Alabama Boy Kills 1,051-Pound Monster Pig, Bigger Than 'Hogzilla'

Site Issues 2007 Archive Room
#1

Alabama Boy Kills 1,051-Pound Monster Pig, Bigger Than ‘Hogzilla’
Jamison Stone, 11, of Pickensville, Ala., poses with huge feral hog his dad says weighs over 1,000 pounds.

FoxNews
Friday, May 25, 2007

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,275524,00.html

An 11-year-old Alabama boy used a pistol to kill a wild hog that just may be the biggest pig ever found.

Jamison Stone’s father says the hog his son killed weighed a 1,051 pounds and measured 9-feet-4 from the tip of its snout to the base of its tail. Think hams as big as car tires.

If the claims are accurate, Jamison’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 1,000 pounds and measure 12 feet in length. National Geographic experts who unearthed its remains believe the animal actually weighed about 800 pounds and was 8 feet long.

After seeing the pig in person, taxidermist Jerry Cunningham told The Anniston Star it was “the biggest thing I’d ever seen … it’s huge.”

The Anniston Star reported that the feral hog was weighed at the Clay County Farmer’s Exchange in Lineville. Workers at the co-op verified that the basic truck scales used were recently certified by the state. But no workers from the co-op were present when the hog was weighed.

Jamison is reveling in the attention over his pig, which has a Web site put up by his father — http://www.monsterpig.com — that is generating Internet buzz.

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

Jamison, who killed his first deer at age 5, was hunting with father Mike Stone and two guides in east Alabama on May 3 when he bagged Hogzilla II. He said he shot the huge animal eight times with a .50-caliber 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 of doing.

“I was a little bit scared, a little bit excited,” said Jamison, who just finished the sixth grade on the honor roll at Christian Heritage Academy, a small, private school.

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 5-inch tusks decided to charge.

With the pig finally dead in a creek bed on the 2,500-acre Lost Creek Plantation, a commercial hunting preserve in Delta, 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 in Lineville, where Jeff Kinder said they used his scale, which was recently calibrated, to weigh the hog.

Kinder, who didn’t witness the weigh-in, said he was baffled to hear the reported weight of 1,051 pounds because his scale — an old, manual style with sliding weights — only measures to the nearest 10.

“I didn’t quite understand that,” he said.

Mike Stone said the scale balanced one notch past the 1,050-pound mark, and he thought it meant a weight of 1,051 pounds.

“It probably weighed 1,060 pounds. We were just afraid to change it once the story was out,” he said.

The hog’s head is now being mounted on an extra-large foam form by Cunningham of Jerry’s Taxidermy in Oxford. Cunningham said the animal measured 54 inches around the head, 74 inches around the shoulders and 11 inches from the eyes to the end of its snout.

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

The Anniston Star reported that congratulatory calls have come all the way from California, where Jamison appeared on a radio talk show. Jamison apparently has gotten words of congratulation from Rickey Medlocke of Lynyrd Skynyrd, country music star Kenny Chesney, Tom Knapp of Benelli firearms and Jerry Miculek of Smith & Wesson.

Jamison is enjoying the newfound celebrity generated by the hog hunt, but he said he prefers hunting pheasants to monster pigs.

“They are a little less dangerous.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

#2

Not sure about that … however if Bigfoot does exist im sure it will be killed and captured by a bunch of beered-up Americans. Only country in the world with enough ppl to go huntin drunk. :smiley: God Bless America! lol

#3

Unbelievable :shock:

#4

Holly crap there going to have a good christmas dinner or thanksgiving,that is a lot of freaking ham

#5

:shock: Did they hunting near Chernobyl or somewhere? - Monstrous animal, perhaps as big as a horse.
Unbelievable! :!:

#6

I wonder though, does it have a “big brother” ?I was at odds originally when I heard about it, why kill it unless it was causing trouble, but I guess a hog that large will become trouble once the food supply runs short. As hogs will attack, and sometimes eat people if they can.
A dog and a cat are reading the paper, and the dog says, look there, this says that pigs may be more intelligent than cats and Dogs! The cat replies, lets go discuss it over a ham sandwich,

#7

At the risk of seeming like a killjoy, I’m not impressed with someone putting 8 slugs into an animal and still failing to kill it. Either he had too little gun or was a lousy shot. Possibly the former as his father and the guides were standing by with rifles in case it charged, which commonsense suggests are better weapons for shooting pigs of any size (When I shot pigs a long time ago, pistols were carried only as backups in case a rifle failed and the pig charged.) Possibly the latter as he seems to have hit it on the rear flank and neck, to the extent that this can be determined from the photo.

