It has been a lot of years since I saw Dad kill one. He almost always sent them off to be butchered after killing them after I got older so I can't help with that a lot. He did a few himself when I was real small but I can't remember the details. He would hang them up by the heels to bleed them, gut them, and do the major cuts. I don't remember a scald, but that is possible. They were certainly cleaned and most of the hair removed someway but I don't remember that part. Butchering takes time. The reason he started sending them off for butchering was that he had a regular job after I got into school. He did not have time to do the whole butchering himself, even over a weekend.
Dad would take a .22 rifle and shoot the hog between the eyes. He never stunned them. He'd get real close so he could not miss, the barrel almost touching the animal. The hog would go down immediately and he would then cut the throat to bleed it out. The guy that did the butchering would be there with his truck and a helper and they would drag the hog onto the truck, haul it away after it had bled out, and a few days later we would go pick up the meat cut up into big pieces and sausage. We would then finish cutting up the meat to wrap it and use the fat to make lard.
My uncle did tell a story of a neighbor that had a few hogs. The neighbor went out to butcher a hog and shot one. He did not kill it. The hogs ran to the other side of the pen so he went over, shot again and was successful. He butchered that hog but a couple of days later another one of his hogs died of a gunshot to the head. If you have more than one, be sure you can tell which one you are shooting. Dad would hunt squirrel and rabbit with a .22. Knowing what you are doing with a gun is essential.
I'll not go into preparing the meat for the freezer or the hams for curing. But to prepare some cuts for freezing, we would cut the outside layer of fat off, along with the skin. You obviously can skin it since footballs are called pigskins, but you cannot pull the skin off. The fat is attached too tightly. You have to carefully cut the skin off if you want the skin. We just cut the skin and fat into chunks maybe an inch or an inch and a half on a side and rendered that into lard.
Rendering into lard is the part I remember best. We had a huge cast iron kettle. Wed have a lot of wood cut and build a fire under that kettle. A few pieces of the fat would go in to start it. We would stir that and as some grease came out, add more of the fat chunks (with skin attached) always keeping it so we could stir it. I don't know how he determined that it was about cooked, but shortly before we took the fire away, he would put in some baking powder and some potatoes. I think both were intended to purify or whiten it somehow, not sure exactly how, but those potatoes were delicious. After it was cooked, we' d put the cracklings in a cloth bag, probably linen but not sure, and had two pieces of wood attached at the end with a hinge, a piece of inner tube I believe, and squeeze the lard out of those cracklings.
I never liked the cracklings, too greasy for me, but some of my siblings did. I also remember Mom always made liver pudding as her first dish with a butchered hog. I like liver but I hated that liver pudding.
Thanks for bringing back memories of long ago. Hope you get something out of this that helps.
