Post by sijae on Jun 16, 2008 14:11:36 GMT -5
Well yesterday turned out differently than I'd planned. Let's start the night before. I had cleaned/packed the office (we're moving out) for a few hours during the day and then taken the kids to see Indiana Jones at the theater around the corner. After that we came back to the office and worked more until midnight. At 12:30 I got home. I carried a sleeping Aidynn in and put her in bed then I started getting my bed ready to get into - I was very, very tired. We had the generator running outside and it was quite loud. The boys were both still outside doing something at the truck. Suddenly we heard a loud horrible sound from outside - definitely a distressed animal sound. I ran outside and turned off the generator so I could hear better. A few seconds later we heard some pretty horrible squealing from the pig pen a few hundred feet away. I ran to the truck and jumped in and drove up there (fastest way to get up there with light). When we got up there I thought I saw a dark shape bigger than the pigs lumbering inside the pig pen and I started honking the horn. I thought at that point it was a bear. I called out and told alex and he went inside and grabbed some loaded guns and came up.
The boys were both in the truck with me and were pretty frightened at this point especially Taji. I jumped out of the truck and walked back towards Alex (not wanting to go investigate without protection) and of course I was in my crocs and unwisely walking around in the dark so I got cactus in my foot :-(
Alex had his 44 magnum revolver and gave me his glock 9mm (I guess because it's easier to shoot - I really need to get gun-knowledgeable) We went up to the pig pen and saw the largest barrow stumbling towards their little house. We could see from there that he had instestines hanging down from his belly and he was dieing. At that point we didn't know what had happened but we knew the pig needed to be put down. I started counting pigs and they were all there (6 of them). One of the other pigs had injuries on his back, one of the pigs has a bloody ear and there were some blood drops on one's nose. At first we didn't know what had happened, we did a quick check on the fence and saw no damage so we started to wonder if there had been a big pig fight? Then I got into the pen and found a dent in the top of the fence on the far side. Something had gone over. Alex went back to get a rifle and I worked on getting the other pigs some food to keep them out of the way.
Alex decided to shoot the pig with his AR-15 instead of the revolver (trying to do the least amount of damage and still kill it). While I was filling the feeders with dry food, he started shooting. Of course it was only supposed to take one shot but I guess he picked the wrong gun (or more accurately he had the wrong kind of bullets in that gun) and they weren't doing the job (even with good head-shots). There was squealing and about 5 shots with the rifle and then he pulled out the 44 revolver and put one more shot through the head and he was gone. (learned a lesson about killing pigs there).
Then we had to decide what to do about the carcass. I wanted to try to keep the meat (it was a small pig but still must have weighed 100 lbs and had some good meat on him) but I was worried about damage done by the predator to the intestines and wether it had tainted the meat. I called my brother to get his opinion (1:30 am by this time) and he said he would at least try to save the meat and see how bad the damage was when I opened him up. So we got the tractor (had to move the truck (which had a trailer full of concrete bags on it) and the van out of the way because they were both up there at this point) and brought it up, carried the pig over to it and took it over near the storage shed to process it. Of course I didn't have a proper skinning knife anywhere. I knew i would need one eventually but i wasn't expecting to have to skin anything soon. All I had was a little sticking blade of Alex's that has a handle like a skinning knife but a very pointy blade, and a combat knife that was long and pointy. NOT ideal for skinning an animal and dealing with abdominal damage delicately. I also hadn't gotten around to reading about skinning and butchering pigs and their different anatomy. I've personally skinned a rabbit and squirrel in my past and been involved with skinning/gutting deer, but never done a large animal myself nor been the one in charge and the most experienced (Alex having never dressed any animal before other than fish)
First I tied him up by his front legs because I wanted the gut damage hanging downward. I started skinning and it took a long time to skin the whole animal especially as I had difficulty in the belly area avoiding the intestines that were hanging out and was unfamiliar with how the nether regions were put together. Finally I got the whole skin off and started working on the innards. I started by opening up the chest and working downward. At some point I decided it was too hard to try to get to the lower organs without damage in that position so we lowered him and pulled him back up by a back leg. Then I was able to see better. i knew by this time that none of the intestines had ruptured. There was no foul odor at all and nothing leaking (but blood of course). I was at this time mostly concerned that I find the bladder and not puncture it.I did find the bladder and got it out with everything else. I guess I hadn't cut high enough and I wasn't getting the upper organs to release so I just cut through some of them to get the guts out (no worries about fouling the carcass with things like the liver.
Then we hung it back up by a front leg and I had to reach up high in the chest and cut the windpipe blind in order to release the lungs and heart. I rinsed the carcas off with the hose and then we had to choose whether to leave it hanging too low to be safe from animals or lay it down flat in the shed (it was very well bled out at this point). We stuck it in the shed along with the bucket of entrails and went to bed. At this point it was 4:30 in the morning.
After a few hours I got back up and had to decide how to proceed with the carcass. We didn't have enough refrigeration to handle it and it was Sunday so my preferred choice of taking it to a butcher to finish was out. My brother suggested I take the trailer into town and grab the freezer from storage and get it cold with the generator which is what I decided to do. So Taji and I went into town, got the freezer and some gas and went back out.