I don’t like so-called sporting shooters who go into the field ill-equipped to kill an animal quickly and who do things that cause the animal unnecessary suffering, like trying to bring down an animal of that size with a pistol.

Yes, I know that Smith and Wesson make a .50 calibre pistol that from the context of the article might have been the one used here and that it’s supposed to be a hand-held cannon that takes game at a couple of hundred yards (at which range the average pistol shot has no hope of hitting anything with the accuracy required for head or heart / lung shots), but if it was used here it didn’t live up to its reputation.

As for this being hunting, what a joke! Who TF needs even one guide, let alone more than one as in this case, to find a pig on just 2,500 acres on a commercial game hunting preserve? It’s like going to one of those stupid fish farms and catching fish in a well stocked dam and thinking it’s fishing.

#8

The story didnt mention what pistol, or caliber was used in this, but there are only a few that would be up to this job. and you would still need to be quite close to be effective.There was mention of it being a.50 cal, but there might be any number of loads using that diameter slug.
I must agree that I do not feel this to be a proper hunt,and using many poorly placed shots is not humane. Unless it was being a menace, I would have left it alone. - Raspenau -

#9

Snopes and other agencies are still waiting out on this, but the lad’s father has started a website here.

Personally I think Panzerknacker’s quite correct, and it is indeed unbelievable.
It’ll be interesting to see when the wind-up is exposed.

#10

Look at the focussing on the picture - the kid is a LONG way behind that pig. The only photo where you get any sense of perspective at all is the one where it is being moved about by tractor, and in that one it doesn’t actually look particularly big.

#11

Hehe, well said PDF, to place the hunter long way back is a trick very often used by the outfitters to make the impression that the game is bigger.

Anyway this animal seems impressive.

#12

See here http://www.hoax-slayer.com/giant-feral-pig.html for some comparative weights of wild pigs, which are a long way short of the one in this thread. Maybe the one here is a different variety and grew to a different weight. But the one in the photo in the link looks to be about the same size as the one in the OP when compared with the tractor photo here http://www.monsterpig.com/ , but it’s only two thirds of the weight at best.

#13

According to the proud dad’s website http://www.monsterpig.com/ which I wasn’t aware of when I wrote my original post

The hog was taken with a Smith & Wesson customized .50 caliber revolver shooting 350 grain bullets.

As you correctly say, with a pistol you need to be close to use it effectively. With a dangerous animal like a wild pig, if you’re close enough to use it effectively, you’re too close. So either dad and the guides let the kid get into a dangerous situation or they let him plug away from too far away when he had no realistic chance of killing the animal, which is cruel. Either way, dad and the guides deserve a good kick in the arse.

If I was dad, I wouldn’t be bragging about it. I’d be ashamed of myself.

And if I was Smith & Wesson I’d keep quiet too, because when you cut through all the hoo-haa all that’s been demonstrated is that their hand cannon can put eight slugs into something about the size of a horse or cow without managing to drop it. Hardly a great advertisement for a supposed game weapon.

#14

dare I say photoshop for the pic’s.

#15

And heres a photoshopped pic I’ve just done in a couple of mins which makes the pig about 20% bigger.

#16

If the measurements of the beast are correct, this image seems pretty close to showing the relative size of boy to hog.

Figuring that twice the boy’s height would be 10 feet 10 inches with the hog’s length being 10 feet 7 inches from snout to hoof. And adjusting the boy’s position so that his heels are more in line with the hog’s snout.

Maybe someone can photoshop this to get more accurate proportions.

