Story:
11-Year Old Alabama Boy Kills 1051 lb 9 ft Monster Wild Pig, bigger than the ‘Hogzilla’.
Other Versions
BIGGER than Hogzilla!
On Thursday May 3 2007, an 11 year old boy kills 1,051 lb. wild Feral hog. The pig was over 10′ 7″ long. The hog was taken with a Smith & Wesson customized .50 caliber revolver shooting 350 grain bullets. The 11 year old boy is Jamison Stone.
Analysis:
These messages and the picture that comes with them have been around online for some time. They claim to show that an 11 year old Alabama boy Jamison Stone has killed a 1051 pound 9 ft Monster Wild Pig which was supposedly bigger than the ‘Hogzilla’. It is not so.
Origin of the Picture
The picture supposedly showing an 11 year old boy with a shot and killed monster hog has been circulating online from 2007, since it was originally shared on monsterpig.com, with a description:
BIGGER than Hogzilla!
Just outside Anniston, Alabama on Thursday May 3 2007, an 11 year old boy kills 1,051 lb. wild Feral hog. The pig was over 10′ 7″ long. The hog was taken with a Smith & Wesson customized .50 caliber revolver shooting 350 grain Hornady bullets. The 11 year old boy is Jamison Stone, his father is Michael Stone.
The feral hog is definitely one of the biggest, if not the biggest ever taken by an 11 year old and Jamison is now looking for a big shotgun and hoping Dragons are real.
Actual Facts
The content of the story at monsterpig.com has been changing continually, especially after investigations into the story began. All other photos of the monster pig have been removed from the website, except for the lead one. It was reported that the hog’s head was mounted on an extra-large foam form by Cunningham of Jerry’s Taxidermy in Oxford, and for the rest of the animal, Mike Stone, the father of Jamison Stone, made sausage of it.
In an interview with FoxNews.com, Mike Stone talked about the picture saying:
Well, I’ll tell you, there has been a lot to do made about those pictures. The pictures are untouched pictures. They are the pictures that we took. The pictures are as they were. There was nothing done to those pictures at all.
A close look at the picture suggests that the perspective could have easily been fudged to make the beast appear larger than it actually was, because the size as it appears is relative. Note from the two different photos of the child with the monster pig taken from the website monsterpig.com (shown in Image Gallery), the size of Jamison’s head has changed — even though his relative position is supposedly the same. A related story of world’s largest Crocodile explains how forced perspective can make something appear larger than what it is.
Dr. Richard Brandt, a New York University retired physicist studied the measurements of the monster pig photo as per the claims. He concluded that if the pig were really 9 feet 4 inches long, the boy’s height would be 3 feet 9-1/2 inches. And conversely, if the boy’s height were maintained at the original 5 feet 5 inches, the pig would scale to a whopping 15 feet! This is clearly suggestive that the claims are inappropriate.
Similar Claim in Past
Famously, the last ‘Hogzilla’ was hyped to weigh 1,000 pounds and 12 feet long. It was a male hybrid of domestic pig and wild hog that was shot and killed by Chris Griffin in Alapaha, Georgia, United States, on 17 June 2004 on Ken Holyoak’s fish farm and hunting reserve.
It was known that domestic pigs can grow up to 1,000 pounds, but wild ones rarely exceed 500 pounds. Scientists working with the National Geographic Society dug up the swine in November 2004, analyzed the remains of the animal and tested its DNA. They estimated that the monster hog would have weighed only about 800 pounds (363 kilograms) and measured about 8 feet (2.4 meters). Nonetheless, compared to most wild boars and domestics, the Hogzilla was still quite a large and extraordinary specimen.
To Conclude
The picture messages claiming to show an Alabama Boy to have killed a 1051 pound 9 ft Monster Wild Pig, bigger than the ‘Hogzilla’ is certainly a hoax. The monster pig in the photo appears huge because of the perspective. The last known ‘Hogzilla’ that was hyped to weigh 1,000 pounds and 12 feet long was later known to weigh around 800 pounds and 8 feet long.
Hoax or Fact:
Hoax.
References:
Alabama Boy Kills 1,051-Pound Monster Pig, Bigger Than ‘Hogzilla’
Monster Pig is HOG WASHED!
Photo in the News: Hogzilla Is No Hogwash
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