HELLO FROM LUKE CLAYTON

[Lukeclayton]

OUTDOORS WRITER LUKE CLAYTON HERE. I AM IMPRESSED WITH THIS SITE, A GREAT PLACE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE SPORT OF HUNTING WILD HOGS. I'D LIKE TO INVITE ALL YOU YOU TO LISTEN TO MY WEEKLY RADIO SHOW, NOW ON 5 STATIONS ACROSS THE STATE. WE ALWAYS DEVOTE SOME TIME TO ONE OF MY PASSIONS, HOG HUNTING!www.catfishradio.com will get you there, then just click on the segment you wish to listen to.God Bless and good hunting! lc

[Gigem]

Welcome aboard Luke. I enjoyed talking to you earlier today. I look forward to being on your show. We'll be making some changes to the site in the near future, so please bear with us. If you have any suggestions, feel free to let me know. Talk to ya soon, Clark

[Hogdude1234]

Welcome to THH Luke!!! I look forward to hearing your show!!! _________________________________ Shane Ladewig >-------------------------------> TexasHogHunter.com Pro Staff Member Sniper Hawg Lights Pro Staff Member LoneStar Surf & Turf Adventures Pro Staff Member

[Lukeclayton]

I was out there 2 nights ago with my 'old school', first generation night scope. Shot a fat little sow at about 40 yards. AWESOME way to put pork in the freezer! I've cured ham a couple times this year and plan to make some more from this hog. I think once folks learn how much fun curing and smoking ham and sausage is at home and.how great eating wild pork can be, more will be putting the meat to good use.lc.

[Gigem]

Way to go Luke!....Sounds like you got the night scope zeroed in! In order for folks to learn more about curing ham we'll need 2 things....1) Someone that knows how 2) Somebody that can write a nice article, for all of our forum members to enjoy. Do you know anybody like that? LOL. Congrats on the pig. clark

[aggiebowhunter]

You show is one of the few that I enjoy listening to. I generally catch it ever Saturday morning around our skinning rack. It always gives us some good converstation with the hunters we have out. Randy

[Lukeclayton]

