Giant boar killed in Alabama

[Raph's Girl]

http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=29&ContentID=29788

An 11-year-old boy used a pistol to kill a wild hog his father says weighed a staggering 476kg and measured 2.74 metres, from the tip of its snout to the base of its tail.

Think hams as big as car tyres.

If the claims are accurate, Jamison Stone’s trophy boar would be bigger than Hogzilla, the famed wild hog that grew to seemingly mythical proportions after being killed in south Georgia in 2004.

Hogzilla originally was thought to weigh 453.6kg and measure 3.6 metres long. National Geographic experts who unearthed its remains believe the animal actually weighed about 362.8 kilograms and was 2.4 metres long.

Regardless of the comparison, Jamison is revelling in the attention over his pig.

“It feels really good,” Jamison said in a telephone interview. “It’s a good accomplishment. I probably won’t ever kill anything else that big.”

Jamison, who killed his first deer at age five, was hunting with father Mike Stone and two guides in east Alabama on May 3.

He said he shot the huge animal eight times with a .50-calibre revolver and chased it for three hours through hilly woods before finishing it off with a point-blank shot.

Through it all, there was the fear that the animal would turn and charge them, as wild boars have a reputation for doing.

“I was a little bit scared, a little bit excited,” said Jamison.

His father said that, just to be extra safe, he and the guides had high-powered rifles aimed and ready to fire in case the beast, with 12cm tusks, decided to charge.

Trees had to be cut down and a backhoe brought in to bring Jamison’s prize out of the woods.

It was hauled on a truck to the Clay County Farmers Exchange, where Jeff Kinder said they used his scale, recently calibrated, to weigh the hog.

Mike Stone said the scale balanced one notch past the 476kg mark.

“It probably weighed 1060 pounds. We were just afraid to change it once the story was out,” he said.

The hog’s head is being mounted by Jerry Cunningham of Jerry’s Taxidermy. Cunningham said the animal measured 137.16cm around the head, 187.9cm around the shoulders and 27.9cm from the eyes to the end of its snout.

“It’s huge,” he said. “It’s just the biggest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Mike Stone is having sausage made from the rest of the animal. “We’ll probably get 500 to 700 pounds (317.5kg),” he said.

Jamison, meanwhile, has been offered a small part in The Legend of Hogzilla, a small-time horror flick based on the tale of the Georgia boar. The movie is holding casting calls with plans to begin filming in Georgia.


Raph's Girl note: Holy shell that's one HUGE pig!! :o

[Anarky]

NOOOO! You can't kill the animal gods. Princess Mononoke will come and kill us all with her pack of giant wolves and then some deer with a silly face appears... and, oh, the rattling mushrooms. The horror!

[Cure]

NOOOO! You can't kill the animal gods. Princess Mononoke will come and kill us all with her pack of giant wolves and then some deer with a silly face appears... and, oh, the rattling mushrooms. The horror!

Haha. I know what you're talkin' about. They're creepy and cute at the same time.

[Mecha Cow]

Wasn't this a hoax? Pretty sure the picture was already proven a fake and that an 11-year old could never withstand the backlash from a .50.

Would be pretty cool if real though. That's one hell of a pig.

[Sewer Bull]

An 11-year-old boy used a pistol to kill a wild hog his father says weighed a staggering 476kg and measured 2.74 metres, from the tip of its snout to the base of its tail.

All I have to say on that issue is:

A NEW KING LEONIDAS IS BORN!!!!!!!

... apparently.

[Revan]

Wasn't this a hoax? Pretty sure the picture was already proven a fake and that an 11-year old could never withstand the backlash from a .50.

Would be pretty cool if real though. That's one hell of a pig.

I'm a bit skeptical about this but what a pig is right.
http://i207.photobucket.com/albums/bb94/kalaneutrino/getfile.jpg

[Anarky]

Behold the amazing truth! (http://snopes.com/photos/animals/hogzilla.asp) The rattling mushroom-heads are angry! Official site of the Monsterpig. (http://www.monsterpig.com/) The black, inky curse is coming.

[Katie]

That picture looks fake to me.


Anyways, I grew up in Alabama. A pig that size would need some pretty dense forest and alot of it. Northern Alabama would be the best bet for finding such a forest (the trees and vegitation get smaller and scrubbier the closer to the coast you get.) Now, the dirt in north Alabama is kind of a reddish clay...not like what's in that picture at all. That dirt looks more like what you would find in south Alabama (spent some time on the Choctaw reservation down there as a kid) If that pig was killed in south Alabama, everyone would have known about him.....there would be litterally no place for it to hide.



