Hey I was just wondering if anyone has eaten Javelina, and more especially if anyone has been able to make them taste great... or even good?
Yes the are. I was pleasantly surprised how good they are. We cooked it like a roast or brisket and it was great.
Awesome: Crock pot works great too. Enjoy
Some vinegar goes a long way.
Never smelled anything as bad as a javelina. Skinned a few. Don't shoot them anymore. Good luck.
Yes, they taste good. Smell......depends on where they are shot. I have shot a few, no smell but plenty of flees and ticks.
Like any wild game the flavor is all in how cleanly its killed and how well its taken care of after the kill. The way I do it is to use gloves and two knives. Use one set to skin it and one set to cut it up. That way the smell doesn't get on the meat. The scent gland is in the skin so once its off there is no more smell.
MAP
Cactus rat is good. Don't listen to those that won't eat it. Cool em down quick get the hide off - spend no time looking for musk gland just skin em as you would anything else. Grilled it is hard to beat5.
I've shot quite a few, but like Straitera, I don't shoot them anymore. As far as eating them I did only once. They are a rodent and not a hog as I have heard some people say. They are loaded with fleas and ticks so if you shoot one let it lay and cool some before handling it and maybe some of the fleas and ticks will come off.
Good luck.
I've shot quite a few, but like Straitera, I don't shoot them anymore. As far as eating them I did only once. They are a rodent and not a hog as I have heard some people say. They are loaded with fleas and ticks so if you shoot one let it lay and cool some before handling it and maybe some of the fleas and ticks will come off.
Good luck.
QuoteOriginally posted by Moon:
Rodents are good. and not a hog as
Good luck.
I like squirrels They are a rodent, must not taste like havi. :confused:
Hey Moon, look it up,Javelina aren't a rodent or a hog, they are a Javelina. I don't know about the Javies in Texas, I've only hunted them in southwest Arizona and out of 24 years and taken a few, I have never found a flea or tick on one. It could be the season, it's in January when it's cold. They don't tastes like chicken, but cooked in a cock pot and made into burritos. :thumbsup:
Thanks guys!
I shot a few and ate them. They are not the best piece of meat that I've ever had but very edible and probably taste even better when starving. Had some in a crock pot this year and that was the best. Dino
Using a crock pot is good, even grilling them. But I really like deep pitting them, now that is eating. :bigsmyl:
Gonna find out tomorrow. Just put my first in the pot. Hope the BBQ turns out.
Very edible crock tequila beer and whatever else. Mine was better than beef
They are very good. I made most of mine into breakfast sausage, and the backstraps I cooked on the grill with some BBQ sauce on them and they were excellent.
Nathan
You know what? Them little suckers are tough! Chewing on a prickly pear or toughing it out after getting hit with an arrow......or on the plate! But, darn, they taste great! I've heard a lot about sure fire methods to tenderize them....well, doesn't always work. Sometimes, they're delectable, and sometimes just really good AND chewy! And the TX ones I saw were filled with fleas while the AZ ones were not.....?
I did read that they are not rodents and not pork, either. I still love to hunt them, and I'm not gonna leave it laying on the ground...it'll go in the pot!
They are no more closely related to a rat than we are.. Javelina belong to the suborder Suina with pigs and hippopotamuses being their closest relatives.
As to cooking them, I've had them barbequed, grilled, in tamales, in sausage, fried, stewed and fricasseed....it's all good if the cook is any good.. overcooked it is like anything else over cooked
The meat is pink and like most mammals the young ones are tender and the best tasting.
When skinning them I usually case them like I would a coon or mink.
Redant 60/65 you ought to know that anything different that you are trying to describe taste's like chicken. I just wish I could go hunt some of those critters.
I got done eating and fired up the computer and had to laugh when I saw this thread because for supper I had just had some javi. I sausage most of mine (breakfast, italian, chorizo) but I usually smoke at least one hind quarter. It is good, not incredible but for sure good....Shawn
Made sausage out of mine turned out great.
As others have mentioned, it's pretty decent - slow cooked, shredded, and thrown in tortillas, hard to tell what it is. Makes good sausage too. A 45lb feral hog it is not, but it's perfectly edible, even moreso if you eat it well after you've forgotten the smell of the live critter.
I thought it was awesome! I made mine into chorizo with seasonings I found online. My wife went to her mothers and the boys and I ground and mixed it.
Mine was a huge sow that weighed 35lbs skinned and gutted. I wish I would have kept the pelt to have tanned and later when money is more available made into a rug.
I'll be back in Arizona next January chasing them again...
you bet, make sure you skin them nicely and avoid the skin fur etc touching the meat, cool it down, Smoke it, marinade it, stew it, i even Canned some with Jalapenos and onion and it was good, you can get a tuff old smelly one now and again, just add more BBQ :cool:
everything is edible if you 1. add enough other stuff. 2. cook it long enough. lol About ten years ago we cooked a nutria on a bet, that thing is truely a he-man version of a rat.
You bet. Butter Milk, foil and grill.
Tried it twice, I just prefer feral hogs. So I doubt I will hunt Javies anymore.
Crock pots can fix anything but havies are quite fine cooked in a number of fashions
Gentlemen, the javelina is neither rhodent or pig, they are a "collard peccary" and species of thier own.
They are a sub order of the hog family.
Far as eating them, I passed when I had the chance, can't say that I regreted it.
Aram- never been that hungry.
Not as good as the hogs you killed down here- I assure you! Course I never have heard if you ate em or not? :confused:
I tried it once, should have done like Pepper did, and pass. Maybe it wasn't cooked right, I don't know, but that was the worst meat I ever ate, and I've ate about every wild critter in North America at one time or another.
