When swine is wild, it becomes bigger, tougher, and meaner than you’d ever think possible. To endure constant combat, harsh terrain, and every kind of thorny underbrush, they develop iron rod-like hair and skin that’s thicker and denser than anything you’d find on a farm.

“It has a very, very dense, firm, and tight fiber structure and derma,” says Ed. “So much so that found that we actually have to add an enzyme to soften the hides to make them workable — you don’t have to do that with cattle hide.”

Every leather from every animal is technically unique, but nothing’s quite as eye-catching as wild boar. Their hair, so thick that Ed has likened it to twigs and porcupine quills, is extremely hard to remove and leaves very large follicles that make your Bad Leather Good distinct from any other.

“There’s really nothing else like it in nature; it really is unique to that species,” says Ed. “It’s interesting because it helps protect them. They live a really rough lifestyle: they’re always running through brush and running through fence lines, they’re just little missiles."

That rough lifestyle also means your leather has a lot of scars. Any wild animal will have way more scars than domestic livestock, but boar get up to a lot of no good. A lot of guys like the kind of scars you get on the leather of wild animals, but wild boar is next level.