Hunting seasons are closing - time to feast! By Luke Clayton Feb 1, 2010 Email this article Print this page Luke Clayton Fall hunting seasons have come to a close and many of us have a freezer full of prime wild game. I’ve been a camp cook for most of my adult life and enjoy not only butchering the game I harvest but transforming the meat and fowl into some tasty dishes. Cooking game is different from domestic meat. Wild animals have to work for a living and they are usually more muscular, resulting in tougher cuts. I recently completed curing and smoking the hams from a couple of wild hogs I harvested and I’m planning my third round of sausage making in the past three months. The controlled, even heat supplied by my Smokin Tex electric smoker make the task easy. Curing ham and bacon is not rocket science. It is an art that has, in large part, become lost through the years. I remember my dad ‘sugar curing’ hams and bacon when I was a kid. He always raised three or four hogs and butchered them in the winter. I am sure if feral hogs were as plentiful back then as they are now, he would have taken his pork from the woods rather than the pig pen! Rather than curing whole hams with the bone in, I prefer cutting the ham meat into 3-4 pound pieces, usually no more than 2 inches thick. Curing the meat is easy. Simply rub the ‘cure’ into the meat and follow the instructions with the cure. Usually a teaspoon of cure rubbed well into a three-pound piece of pork will thoroughly cure it in about four days. If you have trouble locating cures, go online to http://www.friscospices.com/. Mike Pullen there at Frisco offers free advice on curing meats and making sausage; he also has all the spices and supplies necessary. His email is mike@friscospices.com. Make sure and inquire about Mike’s cure packet that transforms ground venison and pork into some very tasty bacon. Once my pieces of pork are cured, I simply wash them off in cold water to remove the excess salt, and then place them in my Smokin Tex electric smoker set at 160 degrees for an hour of heavy smoke. Next, I wrap the pieces in foil and allow them to cook about 3 more hours. The meat will reach 160 degrees well before the four hours, but the added cooking time tenderizes the cured meat. The foil wrap keeps the meat from getting too smoky. I then wrap the cured pork in foil, place it in the freezer and use as needed. Luke’s Smokin Tex electric smoker is ideal for slow cooking cuts from wild game. These wild boar pork chops were cooked 6 hours and are fall off the bone tender. photo by Luke Clayton The first time you enjoy a breakfast of pork you cured at home --with eggs, hashbrowns and biscuits -- you will be ‘hooked’ on curing meat at home. You can make ham at home from cuts of domestic meat you purchase at the grocery just as easily. Catch fresh pork shoulders on sale, cure and smoke them and you turn a $2 per pound cut of meat into a delicacy that would cost three times what you paid for it. I also use my Smokin Tex to smoke cured duck and goose breasts (you cure these smaller cuts the same way used for pork hams); they will cure in about 24 hours in the refrigerator. We really enjoyed quail, chucker or pheasant smoked on the electric smoker. Give this recipe a try, if you don’t have upland birds on hand, Cornish hens work just fine: Sprinkle your favorite dry seasoning on the whole birds, then wrap them with bacon strips and secure with toothpicks. Place each bird on a piece of heavy duty aluminum foil and smoke with pecan or fruit wood such as apple or plum for about fifteen minutes. Next, wrap the birds in the foil and allow to cook at 225 degrees for about an hour. Uncover the birds and allow to brown during the last ten minutes of cooking. I use my electric smoker a great deal for cooking larger cuts of meat the 1400 model I smoke with can handle about 30 pounds of meat. The 1100 model accommodates 20 pounds which will easily handle most meat smoking tasks. The great thing about barbequing (smoking) with electricity is the fact that you load the meat, put the wood inside the smoke box, close the door, set the thermometer and walk away...no staying up half the night feeding wood to a wood-fired smoker. I’ve cooked many wild hog hams and venison hams through the years. I often use an a needle and inject hams with a blend of butter and my favorite dry seasoning, Country Bobs, but pre-mixed injectable marinades are available. I usually put these larger cuts on to smoke a couple hours before I go to bed in the evening and let them cook all night. With the thermostat set at 200 degrees, the meat cooks slowly and tenderizes nicely by morning. I leave the hams uncovered for a couple hours and smoke them heavily with hickory or pecan wood, and then wrap them so they will remain moist during the cooking process. It matters little if the bigger cuts are left in the smoker 12 hours or 18, at the low temperature; they just continue to get more tender. I usually get one-inch thick pork chops cut from wild hogs I harvest. Slow cooking in moisture is very important to making these chops tender. In years past, I’ve tried to simply grill these chops over charcoal or once on a gas grill. They were safely cooked at a temperature above 160 degrees but, tough as a boot. These same chops, when smoked for 15 minutes or so, then wrapped in foil and slow cooked a few hours with BBQ sauce, are fall off the bone tender and flavored through and through. Sausage making at home is very easy. I used to stuff sausage in small ‘link size’ casings, using a sausage stuffer, then smoke them. I’ve found it much easier to use the larger casings and simply pack the raw, seasoned meat into the larger casings by hand. It’s easy to get too much smoke on the sausages, that’s where the Smokin Tex is really worth it’s weight in gold. Simply load three or four ounces of wood into the fire box and let the sausages smoke. This small amount of wood will not overpower the flavor of the meat with wood smoke. Most sausage seasoning packs contain cure which allows slow smoking at long temperatures without fear of the meat spoiling. Make sure and mix the ground pork, venison or beef well, then hand work the seasonings into the meat and allow to chill (cure) overnight in the refrigerator. Hopefully these tips will help you transform your game meats into the makings of many tasty meals. For more information, check out the forum and recipes at http://www.smokintex.com/. Remember, you will need seasonings for curing your bacon, hams and sausages. Frisco Spices (http://www.friscospices.com/) has everything you’ll need, included an onboard game cooking guru, Mike Pullen to answer any questions that might arise. Listen to Outdoors With Luke Clayton Radio at http://www.catfishradio.com/. Email Luke at lukeclayton@prodigy.net OUTDOOR TIP OF THE WEEK: There is no ‘closed season’ for hunting wild hogs in Texas. They are considered exotic animals and they can be hunted year around. If there was an official season, it would be right now, after the close of deer season and before spring fishing and turkey hunting begins. I recently ordered a first generation night scope from Bass Pro Shops that is both affordable and effective. Priced just under $400, this very serviceable Aries night scope cost a fraction of the price of the newer third- and fourth-generations night scopes. I mounted the scope on a .22 Hornet and have what I believe to have the perfect set up for close-in work on hogs at night. It zeroed easily and grouped nicely on a paper target. While testing it at night, I was amazed at how brightly it lights up the night woods and how easy the crosshairs and target is to identify. I’m planning to spend some time in the night woods the next week. More on night hunting hogs soon! THIS IS MY NEWSPAPER ARTICLE LAST WEEK. TO SEE IT ALL, go to www.catfishradio.com and click READ LUKES NEWSPAPER ARTICLE....... DONE, CLARK!!

[Lukeclayton]

Randy, Glad you enjoy the show. It is pretty much the real deal, unrehearshed and off the cuff... Just like around the skinning rack! Well, ALMOST like around the skinning rack! Would luke to visit your ranch sometime. Luke Clayton. www.catfishradio.com you can email me through the site..

[Gigem]

I like it.......you're hired! You might as well take a short road trip.....come see Randy in Centerville and then drive another 20 miles to Madisonville....we'll go play with some of our toys! We would love to have you! You would have plenty of new material for your listeners and readers !

[aggiebowhunter]

Stop by and see us sometime. I know Clark will show you some new and cool ways to chase these critters at night. The majority of my hunters are from out of state and the majority of those being the northern states. They find it pretty interesting to have a radio show that talks about hunting and fishing. I take it they dont have such a thing up there.