I bought some tools from a retired butcher and he had the Morton Salt Complete Guide to Home Meat Curing. It is a fine little book. I've always plinked the hog with a 22 then I stuck the heart. I also usually sliced into the brisket and bruised the meat. r.h. is right, I should slit up by the head. Morton Salt tells how to stick the hog correctly. First they say to never butcher when the hog is over-heated, excited, or fatigued. They recommend to get a loop around a hind foot, hoist the hog up in the air, then stick it. Just going by our past pigs, if we raised them up inverted by a hind leg, they would have been over-heated, excited, and fatigued. So would we. They also say you can just roll the hog over on his back and stick him there. They don't recommend shooting first, they want the heart to pump with the full brain signals coming to it. We've got four more hogs geting big that we can practice on, we'll see how these methods work.