Edit: I read again...Clay County is in south Alabama. I stand by my analysis. this is fake.

'nother edit: I just happened accross another news story about this....seems this animal was captive on a commercial hunting preserve. If it is true (and I still don't believe the picture) What a dispicable thing. I hate canned hunts.

[RaphistheBest]

Uh, actually this is real. A few years ago some people that owned a fish farm claimed to have bagged "Hogzilla". I remember watching it on TV. That was up for whether or not it was fake because the people that "caught" it didn't bother reporting it until months later after they had buried the thing. This one was seen by the boy, his father, and two guides along with the people that weighed it, and the guy that is turning the head into a mount.

If this story showed up all of a sudden like 13 months or something AFTER the fact and the thing had been buried right after it had been "killed" by the only two people that saw it... then yea, I wouldn't believe it.

[Buslady]

oink?

slow news day...
yah canned hunts suck
that pic looks hokey
its sad, feral or not, he was a magnificent pig; I don't see how it's so great killing him in cold blood

[Ecto Jedi]

I'm a bit skeptical about this but what a pig is right.
http://i207.photobucket.com/albums/bb94/kalaneutrino/getfile.jpg

That's a faked pic if I ever saw one.

[Jo Dawn]

yah canned hunts suck

its sad, feral or not, he was a magnificent pig; I don't see how it's so great killing him in cold blood

Agreed. Ack.

[Anarky]

You know what they say... "'t ain't an animal unless you've killed it."

[Voltron]

Mom!? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

My friend showed me this a few days ago. Looks like one of the wart hogs from Twilight Princess.

[iris]

That's a faked pic if I ever saw one.

I've seen mamma pigs nearly that big.

[Anarky]

I've seen Daddypigs even bigger than your mamma pigs, Iris. You wouldn't believe the size of them. They're humongous. As in like horse-size. At least. Maybe a horse with a goat on top and a pig tied to its tail.

[Dinny]

If it is true, who the hell lets an 11-year-old boy carry a gun that can kill a thing like that?

Edit: Just re-read the article so the 11-year-old with the pistol makes a bit more sense, still, how did that tubby kid manage to chase a wild boar for 3 hours?

[Kendamu]

That's a faked pic if I ever saw one.
So that means you haven't seen many, right?

[Aignatius]

Behold the amazing truth! (http://snopes.com/photos/animals/hogzilla.asp) The rattling mushroom-heads are angry! Official site of the Monsterpig. (http://www.monsterpig.com/) The black, inky curse is coming.

If you look at the second photo from the top left, you'll see a more realistic size comparison. This first pic and the third look more like forced perspective. The boy is sitting a bit further back, making the pig look about the size of a rhino in comparison.

Plenty of feral pigs around here, sometimes they come up to the slough across from our house. Raiding birds nests and squealing... They can be aggressive and nasty, but the cougars are keeping them in check. Happy, fat cougars... :)

[Katie]

So, all over the news today I hear this story.....turns out that the big pig was actually named Fred.

Fred was raised on a farm from a little piggy....a gift from the farmer to his wife (a la Wilbur?) Fred WAS a big pig. Nine feet long snout to tail. The farmer and his wife decided that they had enough of raising pigs and sent their heard to slaughter.....all but Fred, who was sold to the owner of the hunting camp as a breeder boar. So what happens? The owner of the camp sends old Fred out to the "wild" with no food for 4 days and finally, he gets shot up by this kid for three hours before he dies.

The people who sold Fred to the camp guy had no idea Fred was the "monster hog" until the game wardens paid them a visit trying to determine Fred's origins. I heard an interview coming home of the farmer's wife who "cried for two days" after hearing Fred died in this manner. Not because she is against hunting or killing of animals (because they are farmers who raise livestock...that's what you do) but because it was sad to her that he died that way and after all, she raised him.

The farmer and his wife felt it was necessary to come forward because of all the news attention that this was the biggest WILD hog ever killed. He was, they said, a domestic animal and it would have been deceitful for them to keep it to themselves.

Now, and this is my opinion, it makes me sick to hear all this. I hated the fact that this pig was killed in one of those stupid hunt camps where the game is penned up with no where to run.....but to find out someone raised him and sold him under the impression that he would be used for breeding and not slaughter. VERY dispicable.

The farmer did shake the kid's hand and assure him that Fred was not a pet and probably was "so big that he needed to be killed" (and I should also say that the slaughter houses that bought the other pigs turned Fred away because he was too big)

So now we know the truth about Fred the Monster Hog.

[Jo Dawn]

Hmm... Now I knew that it was a pet. But I heard they sold it to the neighbors, who then didn't want it. So the kid goes and asks if he can kill it and they said yes.

