Swine Dining

Top Chefs Go Wild for Feral Hog Meat

Hog trapper Kim Rife and the scales he uses to weigh feral hogs for Frontier Meats./Photo by Rebecca Hoeffner

By Rebecca Hoeffner, Texan News Service

Wild hogs have a nasty reputation for destroying property and even posing a danger to people. Now instead of shooting feral hogs running rampant all over Texas, landowners can make a profit from them as more and more top chefs go wild over wild hog meat.

Frontier Meats, headquartered in Fort Worth since 1976, buys the live animals from trappers and markets the meat, which appears on the menus of many gourmet restaurants as “wild boar.”

Chef Jon Bonnell of Bonnell’s Fine Texas Cuisine in Fort Worth often prepares wild boar he procures from Frontier Meats. He even barbecued wild boar on star chef Bobby Flay’s Food Network cooking show. Bonnell prepared rack of wild boar with Parker County peach barbecue sauce.

Bonnell’s current restaurant menu includes a “build-your-own wild game” combination plate comprised of homemade andouille sausage, a wild boar chop and a choice of elk or buffalo tenderloin, quail or lamb loin. In the past Bonnell also has served wild boar with a pomegranate and rum demi-glace.

“I try to use as many ingredients from Texas as I can, and the boars from Frontier Meats are captured all over the state,” Bonnell said. “They have a totally wild diet, which is a lot healthier than something (from) a feedlot. It gives them a more unique flavor.”

In addition to wild boar, Frontier Meats sells beef, ostrich, bison (Central Market is one of its customers), lamb and venison to food service businesses and restaurants. The private company has operated the exotic meats unit of the French-owned Beltex Corp., which attracted controversy for its horse slaughtering business. A court ruling earlier this year closed the only three remaining American plants slaughtering horses, including Beltex.

About 80 percent of the wild boar meat Frontier markets is sent to Europe, said Danny Starnes, Frontiers’ livestock buyer. There it appears on the menus of many fine-dining restaurants.

On its website Frontier describes wild boar meat as “slightly sweet, a little nutty and intensely exotic. Although similar to domestic pork, wild boar has a deeper color, leaner texture and a bold taste that only wild, free-range game can deliver.”

The meat also contains a third less fat than domestic fat, thus appealing to health-conscious diners, according to Frontier.

Starnes said the company has buying stations in about 30 cities and towns around Texas, including Abilene, Cisco, Henrietta, Maypearl, Quanah and Santa Anna.

“The trappers trap them and once a week we send out drivers to pick up the animals,” Starnes said.

One of the trappers, Kim Rife, resides in Jermyn near Jacksboro. Because the hogs are such an annoyance, Rife asks property owners to call him to trap hogs on their property. He builds his own traps and travels through 18 counties to round up the hogs.

“There’s nothing more trouble than a wild hog,” Rife said. “They can tear up a whole field just by rooting around. There are literally thousands of them in these woods, and they can have litters two to three times a year.”

Rife sets his own traps, but he also buys the hogs from other people at the same rate Frontier Meats buys them from him. “I hardly ever send out under 40 hogs a week,” Rife said.

Frontier Meats set up Rife with a pen to house the animals and a scale on which pricing is based. “Frontier Meats won’t buy a hog under 40 pounds,” Rife said.

Hogs that range from 40 to 59 pounds fetch $5 a head; 60 to 79 pounds bring 13 cents per pound; and hogs weighing from 80 to 99 pounds are 28 cents per pound. Once the hogs weigh over 100 pounds they’re worth 33 cents per pound plus a $20 head bonus – “basically, an incentive,” Starnes said. Hogs weighing 150 to 249 pounds bring 43 cents per pound plus the $20 head bonus; and anything over 250 pounds is 58 cents per pound plus a $15 head bonus. Hogs that are brought directly to the factory in Fort Worth are worth 10 cents more per pound with the same head bonus.

Once they arrive at the factory, the hogs are euthanized. Blood samples are randomly taken and sent to the Texas Animal Health Commission to test for diseases such as rabies and swine brucellosis, an infectious, bacterial disease that can be transmitted to humans. Rife said that while he’s seen malnourished hogs, he’s never seen one that had visible signs of being sick.

Starnes said that it’s important for those hunting the hogs to wear gloves. “If a hunter dresses a hog out in the field and they get a cut, they can get infected with swine brucellosis, and that’s bad news,” Starnes said.

“Don’t touch ‘em,” he added. “They do bite.”

To attract the hogs, Rife puts diesel on corn. “Diesel corn is good to use because deer, turkey, and livestock won’t eat it,” Rife noted. “Hogs will eat anything.”

With few natural predators and an ability to reproduce prolifically, feral hogs populations have exploded in Texas over the past 25 years. “Texas has the dubious distinction of being the feral hog capital of the United States,” Agriculture Commissioner Susan Combs said in a prepared statement. The agriculture department estimates that one-and-a-half million to two million hogs run wild in Texas.

“This is a serious problem, with the hogs destroying pastures and spreading disease to livestock statewide,” Combs said.

The Texas Cooperative Extension service estimated feral hogs cause about $52 million in damage to Texas agriculture annually. It costs about $7 million annually to repair damage and control hogs, the extension service found.

Spanish explorers most likely introduced hogs in Texas more than 300 years ago as a source of cured meat, according to a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department report on feral hogs. As settlers raised hogs as livestock, many escaped into the wild or were allowed to range freely. Then in the 1930s, ranchers and sportsmen imported European wild hogs, or “Russian boars,” for sport hunting.

“Most of these eventually escaped from game ranches and began free ranging and breeding with feral hogs,” TP&W wildlife biologist Rick Taylor reported.

Texas Parks and Wildlife classifies feral hogs as “unprotected, exotic, non-game animals.” They can be hunted year-round with no bag limits. The department requires that hunters obtain a license and permission from landowners to hunt feral hogs.

Although Frontier has marketed wild boar meat for about 15 years, interest has been picking up this year among property owners who want to trap the animals and sell them for slaughter. “It seems like more people are calling and asking where the closest buying station is,” Starnes said.

On the consuming end of the market, Texas carnivores can do their part to take a bite out of the swine problem by ordering an entrée of feral hog – wild boar, that is -- the next time they dine at a fancy restaurant.

The Texan News Service is a project of the journalism program at Tarleton State University in Stephenville. Story editors: Paige Calloway, Kevin Emmert, Taryn Krantz and Rachel Steele. Contact the news service at texannews@tarleton.edu.

Chef Jon Bonnell of Bonnell's Fine Texas Cuisine in Fort Worth often prepares wild boar dishes./

Photo courtesy of Bonnell's

Feral hogs root around a feeder at a hunting lease in LaSalle County. These photos were taken with a game camera triggered by a motion detector./Photo courtesy of Taryn Krantz