I got the freezer starting to cool and then we had to make a work-space for me to cut on. I had already decided to just quarter it and get it into the freezer. We washed a table, took it up to the shed and gathered up our sharpest knives which aren't. The blades I had used the night before were quite dulled. Alex got the Auger onto the tractor to dig a hole for the entrails (I wanted to use the auger since I was planning to dig some fence-post holes anyway. I ended up cutting the carcass into 6 pieces. The back legs/haunches, the front legs/shoulders, and I split the main portion on the edge of the spine where the ribs connect with cartilage. I'm sure I wasted a lot of meat. I've heard that bacon comes from the belly but I didn't see anything there, lol. I'm also sure there was more useable meat on the head portion I cut off and I know people eat the organs and feet etc. This was a good test of our abilities and showed us some things we need to acquire or prepare. It also drove home the very different life we've chosen for ourselves. We are not Denver suburbanites anymore!
By this time it was 95 degrees outside and no wind. I hadn't had food or much sleep and I was pretty worn out. But Mable was way overdue for her milking. I got her milked and watered and stumbled inside to rest. Alex couldn't get the auger into the ground. The ground is like concrete out there which makes me wonder how we are going to get a fence up for the naks. Anyway he finally got a hole dug in some softer area where the dirt had been piled from excavation and buried the head, feet and entrails. He also washed up the butcher table and all the knives I used.
I stayed inside resting for a while and staying out of the heat. We'd been trying to use the generator very little due to the cost of gas but we ran it all day yesterday cooling the freezer, charging the batteries and running the air conditioner inside (thank God because it was 95 out and 76 in!) After a few hours it had cooled down to 86 outside and I went out and worked on the pig fence. Previously we had had a 4 foot tall field fencing with a line of horse tape (electrified) 6 inches off the ground to train the pigs to respect electric fencing (it worked). I went out and ran a line of tape just over the 4 foot fence and then another at about 5 feet. They are electrified now and will hopefully deter anything going over the fence.
We finally decided that the predator was a mountain lion, perhaps a young and inexperienced one. The cut marks on the dead pig and the injured one are from something very sharp. The dead pig had a deep slice on his shoulder, slices across his back and the opened up belly. The injured one has cuts across his back on each side like something grabbed him from the back. We think a bear would go after the easier things to take such as the animal grain (in easy to open trash cans), vehicles with various good smelling things in them and trash. Our camp is appallingly bear-friendly which is something that will change a lot in a couple weeks when the barn goes up. We've seen no signs of bear before and after my experiences with bears up in the mountains I really think we'd have been dealing with damage to other things before the bear tried to climb over a fence to take a pig. The other thing is that the pigs were not taken. A bear could have gotten a pig over that fence. We found faint tracks we believe were big cat near the pen although the ground was so dry and dusty tracks were difficult to make out. I'm hoping that it will encounter the electricity if it comes back and also that it will think our other animals are way too big to attempt. (crossing fingers)
The boys were both in the truck with me and were pretty frightened at this point especially Taji. I jumped out of the truck and walked back towards Alex (not wanting to go investigate without protection) and of course I was in my crocs and unwisely walking around in the dark so I got cactus in my foot :-(
Alex had his 44 magnum revolver and gave me his glock 9mm (I guess because it's easier to shoot - I really need to get gun-knowledgeable) We went up to the pig pen and saw the largest barrow stumbling towards their little house. We could see from there that he had instestines hanging down from his belly and he was dieing. At that point we didn't know what had happened but we knew the pig needed to be put down. I started counting pigs and they were all there (6 of them). One of the other pigs had injuries on his back, one of the pigs has a bloody ear and there were some blood drops on one's nose. At first we didn't know what had happened, we did a quick check on the fence and saw no damage so we started to wonder if there had been a big pig fight? Then I got into the pen and found a dent in the top of the fence on the far side. Something had gone over. Alex went back to get a rifle and I worked on getting the other pigs some food to keep them out of the way.
Alex decided to shoot the pig with his AR-15 instead of the revolver (trying to do the least amount of damage and still kill it). While I was filling the feeders with dry food, he started shooting. Of course it was only supposed to take one shot but I guess he picked the wrong gun (or more accurately he had the wrong kind of bullets in that gun) and they weren't doing the job (even with good head-shots). There was squealing and about 5 shots with the rifle and then he pulled out the 44 revolver and put one more shot through the head and he was gone. (learned a lesson about killing pigs there).
