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MONTGOMERY,
Ala. - Hogzilla is being made into a
horror movie. But the sequel may be even
bigger: Meet Monster Pig.
An
11-year-old boy used a pistol to kill a
wild hog his father says weighed a
staggering 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 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. "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."
On the
Net:
Hogzilla movie:
www.thelegendofhogzillathemovie.com |
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