Hogzilla: fact or fiction?

primroselane · #1 03/21/05, 11:08 AM

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Technology/story?id=599913

jack_c-ville · #2 03/21/05, 12:48 PM

Fact. They exhumed the body. It wasn't quite 1,000 lbs, but this was a very big, very real hog.

-Jack

james dilley · #3 03/21/05, 01:47 PM

I would love to have a shoat out of Hogzilla for a brood sow just think!!!!

bethlaf · #4 03/21/05, 02:53 PM

it was only partial wild boar, and weighed 800lbs, think aout it, this means someone either intentionally or unintentionally let a native pig loose, or cross bred with the wild one ............
kind of scary,

MikeD · #5 03/21/05, 05:02 PM

I wouldn't be at all surprised if this was a wild/domestic product. Could be either a farm "escapee" or something somene intentionally let loose. With the way that Florida, for example, is being overrun with iguanas, pythons, and monitor lizards Hogzilla just doesn't surprise me in the least. If it was accidental then it was an accident. If it could have been avoided then it should have been. People, in general, can be extremely stupid.

Ken Scharabok · #6 03/21/05, 05:24 PM

Keep in mind back when lard was king, hogs approaching 1,000 pound were rather common. I can't find what I did with the article, but I believe the world's record was around 1,500 pounds.

Ken Scharabok

**Terri** · #7 03/21/05, 05:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ken Scharabok

Keep in mind back when lard was king, hogs approaching 1,000 pound were rather common. I can't find what I did with the article, but I believe the world's record was around 1,500 pounds.

Ken Scharabok

Ken, you are correct. On the "Hogzilla" special they showed the record holder: it has been stuffed.

Ken Scharabok · #8 03/21/05, 07:17 PM

For those not familiar with the process, if you take a couple of domestic 'purebred' hogs and turn them loose in the wild within about three generations (not long in pig time), they will revert to their 'wild' appearance. Hog hunting is a big time hunting activity in several of the Southeastern states.

My full-grown Angus bull only weighs about 1,600 pounds.

Ken Scharabok

Rouen · #9 03/21/05, 10:27 PM

"think aout it, this means someone either intentionally or unintentionally let a native pig loose, or cross bred with the wild one "
what're you calling native? feral hogs?

accourding to the national geographic channel special, hogzilla was 1/2 feral and 1/2 hampshire, they said the probable way he grew so big was the fish feed the local fishery(the guy(or one of the guys) whom measured and weighed him owns the fishery) feed to their stock which is produced for faster/larger fish growth, i believe they said it's alot higher in protien than normal fish feed.

Shygal · #10 03/21/05, 11:05 PM

So.....what did he shoot this and BURY it for?

Why shoot it to bury it?

Rouen · #11 03/21/05, 11:16 PM

no clue but, he said if he found another he'd do it again.
and there're probly a few cross' out there since hogzilla was estimated to be 7 years of age, though the offspring may not reach his size, but who knows.

seems a waste of life to me.

oldnndway · #12 03/21/05, 11:26 PM

"it was only partial wild boar, and weighed 800lbs, think aout it, this means someone either intentionally or unintentionally let a native pig loose, or cross bred with the wild one ............
kind of scary,"

Wild hogs are not at all rare in East Texas Piney Woods.
Years ago we had open range laws. (The hogs never heard that we don't anymore.)
Everybody would ear mark their hogs with a registered mark (ear cutting in a particular pattern) and let them run wild in the bottoms eating mast from the hardwood trees and whatever else they could root up.
Then once a year, in the fall or early winter, when they are good and fat, they would gather them up with dogs and horses and mark the young ones, castrate the boars they didn't want to continue the line on and cull the bunch for smokin meat, and render the fat for lard.

Add to the mix the russian boars that folks have turned out to hunt and get em all breeding and you get some WILD animals....these ain't no "here piggy piggy" kind of animal.

Pigs is scary if you get them backed into a corner...they will eat you up.