#17

Not a Feral Pig, it was Domesticated…NEWS!

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,277097,00.html

#18

Yep…you beat me to it.

UPDATE - 01 June 2007:

[b]Farmers: ‘Monster Pig’ Not a Wild Hog, But Was Their Pet Pig ‘Fred’

Friday, June 01, 2007[/b]

Associated Press
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,277097,00.html

FRUITHURST, Ala. —

The Mystery of the Monster pig appears to have been solved.

The 1,051-pound hog, shot and killed by 11-year-old Jamison Stone and the subject of a world-wide Web firestorm over the photo’s authenticity, really is…Fred.

That’s “Fred” the pig, and according to Rhonda and Phil Blissitt their humongous hog escaped on April 29, four days before it was killed, according to the Star newspaper.

Late Thursday evening, their claims were confirmed by Andy Howell, Game Warden for the Alabama Department of Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries.

“I didn’t want to stir up anything,” Rhonda Blissitt said. “I just wanted the truth to be told. That wasn’t a wild pig.”

Her husband agreed.

“If it went down in the record book, it would be deceiving, and we’d know that for the rest of our lives.”

The monster hog gained worldwide acclaim after he was bagged by 11-year-old Jamison Stone, a Pickensville native, with a .50-caliber pistol on May 3 at the Lost Creek Plantation, LLC, a hunting preserve in Delta. The big boar was hunted inside a large, low-fence enclosure and fired upon 16 times by Stone, who struck the animal nearly a half-dozen times during the three-hour hunt.

The saga of young Jamison’s hunt spread as the family posted the story and photos on their Web site, monsterpig.com.

The Blissitts said they were unaware that the hog generating all the media attention was once theirs. It wasn’t until Howell spoke with Phil Blissitt that the pieces of the puzzle came together.

Phil Blissitt recalled Howell asking him about the now-famous hog.

“Did you see that pig on TV?” Phil Blissitt recalled Howell asking him. "I said, ‘Yeah, I had one about that size.’ He said, ‘No, that one is yours.’

“That’s when I knew.”

Phil Blissitt purchased the pig for his wife as a Christmas gift in December of 2004. From 6 weeks old, they raised the pig as it grew to its enormous size.

Not long ago, they decided to sell off all of their pigs. Eddy Borden, owner of Lost Creek Plantation, purchased Fred.

Attempts by The Star to reach Borden were unsuccessful.

While Rhonda Blissitt was somewhat in the dark about the potential demise of her pet, Phil Blissitt said he was under the understanding that it would breed with other female pigs and then “probably be hunted.”

Many other of their former pigs — like their other farm animals — had been raised for the purpose of agricultural harvest.

As the Blissitts recounted the events of the last two days, they told stories and made many references to the gentleness of their former “pet.”

From his treats of canned sweet potatoes to how their grandchildren would play with him, their stories painted the picture of a gentle giant. They even talked about how their small Chihuahua would get in the pen with him and come out unscathed.

“But if they hadn’t fed him in a while,” Rhonda Blissitt said, “he could have gotten irate.”

Phil Blissitt said he became irritated when they learned about all the doubters who said photos of Fred were doctored.

“That was a big hog,” he said.

The information of the pig’s previous owner came out on the same day that officials from the Fish and Wildlife concluded their investigation of the hunt. They concluded that nothing illegal happened under the guidelines of Alabama law.

Allan Andress, enforcement chief for the Alabama Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries Division, said they learned the hog’s origin as the investigation unfolded.

“We were able to determine that he came from a domesticated environment,” he said. “So, he was not feral to start with. Therefore, he would not violate our feral swine trapping and relocating rule.”

Mike Stone, Jamison’s father, contends that he was unaware of the origin of the pig. Before, during and after the hunt — and until late Thursday night, when contacted by The Star — Mike Stone was under the impression that the hog was feral.

“We were told that it was a feral hog,” Mike Stone said, “and we hunted it on the pretense that it was a feral hog.”

