We took these two boars at Hoffman Hunting Ranch in Rocksprings Texas recently. Don't let anyone tell you that a large boar isn't tasty. The spotted boar in the photo was probably between 200-250 lbs. and it was every bit as delicious as the 50-60 lb. animals that we shoot there more regularly. You will know if an animal is going to taste gamey the second you cut into one. If it stinks, trash it unless you like gamey flavor or are in desperate need of food. It is difficult but not impossible to make gamey meat more palatable. 

Breakfast sausage or pan sausage as you may know it is one of the best by-products of wild boar. Here is our recipe for a pretty typical sweet and spicy maple breakfast sausage. We hope for you to only use our recipe as a guideline and that you will flavor your sausage to your liking with the spices that you like to cook with.

Step 1. Kill you some boars or if you are lucky, somebody else will do the dirty work and just give you some of their meat.
Step 2. Butcher(break down) your animal pack it in ice and get it home. Some people like to leave their animals on ice for up to a week to let it bleed out. I have never found this to be necessary. Again, develop your own routine for processing wild game.
Step 3. Process your meat. Decide what you are going to smoke, grill, roast and how much sausage you would like and make the appropriate cuts. You will always be left with a lot of scraps especially from large animals like the ones pictured above to make sausage with. If you prefer to eat venison steaks or burgers then you may want to process most of your boar into sausage.

Step 4. Take your scraps or whatever cuts you have dedicated to sausage and remove all silver skin, hair and bone from the meat and cut it into 1" cubes. You want to leave any fat you may find and may add additionol if possible because wild boar is pretty lean. Your looking for at least 10-15% fat in your sausage. 
Step 5. Mix your spices and do your first grind on coarse.

Ingredients:

3 lbs wild boar cubed 1"
1/4-1/2 cup organic maple syrup(don't use cheap syrup it's nasty)
1-2 Tbs of fresh chopped sage or thyme
1 Tbs salt
2-3 tsps fennel seed (grind in spice grinder until coarse)
2-3 tsps red pepper flakes
2-3 tsps onion powder or use 3-4 Tbs fresh onion chopped fine and sweated
2-3 tsps garlic powder or use 3-4 cloves(pieces) of minced garlic also sweated
2-3 tsp anise seed

Mix the dry ingredients together. Add or subtract if you want one or more flavors to be more prominent than the others. Then thoroughly mix these dry ingredients with your cubed meat before grinding them together on coarse. After your first grind on coarse, either pan fry or poach a sausage patty. Let it cool and taste it. Adjust your seasoning after tasting.

Step 6. After adjusting your seasoning, grind again on your hamburger die. Once again, cook a patty, taste and make your final seasoning adjustment. 
Step 7. It's done, form it into patties and fry it on medium in a cast iron skillet with a little olive oil or coconut oil. 

You can freeze the patties on a sheet pan in your freezer. Once they are frozen, you can put them in a freezer bag for storage. Get out a few patties for breakfast the day before or thaw them in a microwave before pan frying. Enjoy!