This is a really big wild hog. It weighs as much as some buffalo and appears to be longer than most. This wild hog might set a new world record. And it was killed by a 11 year old Alabama boy using a .50 caliber pistol.
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 1,000 pounds and measure 12 feet long. National Geographic experts who unearthed its remains believe the animal actually weighed about 800 pounds and was 8 feet long.
Regardless of the comparison, Jamison is reveling in the attention over his pig.
"It feels really good," Jamison 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 Monster Pig. 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 for doing.
"I was a little bit scared, a little bit excited," said Jamison, who lives in Pickensville on the Mississippi border. He 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 animal 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, recently calibrated, to weigh the hog.
Kinder's scale measures only to the nearest 10, but Mike Stone said it balanced one notch past the 1,050-pound mark.
"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 being mounted by Jerry Cunningham of Jerry's Taxidermy. 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.
"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," 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.
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."
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More about the wild hog that turns out that it wasn't wild after all.
FRUITHURST, Ala. (AP) — The huge hog that became known as "Monster Pig" after being killed by an 11-year-old boy was raised on a farm where it had another name: Fred.
Phil Blissitt said he purchased the 6-week-old pig in December 2004 as a Christmas gift for his wife Rhonda, and they sold it to the owner of Lost Creek Plantation after deciding to get rid of all the pigs at their farm.
He told The Anniston Star in a story Friday that the sale was four days before the hog was killed in a 150-acre fenced area of the plantation.
"I just wanted the truth to be told. That wasn't a wild pig," Rhonda Blissitt said.
The Blissitts said they didn't know the huge hog drawing widespread media attention was Fred until they were contacted by Andy Howell, game warden for the Alabama Department of Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries, whose agency found that no laws were violated in the hunt.
"Did you see that pig on TV?" Phil Blissitt recalled Howell asking. "I said, 'Yeah, I had one about that size.' He said, 'No, that one is yours.'
"That's when I knew."'
Phil Blissitt said he became irritated when he learned that some thought the photos of Fred were doctored.
"That was a big hog," he said.
Mike Stone, the father of Jamison Stone, the 11-year-old boy who shot the huge hog to death during what they described as a three-hour chase, has said the hog weighed more than 1,000 pounds and was more than 9 feet long. He told the Star he had been under the impression that the hog was wild, not farm-raised.
"We were told that it was a feral hog," Mike Stone told the Star, "and we hunted it on the pretense that it was a feral hog."
Telephone messages left Friday with Eddy Borden, the owner of Lost Creek Plantation, were not immediately returned.
Stone said state wildlife officials did tell him, though, that it is not unusual for hunting preserves to buy farm-raised hogs and that the hogs are considered feral once they are released because they are back in a natural environment.
Stone said he brought Jamison to meet with Blissitt Friday morning because he wanted to get more details about the hog. Blissitt said he had about 15 hogs and decided to sell them all off for slaughter, but no one would buy that particular hog because it was too big for slaughter and too big to use for breeding purposes, Stone said.
Stone said Blissitt told him the pig had become a nuisance and that people were often frightened by it when they came onto his property.
"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."