But given the chance they will get away from you, at least these lil ol pigs around here will...I ain't never run up on any 1000 lb'ers

As far as why anyone would shoot a hog like this and bury it ... pigs are hard on property.
They will tear up ground like you wouldn't believe and one this size , especially a boar, would most likely not be fit to eat.

primroselane · #13 03/21/05, 11:40 PM

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/mg18524915.900

Archaeologists long believed that pigs were domesticated in eastern Turkey about 9000 years ago. Then later digs and genetic studies identified a second domestic root in China. Now a group led by Greger Larson of the Ancient Biomolecules Centre at the University of Oxford has identified five other domestication sites in Italy, central Europe, northern India, south-east Asia and Papua New Guinea.

Shygal · #14 03/22/05, 06:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by oldnndway

As far as why anyone would shoot a hog like this and bury it ... pigs are hard on property.
They will tear up ground like you wouldn't believe and one this size , especially a boar, would most likely not be fit to eat.

Ok I can understand that, thanks

Rouen · #15 03/22/05, 11:03 AM

"As far as why anyone would shoot a hog like this and bury it ... pigs are hard on property.
They will tear up ground like you wouldn't believe and one this size , especially a boar, would most likely not be fit to eat."

actually the fishery runs a side business with the hogs, which were turned loose by someone "up the road" as they said, so I'm a bit confused, that hog would have made for a nice trophy for someone trying his hand at hog hunting, not too mention it probly would have meant money in the fisheries pockets.

longshadowfarms · #16 03/22/05, 06:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rouen

actually the fishery runs a side business with the hogs, which were turned loose by someone "up the road" as they said, so I'm a bit confused, that hog would have made for a nice trophy for someone trying his hand at hog hunting, not too mention it probly would have meant money in the fisheries pockets.

Trophy is for the person shooting it. Apparently this guy didn't care to stuff it and hang it on his wall and the deed was already done. You can't just call that piggy to the place down the road where they'd like to chase it and kill it for a "trophy." A boar that size would be down right dangerous.

I've tasted boar and it isn't something I'll ever repeat willingly. Ok, maybe if I was literally starving to death. I can't imagine how nasty a 7 yr old boar would taste! That is one reason they castrate young males. Best thing to do with these introduced nuisance animals is to bury the beasties underground. THey make good fertilizer that way.

agmantoo · #17 03/22/05, 06:41 PM

Boar hogs go to market regularly and end up mainly as pepperoni. Taste pretty good to me on pizza.

Tana Mc · #18 03/22/05, 08:52 PM

I am from that area originally. About 7-8 years ago, the price of hogs dropped to $.08 ( eight CENTS a pound). I know because we managed a big hog farm about 40 miles from this fellow and that is how we ended up making a job change that took us to Kansas. (BTW-- I have even met him briefly at an ag show) You could not GIVE hogs away then and rather than feed them, many were just turned loose to forage in the swamps and peanut fields ( a popular old fashioned way of feeding out hogs...) This area is very swampy as it is getting near the Okeefenokee Swamp and is flat, sandy and still agricultural.
I have no doubt hogzilla and several others were just really tearing up the place. You have no idea just how much damage one hog can do in the wrong place -- let alone one this size. I can just see him now tearing up the run ways on the fish hatchery during a cooling dip...... clean water isn't what hogs want..... I imagine he made quite a hog wallow out of those small ponds.....
This guy had acres of small ponds for fish and I believe he was experimenting with frogs or crawdads or something like that. He wasn't thinking about trophies and I imagine he was as surprised as anybody when he got this big boy. How in the world do you handle something this big especially when you weren't prepared for it? You have to realize that the temps rarely drop below freezing more than 10-15 days for the whole year. Even in the dead of winter it is still considered warm so decomposition starts quick. How in the world do you process this or even get it to an unsuspecting taxidermist?
Tana Mc

TC2 · #19 03/22/05, 11:56 PM

I am also from near this area (Wayne County, on the Altamaha) and Tana Mac and Oldnndway have it right. That's the way it was done back then, before factory farming. Wild hogs are where we got our domestics, and they will eat anything, meat included!
An article in Going South ( not sure a/b website) said that there was no freezer large enought to hold the hog for preserving, and no skull mount large enough to fit either. They would have had to shrink the head by over 1/2 just to fit their largest mount. The skull has been put on display, I will try to find the article and let you know where.
DH and I loooove to go hog hunting!

Quint · #20 03/23/05, 03:10 AM

The state actively encourages folks to kill any unmarked hog. Terribly, terribly destructive. They will simply wreck your timberland. Or any other land for that matter