The Incredible Shrinking Hogzilla II Is a Pet Pig

Is Hogzilla II a hoax, a tall tale gone out of control, or simple wishful thinking?
To see a larger version of the top two pictures >> Click Here

The folks at NBC News in Oxford, Alabama put up a slide show of what the Stone family says is the skull of their "giant hog."

The last photo in the series shows young Jamison Stone holding the giant pig skull. By clipping that picture and pasting it on another photo of Jamison (wearing the same shirt) that can be found earlier in the series, we can get some sense of scale for the skull.

By comparing the much-circulated picture of Jamison and the "giant hog" with a picture of Jamison holding the hog's skull, we can get some idea of how much "forced perspective" was at work in the original hog photo widely circulated on the internet. The folks at StinkyJournalism.com are clearly right -- this is some type of photographic hoax.

One way to look at the photo is to simply move the pig skull from the right photo to the left and then move it up close to the top of the pig's head (since no animal has very much flesh over the top of its cranium due to the need to cool off the brain quickly when overheated). The gap below the bottom of the jaw bone and the bottom of the photo of the pig's head gives some some idea of the degree of artifice in the photograph.

Photo shows real skull of hog properly sized (facing forward) next to pig.
The pig looks so large because the boy is standing many feet
behind the pig -- a type of photographic forced perspective.

Bottom line: This was a big hog, but it was no bigger than any really large farm pig of the type commonly made available (for a price) at other canned hunts. And let's note, once again, that this WAS a canned hunt. The pig, it turns out, was penned in a 150-acre fenced enclosure and it had been trucked in from somewhere else in the not-too-distant past.

Quote of Note from The Los Angeles Times:

Eddy Borden, owner of the spread where the hunt occurred, declined to comment on how the hog got into the 150-acre area where it was killed by Jamison Stone of Pickensville, Ala.

Borden said he was getting tired of questions about the hog, which Jamison's father said weighed 1,051 pounds and measured 9 feet, 4 inches from the tip of its snout to the base of its tail. The kill drew international attention.

"I didn't ask for the publicity. I just want it to all go away," said Borden, whose Lost Creek Plantation is in eastern Alabama.

Woops! A public relations stunt gone bad. Ouch. One thing is for sure: Mr. Borden knows how much he paid for that hog, and that price was based on weight, and there is probably a receipt of sale somewhere. Another thing for sure: that hog was not in that 150-acre pen for very long, as a big hog can wreck a lot of ground pretty quickly. This hog was taken out of this kill pen dead at about the weight he was put in alive.

Hogzilla Update:
OK, it's all over. This was a pet pig, and a hat tip to the always-readable J.R. Absher over at the Outdoor Life Newshound blog who has the full story gleaned from the Anniston Star, the local Alabama newspaper. The long and short of it is that "Fred" was a pet pig and a gentle swine that played with the previous owner's grandchildren. I hate it when I'm right. Honestly, it's a burden.

• For those who are interested in reading about the limits of ethical hunting (and why this kind of "Hogzilla" nonsense is very bad for real hunting, see a blog post from last year entitled (all too appropriately) : "Hunting and Fishing Like Adults."

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Coffee and Provocation

TV Shows Have Screwed Up a Whole Generation of Hunters:
A hat tip to Steve Bodio for pointing to this great little bit by David Petzal at Field and Stream. Entitled "More Sad Tales of Computer-Age Hunters," it describes the collision that occurs when the false expectations of fantasy hunters slam up against the real world of hunting and fishing on open land and open water. Bingo. Excellent and well said.

Like Catching a Shot Put:
The same Dave Petzal, cited above, also wonders about an 11-year old kid shooting a .50 cal eight times at anything. Glad I am not alone in this regard. He writes with some authority: "About the .500 S&W. I can distinctly remember when the .45 ACP was thought of as a veritable cannon, and the .357 magnum was considered so terrifying that only FBI agents were manly enough to shoot it. Yet here is an 11-year-old shooting something with one hand that kicks as hard as a .338. I shot a .500 S&W when it first came out in 2003, and it reminded me of the time when, as a kid, I tried to catch a 12-pound shot put."