The whole 'feral' thing comes from the fact that there are only two classifications for pigs: domestic and feral. So it could be a pet, but if it's outside, they call it feral.

I heard this on Sunday. Either way, it makes me sick. What lunatic parents would let their kid go kill an innocent animal?

...Bet they'd be really upset if I decided to hunt their kid.

[iris]

So, all over the news today I hear this story.....turns out that the big pig was actually named Fred.

Fred was raised on a farm from a little piggy....a gift from the farmer to his wife (a la Wilbur?) Fred WAS a big pig. Nine feet long snout to tail. The farmer and his wife decided that they had enough of raising pigs and sent their heard to slaughter.....all but Fred, who was sold to the owner of the hunting camp as a breeder boar. So what happens? The owner of the camp sends old Fred out to the "wild" with no food for 4 days and finally, he gets shot up by this kid for three hours before he dies.

The people who sold Fred to the camp guy had no idea Fred was the "monster hog" until the game wardens paid them a visit trying to determine Fred's origins. I heard an interview coming home of the farmer's wife who "cried for two days" after hearing Fred died in this manner. Not because she is against hunting or killing of animals (because they are farmers who raise livestock...that's what you do) but because it was sad to her that he died that way and after all, she raised him.

The farmer and his wife felt it was necessary to come forward because of all the news attention that this was the biggest WILD hog ever killed. He was, they said, a domestic animal and it would have been deceitful for them to keep it to themselves.

Now, and this is my opinion, it makes me sick to hear all this. I hated the fact that this pig was killed in one of those stupid hunt camps where the game is penned up with no where to run.....but to find out someone raised him and sold him under the impression that he would be used for breeding and not slaughter. VERY dispicable.

The farmer did shake the kid's hand and assure him that Fred was not a pet and probably was "so big that he needed to be killed" (and I should also say that the slaughter houses that bought the other pigs turned Fred away because he was too big)

So now we know the truth about Fred the Monster Hog.
That's quite a story, Katie. Thanks. Now it makes more sense how a "wild" pig could get that large in Alabama.

The part I don't buy is the idea the farm had no clue what the guy who runs hunt camps would do with the pig. That boar was way too big for breeding.

[Sunshine]

True or not that's awful. I am not a vegitarian or anything. So I am not hypocrytical enough to say that people shouldn't hunt or anything like that. But letting a KID hunt especially from age 5?!? And then letting him chase down that pig for hours? It makes me wish the pig HAD turned around and trampled the kid. It was running for it's life for three hours! I hate people sometimes... :evil:

[RaphistheBest]

The whole 'feral' thing comes from the fact that there are only two classifications for pigs: domestic and feral. So it could be a pet, but if it's outside, they call it feral.

The thing about pigs is that they are the one species on the planet that can revert from being domestic to wild in just a few days. If a pig gets out and the farmer goes after it and doesn't catch soon enough the pig is dangerous and it's pretty hard to domesticate them again. I'm sure that the people that owned Fred and raised him didn't realized that it was Fred because the guy who bought Fred let him loose into the woods for days. So even though I'm sure these people saw pictures obviously they didn't recognize him.

...Bet they'd be really upset if I decided to hunt their kid.

Hehe. That's funny.

Now, I'm not someone that yells at people for eating a hamburger but I also don't have any problem with hunting animals and I also wasn't raised in the middle of some woods in a shack and taught that if it has four legs it should be killed. I don't see the problem with this pig being killed. The farmer sold him to a guy that owned a hunting camp so I'm sure the farmer would have figured out what would eventually happen to Fred. Besides that pig was freaking huge. Huge pigs, especially feral ones, are dangerous as hell. Geez, even regular sized feral pigs cause damage and those are dangerous as hell too. And even though this pig was killed it's not like pigs are endangered or something. I'm sure a dozen litters will take Fred's place.

[Katie]

True or not that's awful. I am not a vegitarian or anything. So I am not hypocrytical enough to say that people shouldn't hunt or anything like that. But letting a KID hunt especially from age 5?!? And then letting him chase down that pig for hours? It makes me wish the pig HAD turned around and trampled the kid. It was running for it's life for three hours! I hate people sometimes... :evil:


well...that's not unusual for Alabama. it is like a right of passage for dads and their kids. (my dad doesn't hunt but we did start fishing when I was about three.)

my problem is that it took HOURS for the pig to loose enough blood to die and teh fact that this was a canned hunt. IMHO hunting should put the hunter and the game on even ground and if you do kill something, it should be quick and humane.

this was neither.