The first one he got he cleaned it and tried to cook it on our barbecue and it was awful. He did some asking around and it was said that the Javelina have scent glands that have to be carefully skinned around or they ruin the meat, kinda skunky.
Sooo....he was prepared the next time. He found some place that said they knew just what to do. He took the Javelina straight to this guy , who then cleaned it and charged my dad a lot of money to slow roast the pig in a big smoker. My family planned a big feast around this and.....it was awful. :laughing: They threw the whole thing out and my dad never hunted for one again.
 
you have the wild game around you like me. Nice.

Pig meat, (pork), taste is influenced by what they eat...........we would feed our pigs different food for a couple of months before killing them. if the chestnuts were falling around then we had chestnut flavored pork.

Wild pigs, (javelina's), would eat decaying carcasses......wouldn't make for great tasting pork if food was scarce
 
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Pig meat, (pork), taste is influenced by what they eat
Very true. When I started in the pig plant 235 was the target for "market weight" , When we quit killing 275 was. They not only wanted them bigger for more efficiency they also wanted them leaner.
Killing pigs is not as easy as you might think. What you want to do is stun them then slit their throat so all the blood drains out. If they "die" before the blood is gone you you get PSE in the meat. Reason they have to be stunned is so the people slitting their throats and shackling don't get the shit kicked out of them.
 
Very true. When I started in the pig plant 235 was the target for "market weight" , When we quit killing 275 was. They not only wanted them bigger for more efficiency they also wanted them leaner.
Killing pigs is not as easy as you might think. What you want to do is stun them then slit their throat so all the blood drains out. If they "die" before the blood is gone you you get PSE in the meat. Reason they have to be stunned is so the people slitting their throats and shackling don't get the shit kicked out of them.
No bacon for breakfast this morning. :sick:
 
Killing pigs is not as easy as you might think. What you want to do is stun them then slit their throat so all the blood drains out. If they "die" before the blood is gone you you get PSE in the meat. Reason they have to be stunned is so the people slitting their throats and shackling don't get the shit kicked out of them.

We used to kill and dress all our own meat, be it beef, sheep, pigs or fowl. Used a gun, (not on the fowl), and with a proper head shot, (head on and with the head at the right angle imagine a crossed line from the eyes to the ears and where those lines intersect is the brain shot), the animal would drop on the spot, as for reflex movement after the killing there was very little to virtually none. Pigs i would head shoot and stick them straight away. never a problem draining the blood or with the animal kicking

Stress in the animal causes the meat to be infused with a lot of enzymes and chemicals that make the meat tough and does affect flavor. Social structured animals like cattle and pigs, (especially as they are so intelligent), will react with just the smell of blood in a paddock in such a way there tails will be raised they stomp the ground and get agitated to the point where they will strike others in their vicinity..........if they are that stressed in an open paddock imagine how they are stressed in cattle yards at the abattoirs, the smell of blood is all around them with the stress from all the other animals as well, while being herded and prodded in a completely alien environment.........Carcasses are known to be given electric shocks to tenderize the meat due to chemical infusion of stress the animal suffered before killing.
 
Used a gun, (not on the fowl), and with a proper head shot, (head on and with the head at the right angle imagine a crossed line from the eyes to the ears and where those lines intersect is the brain shot)
We were a small kill operation, only 7200 a day. Would have been a lot of bullets. A electric stunner was used. The goal was to stun them enough to knock them out for 20 seconds. By then their throats were were slit and they were shackled and up side down. Didn't want to kill them just stun them. Better meat if the heart keeps beating. Blood gets pumped out faster. Correctly stunning is not as easy as it sounds.
We only killed happy stress free pigs.:rolleyes:
We did a lot of things to try and keep them calmed down.
 
Wasn't suggesting using a gun. Explaining the procedures i/we used to use on the farm.

An abattoir is just that and its the way we do things, some may have better practices than others but an animal is going to be stressed in that environment, cant be avoided. Not a critic of your work or job. The local abattoir was just down and or across the road from our farm, and we overlooked it from the main house. A lot smaller than yours

Before regulation and the use of settling ponds they used to discharge all the floor washings into the local river, that was the boundary the length of our farm. the river would run red 6 days a week and on Sunday it was still dirty but not red.
 
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