Kissing the Sphinx and Other Tricks of Forced Perspective:
Over at Stinky Journalism, they have done a very nice analysis of the new "hogzilla" photo and found it wanting. In fact, their analysis was apparently good enough that The Today Show scraped their invite to Jamison Stone and his father.

Alabama's Inquiring Minds Want to Know:
It seems that Alabama fish and game officials have a few questions about that monster pig as well. They want to know how this huge hog miraculously got into a 150-acre fenced pay-to-shoot hunting place (of all the places for a giant pig to show up on its own), and whether anyone broke Alabama state law prohibiting the transportation and release of live feral swine. They also want to know if the hunt complied with the state's "fair chase" law which requires that animals on hunting plantations have a reasonable chance of escape. I'm sure some interesting stuff is going to reveal itself. So far we've learned this pig was in a 150-acre pen. Hmmm. Stay tuned.

The Number of the Beast:
Jim Stevens Chief Financial Officer of the AKC, has told the board of that august organization that AKC events (i.e. dogs shows) "lost approximately ten million dollars in 2005." In order to recoup the money lost by holding dog shows the AKC has decided it will continue to register puppies from places like the Hunte Corporation and other commercial breeders (sometimes referred to as "puppy mills"), just as they have done for decades. Since it costs $15 to register a puppy with the AKC, the AKC will have to register 666,666 "misery puppies" a year from these commerical breeders in order to recoup the money lost by the rosette chasers. You can do the math yourself -- I did not make up this equation which gives you the Mark of the Devil and the Number of the Beast.

PayPal Comes Through:
A few weeks back, I got a little over $400 stolen from a PayPal account that was hacked into by someone overseas (the money was converted to U.K. pounds). The folks at PayPal investigated and refunded the whole amount to me in pretty short order and with a great deal of professionalism and assurance that all would be made right. They were true to their word.

Head of FDA Sentenced to Death:
The head of the FDA has been sentenced to death. Unfortunately, it's the head of the FDA in China. He is being sentenced to death for accepting $850,000 in bribes and looking the other way on questionable drug approvals. I certainly hope Members of Congress bring up this story repeatedly the next time the head of the US FDA is called up to testify about toxic dog food, payola to FDA officials from drug companies, and uninspected meat packing houses. As a friend of mine once observed, "the safety coming of a gun has a way of focusing the mind."

Melamine Toxin Added to Animal Feed in America:
It turns out that American companies have been putting Melamine into animal feeds over here all on their own. You see, the Chinese aren't smarter than we are, and people are the same all over! Now, doesn't that make you feel better?

Hogzilla II: Terrific Hunting Story or Sad Artifice?

The "pig in a poke" story that is circulating on the internet is that on May 3, 2007, an 11-year old boy by the name of Jamison Stone killed an 1,051 lb. wild feral hog. The pig was supposedly over 10' 7" long and was shot with a .50 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver shooting 350 grain bullets. Killing the hog, we are told, took 3 hours and 8 bullets.

A lot of skepticism was expressed right from the beginning. First of all, the pictures were clearly staged to make the pig look as large as possible -- a common trick done by all hunters and anglers.

Adding fuel to the fire, it turns out no one in authority was actually there when the pig was weighed. You would think that would be required if you were claiming a world record feral hog. Yet, it seems no one thought of that. Hmmm. . . .

Another oddity to the story is that the scale to which the pig was hitched does not actually weigh things by the pound -- it is marked off in 10-pound increments. A weight of 1,051 pounds was technically not possible. The boy's father now says the pig was over 1,050 pounds, and they assumed the little mark above that was for 1 pound. He now says the pig must have weighed 1,060 pounds. OK, but in truth this man aparently had no idea how that scale worked, and neither did anyone else at the weigh-in with him.

That's not a small problem.

Another wrinkle in the story is the gun itself. Who the hell gives a .50 caliber handgun to an 11-year old kid? And does anyone think an 11-year old boy is going to be able to fire off 8 rounds from a .50 caliber and still have a wrist that can work? It might be true, but one wonders . . . .

