A conversation with Paul Billet, the fire chief in Weimar, Texas and part of the crew that smoked the sausage

You'd be surprised. People who don't like deer meat. Man, they hang them in coolers with the skin on...if you put it in ice cold water and change the water several times, you don't have that wild taste. We've had 300 pound hogs (feral), they'ed be stinking when you clean them, throw them in the cooler in ice cold water, no wild taste. A lot of people put a cup of vinegar in with it to help tenderize the meat while it's sitting. This will get rid of all that blood. The meat is white when you've finished.
After that, we'll de-bone it, put it in bags toward when we can make sausage or jerky with it.

My boys and I used to have a butcher shop, right in our barn, about 10 miles outside of town. Well, they sold the house so now the "butcher shop" is on my patio. So we got all the stuff. We got the grinder, sausage stuffer, vacuum pack. We just do it for ourselves, our families. Whole lot cheaper.

We even built a smokehouse in the back yard. We always try to have it like in the meat markets, around 160 F, 6 to 7 hours.

We take the wild hog and do 40% to 60% deer meat for our sausage. As long as you take care of your meat and get all the blood out of it, you won't have any problems.

Traps we use aren't claw traps, they're big swinging door traps. If a pig goes in one time they won't go in again. We sour corn, eggs, throw it in there. Some yeast, old beer. Anything that stinks.

We have some farm land. Feral pigs got in and tore it up bad. In one night. We had to replant. It is a real serious problem. Like hurricane blowing through. We have a friend who goes hog hunting at night. He bought a night scope. Behind our place, about a week ago, they got 7 last week. Including a sow weighing around 300 pounds. You might shoot one or two or three but they breed so fast, you just can't keep up.

Barbecue: Most places around here, you don't really see using much sauce. It just covers up the meat. You can have a bad meat and the sauce will just cover it up. Now, when you're cooking, you can baste it but when you put it on that plate, you better not have any on it. Once you cook it in, it's alright.