[b]Pig Was a Monster, but He Wasn’t Wild

Friday, June 01, 2007[/b]

Associated Press
http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2007Jun01/0,4670,MonsterPig,00.html

FRUITHURST, Ala. —

The huge hog that became known as “Monster Pig” after being hunted and killed by an 11-year-old boy had another name: Fred. The not-so-wild pig had been raised on an Alabama farm and was sold to the Lost Creek Plantation just four days before it was shot there in a 150-acre fenced area, the animal’s former owner said.

Phil Blissitt told The Anniston Star in a story Friday that he bought the 6-week-old pig in December 2004 as a Christmas gift for his wife, Rhonda, and that they sold it after deciding to get rid of all the pigs at their farm.

“I just wanted the truth to be told. That wasn’t a wild pig,” Rhonda Blissitt said.

Jamison Stone shot the huge hog during what he and his father described as a three-hour chase. They said it was more than 1,000 pounds and 9 feet long; if anything, it looked even bigger in a now-famous photo of the hunter and the hunted.

Mike Stone said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press on Friday that he had been under the impression that the hog was wild, not farm-raised.

Telephone messages left Friday with Eddy Borden, the owner of Lost Creek Plantation, were not immediately returned.

Stone said state wildlife officials told him that it is not unusual for hunting preserves to buy farm-raised hogs and that the hogs are considered feral once they are released.

Stone said he and his son met Blissitt on Friday morning to get more details about the hog. Blissitt said that he had about 15 hogs and decided to sell them for slaughter, but that no one would buy that particular animal because it was too big for slaughter or breeding, Stone said.

Blissitt said that the pig had become a nuisance and that visitors were often frightened by it, Stone said.

“He was nice enough to tell my son that the pig was too big and needed killing,” Stone said. “He shook Jamison’s hand and said he did not kill the family pet.”

The Blissitts said they didn’t know the hog that was hunted was Fred until they were contacted by a game warden for the Alabama Department of Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries. The agency determined that no laws were violated in the hunt.

Phil Blissitt said he became irritated when he learned that some thought the photo of Fred was doctored.

“That was a big hog,” he said.

#19

That just confirms my original suspicion that this great kill was the equivalent of one of those stupid fish farms where game is confined in circumstances where even idiots with a couple of guides can find large animals.

And now we’re down from 2,500 acres to 150 fenced acres. You could find a rabbit in that!

This makes shooting fish in a barrel seem almost sporting.

In case my contempt for such actions and for such people is not clear: I hold the game farm, its guides, and its customers in utter contempt.

As for firing 16 rounds (first I’ve heard of that) for 8 hits and leaving the poor animal to run around for three hours, clearly bleeding itself to death, this just reinforces my earlier comment that the father should be ashamed of himself. It’s not the kid’s fault. He can’t help having a dickhead for a father.

These pricks ought to turn in their guns or get out somewhere where they find out what real sporting shooting is about.

As for shooting pigs, they ought to get out among some true feral pigs. The ones I used to shoot a very long time ago were quite capable of ripping up a man or a dog, and most of them weren’t even as big as a sheep. You wouldn’t want to track one of them when you wounded it, because the bastards are smart and vicious and were just as likely to wait for you to pass and charge from behind in thick scrub. Which is why you learn to kill them with the first shot. Like any animal should be killed. Not that it always works, but anyone with any self-respect would give it up if they had to fire 16 shots for 8 hits without dropping it in the first minute or two.

Instead of some stupid kid with the wrong gun running around the countryside blasting away uselessly at some poor animal that should have turned and charged its tormentor before it died.

I’ve got a lot more respect for the pig than I have for the kid’s father and the guides. I just wish the pig had used its brain and weight and got stuck into these idiots like the pigs I was used to would have. These idiots deserved it.

#20

To kill a beast in an enclosed compound, that is a domestic beast at that, is anything but sporting. not a proud moment at all. Though I am no hunter, so probably do not have the savvy of an experienced hunter, I dont think much of this “kill”.
Nor do I hold much esteem for the adults who left a child in a dangerous situation with an inadequate weapon, and probably little training.Just my tuppence worth. - Raspenau -