KEY POINTS:
WASHINGTON - An 11-year-old Alabama boy hunter has killed a wild hog so large there is widespread speculation that the story, and its accompanying picture, could be a hoax.
The boar, after all, apparently measured 2.74m (9ft) from snout to tail and weighed a staggering 476kg, with hams "as big as car tyres".
The animal thus dwarfs "Hogzilla", the famed wild boar killed in south Georgia in 2004, which is now the subject of a forthcoming, and assuredly bloodcurdling film. Hogzilla was a mere 2.4m long.
The story of the slaying of the Alabama hog takes a bit of swallowing, as will the hundreds of thousands of sausages its killer's father says are now being made from it.
It all began in east Alabama on May 3, when Jamison Stone, his father, Mike, and two guides went hunting. Jamison, who killed his first deer at age five, said he shot the huge animal eight times with a .50-calibre revolver, and then chased it for three hours through hilly woods, finishing it off with a point-blank shot.
Through it all, there was the fear that the animal would turn upon his hunters, as wild boars have a reputation for doing. 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, whose tusks are 12.7cm long, decided to charge.
With the animal finally dead in a creek bed on the 2500-acre Lost Creek Plantation hunting preserve, 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 Exchange, where Jeff Kinder said they used his scale, recently calibrated, to weigh the hog.
The hog's head is being mounted by Jerry Cunningham of Jerry's Taxidermy. Cunningham said the animal measured 137cm around the head, 19cm around the shoulders and 28cm 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 sausages made from the rest of the animal.
Not everyone is convinced by the tale. Posters to hunting blogs such as "Field and stream" were sceptical.
A message from "Matt" was typical. He wrote: "That's not a pig, it's a dinosaur. No way that's a naturally occurring hog."
If the story is true, it's hard to know what's more worrying, a 2.7m pig or an 11-year-old serial animal killer with a deadly aim.
- INDEPENDENT
