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Step 2: At dawn I'm ready with a very sharp knife placed where I can grab it, and a .22 loaded with a long-rifle slug. I aim the rifle very carefully right between the animal's eyes and slowly squeeze the trigger. He falls like a rock and remains stunned for perhaps five seconds before he starts kicking. If I stick him very swiftly, there's no danger of his knocking the knife blade into my wrist.

I tend to overkill since I'm not professional and can't be sure I'll hit the artery with one stab. (I usually open up half the throat and both my hogs have bled out very clean with a minimum of blood clots.) The pickup gets messy, of course, but it can be hosed out. Now I pull the pig out of the truck.

Step 3: I take a five-minute break to let my hands stop shaking. Step 2 is not a pleasant procedure and only a sadist could actually enjoy it, but it's necessary if you wish to eat meat. Contrary to the recommendations of the Morton article, 1 shoot before I stick because these hogs are my friends (I was their midwife, their doctor . . . I spent a lot of time with them) and a bullet is much quicker than my shaking hand.

Step 4: When I'm calm, I locate the tendons on the hind legs, cut through the skin and peel them out with my fingers. Then I spread the hind legs and hook them to either end of the singletree. (If the legs don't reach far enough, I make up the gap with a length of barbed wire.) After backing up the truck, I tie the rope to its bumper and drive away until the hog is swinging in the air where I want him. I now take a brush and a pail of soapy water, wash the beast down and rinse him off .

Step 5: A single-edged razor blade or a doctor's scalpel works beautifully for skinning (only it's necessary to have more than one handy because the hair and tough skin dull a blade astonishingly fast). Holding the blade so that an eighth-inch of the edge is sticking out between my fingers, I start by the pig's hind feet and cut three-inch-wide strips down the length of his body . . . just through the skin, no deeper. When I loosen the end and rip, the hide peels off. If the fat starts to come along, I shave it away with my knife down to the skin and pull again. The whole process shouldn't take more than an hour for one person.

When I've got all the skin-strips dangling around the hog's heart, cut the head off (saving as much of the jowl as I can). I confess to being wasteful in not keeping the brains, but my dogs are everlastingly grateful. Since they seem to like meat better the riper it gets, I haul the skin and head (plus any guts I don't save) off in the woods somewhere and they clean it up in a few days.

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