I'm sure some people can cook it up so it tastes good, but who ever cooked this one sure couldn't.
I kill a Javalina every year here in AZ and eat them all. Like many before me said crock pot and BBQ sauce, or green chili burros, etc. If I don't want it I know plenty that will take the meat off my hands. Thing for me is they are just plain fun to hunt. Had a dozen of them within 10 yards of me this year, just stood there watching them for an hour before shooting one. Great time and fun hunt for kids as well.
Smeared with peanut butter and barbeque sauce and pit-cooked, javie is delicious!
Marty, we had some of that hog in elk camp last year. Laurel did her magic with it. She was in an especially good mood as she was still basking in the glow of her successful elk hunt with the broadheads you gave her.
Aram, sounds like you are fixin to do a bit javi huntin. You are going to need a pile of them things to feed that growing family of yours.;^)
My dad once told me that anything that was not really good tasting you start adding other ingrediants to get it so you could say it is good. Works for me.
for the ticks and fleas we give them a "bath" just soak them up wit soap and water and let them cool for a while, skin them with one knife, quarte with another, marinade and there you go, its not the best meat around but still you can get great sausages, chorizo, tamales, stews, etc.
I think they were made for bowhunting :archer:
I have been shooting them for about 8-10 yrs now. We bone out all the meat and grind. Then mix it with the same amount of ground pork.
Next I buy sausage seasonings and mix. We have probably made 10-12 different kinds of sausage. We like the Southern Style Breakfast and German sausage the best. We don't put it in casing, just 1 lb. packages and make patties out of it for breakfast. Try making some biscuts and gravy out of it - Wow it is really good. Have also made a LOT of breakfast burritos and we have them on the next hunt every morning.
We quit gutting them - just skin them clean good and bone the meat out.
As for fleas - yea we encounter them every year. You can wash them or spray something on them before skinning.
We made sausage (italian) out of the Javelinas we got this year. Kept the tenderloins out just to see how it was plain. I think it's good either way. We cleaned and skinned ours just after harvesting them to get them cooled down and had them on ice within an hour or two. I'm sure that made a huge difference in the taste.
So far I've cooked it a variety of ways:
Fondued the tenderloins (in a broth not oil).
Grilled the sausage on the BBQ.
Slpit it out of the casing and fried it up for breakfast.
Split it out of the casing, fried it up, and added it to rissoto.
Split it out of the casing, fried it up, and topped home made pizza with it.
-Mack
I've always wondered, when people call them rodents or say they are related to rats, more than pigs, why then, do they have hooves, and non-rodent-like teeth?
I've never hunted them, but when I lived in new mexico, a guy gave some meat from one he arrowed. It tasted alright, of course it was free and that probably made it taste better.
"Javi" hit the nail on the head. The young/small ones are much better. As they get older/bigger (especially the boars) you have to be a little more "creative" in how you prepare them. I know an old crusty South Texas taxidermist near Kingsville who prefers eating a young javelina to anything else you can kill down there.
Only ever had them as sausage and it was fine.
Marty and Greg, looks like I will soon be managing the hunting on a 382,000 acre ranch in west Texas. Good mule deer, Turkey, some whitetail, some Aoudad, a herd of wild elk, and lots of Javalina. So yep, I'm trying to figure out how to eat them. And yes we ate the Florida hogs - they were great.
Sure but then you could eat a bowling ball if you were really hungry.
We made kabobs with them after we shot some. We had pineapple, hot peppers, cherry tomatoes, and Javie's. We also soaked it for a while in pineapple juice for a few hours. A couple pieces tasted like it smelled but most were alright. It is a white meat.
PS,
never cut the meat with the same knife you skin the critter with!
Here guys this should settle the question about what a Javalina actualy is.
Is it a "Pig" or Not?
Most people think of Javelina as "pigs", just a desert variety of the common barnyard animal we all know so well. The fact is Javelina do share common ancestry to old world pigs and even similarities in appearance. However, Javelina have many significant differences. They have a different number of teeth, a different gestation period, a complex (versus simple) stomach, and a musk gland on their backs--the fact is, they are not "pigs".
Both Javelina (collared peccaries ~ tayassu tajacu), and pigs are members of the order artiodactyla, suborder suiformes, sharing a common ancestry dating back some 30 million years. But, because of significant anatomical and genetic differences they, have been placed in separate families - pigs in the Suidae family and Javelina in the tayassuidae.
They claim if you soak them in milk for 24 hours all their wild taste is eliminated.
I've never hunted it or tasted it. In fact, this is the first discussion concerning it's edibility that I've ever seen. I wouldn't pass on trying it, but all this talk about the meat smelling isn't very appetizing either.
Wow Aram that is more like a county than a ranch, at least where I come from. I might just have come down and see if I can out walk you around that place. Keep me posted on hunting options.
So far it seems that the consensus is that bowling balls smell better than javelinas, but are a bit tougher and roll off the skillet.
Easy to hunt. Hard to eat.
We just got back from texas last week hunting the little devils. Yes in texas they have alot and I mean alot of fleas and ticks. But we make cherizo sausage out of most of the meat. Then take the back straps and butterfly them and make small medalion steaks. Wrap the steaks with a strip of bacon and season as you might a steak.They are not the best tasting cut of meat but Ive eaten a lot of things worse.Or just grind all of the meat, mix with pork fat and they make good cherizo though.
Are they edible ? Yes . Do you want to eat them ? NO !! Grill your shoes and eat them instead .
Aram:
Sent you a PM.
Javi salad is YUMMMMMY. Grilled is great, also in a crock pot with vegies. I love em. Try a little cajun injector garlic butter. Now that is fine.