Here's the most interesting bit: this pig was shot at a pay-to-shoot game farm. If you look at the price list at the entirely fenced Lost Creek Plantation, you find that large boars are priced at $2 a pound on the hoof, while commercially-sold farm hogs are normally sold for about $50 per cwt (i.e. per 100 pounds of pig on the hoof). That means this pig cost about $500 to buy (assuming no major premium was paid for its size) and could be sold for over $2,000 at a canned hunt. So there's the business math for you business majors.

But wait, there's more. Lost Creek Plantation was opened up just one-year ago. Hmmm . . . . Yep, I'm thinking the same thing too. This is a simple artifice. What we might call a "stock and shoot public relations" stunt.

Here's how you do it: Go out and get the biggest dam pig (or deer or elk) you can from a commercial breeder of such things. Raise it up in a pen a little bit more (and maybe feed it steroids), and then release into "the wild" of a large fenced compound. Get the animal used to coming to a scatter-feed bucket so you can be sure where it will be at least twice a day.

A few months after you have placed the pig in the wild, get the animal killed in the most sensationalistic way possible. A kid with a .50 caliber handgun would be great. So too would be a woman archer, or a guy with nothing but a spear and a dog. Ooga-Ooga. The Walter Mitty crowd will go ape-shit on this story, and bingo: Instant clients for your canned-hunt franchise.

Want to bet that this is exactly what happened? There's a reason this pig was not frozen or properly weighed -- it would put a crimp in the story. An examination of the ears and the hide might reveal the absence of the type of rips and gashes you would expect to find on a feral hog that had fought its way to the top in the woods among other wild pigs. An examination of the skull might reveal this "feral hog" to be nothing more than a domestic pig of the type to be found in any slaughter house. A look at the hooves might tell you if this pig once spent a lot of time on concrete. A look at the tusks and teeth might tell you how much of its food came out of the forest, and how much came out of a bucket.

So was this pig over 1,000 pounds? Who knows, and more importantly who cares?

The largest pig ever raised was not 1,000 pounds, but a 2,552 pound China Poland monster by the name of "Big Bill." A 1,000 pound pig is a very big pig, but it's not a world record by any stretch.

Bottom line: What you have here is a very nice "pig-in-a-poke" story concocted by a brand new "pay-to-shoot" game farm that (surprise, surprise) managed to get an 11-year old kid to shoot the stocked animal.

Did the kid shoot the pig all by himself? Maybe. But again, who cares? This not a "wild" pig, and this was not hunting.

As for the hog's size, no one will ever know as the photos are designed to obscure the truth, and the pig was never properly measured.

Was it a very big pig? For sure. But if you have the money, you can shoot a pig just as big or even bigger, and you can even call it "Hogzilla III" if you want -- just put your money down, and try to forget that that giant animal now running between the fences was called "Rosie" just 6 months ago and was trained to come to a slop bucket.
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Hogzilla II Update #1:
It seems that Alabama Fish and Game officials have a few questions about that monster pig as well. They want to know how this huge hog miraculously got into a 150-acre fenced pay-to-shoot hunting place (of all the places for a giant pig to show up on its own), and whether anyone broke Alabama state law prohibiting the transportation and release of live feral swine. They also want to know if the hunt complied with the state's "fair chase" law which requires that animals on hunting plantations have a reasonable chance of escape. I'm sure some interesting stuff is going to reveal itself. So far we've learned this pig was in a 150-acre pen. Hmmm. . . .

Hogzilla Update #2:
It looks like Hogzilla was not that large. See my analysis based on the pictures of the skull and photos of Jamison Stone holding the same.

Hogzilla Update #3:

OK, it's all over. This was a pet pig, and a hat tip to the always-readable J.R. Absher over at the Outdoor Life Newshound blog who has the story gleaned from The Anniston Star (a pretty good Alabama newspaper). The long and short of it is that "Fred" the pig was a gentle swine that played with the previous owner's grandchildren. Now the story has slid into sick. I hate it when I'm right. Honestly, it's a burden.

• For more on the limits of ethical hunting, see >> Hunting and Fishing Like Adults, an essay sparked by another pathetic and stupid canned hunt, this time by a country-music star.