Then we had to decide what to do about the carcass. I wanted to try to keep the meat (it was a small pig but still must have weighed 100 lbs and had some good meat on him) but I was worried about damage done by the predator to the intestines and wether it had tainted the meat. I called my brother to get his opinion (1:30 am by this time) and he said he would at least try to save the meat and see how bad the damage was when I opened him up. So we got the tractor (had to move the truck (which had a trailer full of concrete bags on it) and the van out of the way because they were both up there at this point) and brought it up, carried the pig over to it and took it over near the storage shed to process it. Of course I didn't have a proper skinning knife anywhere. I knew i would need one eventually but i wasn't expecting to have to skin anything soon. All I had was a little sticking blade of Alex's that has a handle like a skinning knife but a very pointy blade, and a combat knife that was long and pointy. NOT ideal for skinning an animal and dealing with abdominal damage delicately. I also hadn't gotten around to reading about skinning and butchering pigs and their different anatomy. I've personally skinned a rabbit and squirrel in my past and been involved with skinning/gutting deer, but never done a large animal myself nor been the one in charge and the most experienced (Alex having never dressed any animal before other than fish)
First I tied him up by his front legs because I wanted the gut damage hanging downward. I started skinning and it took a long time to skin the whole animal especially as I had difficulty in the belly area avoiding the intestines that were hanging out and was unfamiliar with how the nether regions were put together. Finally I got the whole skin off and started working on the innards. I started by opening up the chest and working downward. At some point I decided it was too hard to try to get to the lower organs without damage in that position so we lowered him and pulled him back up by a back leg. Then I was able to see better. i knew by this time that none of the intestines had ruptured. There was no foul odor at all and nothing leaking (but blood of course). I was at this time mostly concerned that I find the bladder and not puncture it.I did find the bladder and got it out with everything else. I guess I hadn't cut high enough and I wasn't getting the upper organs to release so I just cut through some of them to get the guts out (no worries about fouling the carcass with things like the liver.
Then we hung it back up by a front leg and I had to reach up high in the chest and cut the windpipe blind in order to release the lungs and heart. I rinsed the carcas off with the hose and then we had to choose whether to leave it hanging too low to be safe from animals or lay it down flat in the shed (it was very well bled out at this point). We stuck it in the shed along with the bucket of entrails and went to bed. At this point it was 4:30 in the morning.
After a few hours I got back up and had to decide how to proceed with the carcass. We didn't have enough refrigeration to handle it and it was Sunday so my preferred choice of taking it to a butcher to finish was out. My brother suggested I take the trailer into town and grab the freezer from storage and get it cold with the generator which is what I decided to do. So Taji and I went into town, got the freezer and some gas and went back out.
I got the freezer starting to cool and then we had to make a work-space for me to cut on. I had already decided to just quarter it and get it into the freezer. We washed a table, took it up to the shed and gathered up our sharpest knives which aren't. The blades I had used the night before were quite dulled. Alex got the Auger onto the tractor to dig a hole for the entrails (I wanted to use the auger since I was planning to dig some fence-post holes anyway. I ended up cutting the carcass into 6 pieces. The back legs/haunches, the front legs/shoulders, and I split the main portion on the edge of the spine where the ribs connect with cartilage. I'm sure I wasted a lot of meat. I've heard that bacon comes from the belly but I didn't see anything there, lol. I'm also sure there was more useable meat on the head portion I cut off and I know people eat the organs and feet etc. This was a good test of our abilities and showed us some things we need to acquire or prepare. It also drove home the very different life we've chosen for ourselves. We are not Denver suburbanites anymore!
By this time it was 95 degrees outside and no wind. I hadn't had food or much sleep and I was pretty worn out. But Mable was way overdue for her milking. I got her milked and watered and stumbled inside to rest. Alex couldn't get the auger into the ground. The ground is like concrete out there which makes me wonder how we are going to get a fence up for the naks. Anyway he finally got a hole dug in some softer area where the dirt had been piled from excavation and buried the head, feet and entrails. He also washed up the butcher table and all the knives I used.
I stayed inside resting for a while and staying out of the heat. We'd been trying to use the generator very little due to the cost of gas but we ran it all day yesterday cooling the freezer, charging the batteries and running the air conditioner inside (thank God because it was 95 out and 76 in!) After a few hours it had cooled down to 86 outside and I went out and worked on the pig fence. Previously we had had a 4 foot tall field fencing with a line of horse tape (electrified) 6 inches off the ground to train the pigs to respect electric fencing (it worked). I went out and ran a line of tape just over the 4 foot fence and then another at about 5 feet. They are electrified now and will hopefully deter anything going over the fence.
We finally decided that the predator was a mountain lion, perhaps a young and inexperienced one. The cut marks on the dead pig and the injured one are from something very sharp. The dead pig had a deep slice on his shoulder, slices across his back and the opened up belly. The injured one has cuts across his back on each side like something grabbed him from the back. We think a bear would go after the easier things to take such as the animal grain (in easy to open trash cans), vehicles with various good smelling things in them and trash. Our camp is appallingly bear-friendly which is something that will change a lot in a couple weeks when the barn goes up. We've seen no signs of bear before and after my experiences with bears up in the mountains I really think we'd have been dealing with damage to other things before the bear tried to climb over a fence to take a pig. The other thing is that the pigs were not taken. A bear could have gotten a pig over that fence. We found faint tracks we believe were big cat near the pen although the ground was so dry and dusty tracks were difficult to make out. I'm hoping that it will encounter the electricity if it comes back and also that it will think our other animals are way too big to attempt. (crossing fingers)
I'm not doing anything but T posts until next fall and not looking forward to the T posts either. 
