Some Pig!!

I can only imagine what Charlotte might have woven into her web after seeing this. Probably something along the lines of "Holy Shit!!"

Here's the news story:





Georgia Hunter Bags 'Hogzilla'


FAYETTE COUNTY -- An urban legend comes to life, and meets its death in northeast Georgia.

A boar weighing 1,100 pounds was shot and killed in a Fayette County neighborhood.

Residents say the wild hog had been tearing up their yards for years.

These so-called "hogzillas" have been spotted and killed in south Georgia in recent years, but the Department of Natural Resources is trying to determine if the pig shot in Fayette County this week is a state record.

People passing by the Coursey house are amazed by the boar hanging from a tree in the front yard. William Coursey, an avid hunter, shot the pig in a neighbor's yard.

Coursey says the boar is one of four that had been roaming the neighborhood, uprooting yards for seven years. He says the other three animals may have been killed previously.

He says he thought it was myth until now. Coursey and his son took the hog to a local weigh station, where it weighed in at 1,100 pounds. It's an estimated 9 feet long.

The Courseys believe the hefty hog may be the biggest ever, based on statistics they say they found in a local hunting magazine.

Experts say the large pigs are "feral," meaning they were once domesticated but now run wild. They can be dangerous, and the DNR urges that you call wildlife experts to remove the animals.

The story aired on CNN also. Here's a link to the video.
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A few years ago there was an internet story about a guy in Alapaha, Georgia that had supposedly killed a similar-sized wild feral hog. The rumors were that the hog weighed over 1000 pounds but the man had buried it before anyone could actually verify the weight and size of it. Here is a copy of that story as it circulated the internet:

Giant Hog Killed on a Plantation in Georgia

ALAPAHA, Georgia (AP) -- Around these parts, they are calling it Hogzilla: a 12-foot-long wild hog recently killed on a plantation and now quickly becoming a part of local legend.

The plantation's owner claims the hog weighed 1,000 pounds and had 9-inch tusks. But few people have actually seen the hog -- the only proof being a photo that shows the dead beast hanging from a rope.

Whether the hog ever actually existed or is some sort of Faulknerian myth, it has definitely been the topic of conversation in small towns across southern Georgia.

"People just back up and ask 'Is it real?' They can't believe that there's a hog that big in the woods," said Drew White, who has a copy of the photo on display at an auto parts store in Tifton, about 17 miles away.

Chris Griffin said he killed the beast last month at the River Oak Plantation, where he is a hunting guide, and has been showing off the picture around this small farming community ever since. The hog is nearly twice as long as the 6-foot-tall Griffin, who is seen standing next to it in the photo.

"They say 'Man, you look like a dwarf compared to that thing,"' he said Wednesday.
The picture is all Griffin has to back up his claims. He and Ken Holyoak, owner of the plantation, buried the beast on the property and did not want to hassle with slaughtering it since the meat of large feral hogs is typically not very good.

Holyoak said he decided that the hog's head also wasn't worth keeping because it was too large to mount on a wall. He said the head has the diameter of a tire on a compact car.
"We had to lift him with a backhoe," he said.

No one maintains official records on hog kills in Georgia. But Department of Natural Resources biologist Kent Kammermeyer, who helped write a booklet on feral-hog problems in the state, said he has never heard of one as large as Hogzilla.

Holyoak said the plantation's previous record was a 695-pound hog shot several years ago. Enough wild hogs roam Holyoak's plantation that he has made it a side business to allow people to hunt them, but he said "Hogzilla" was too big to let someone else shoot.

"We killed it because we didn't want to take a chance of him getting away. Somebody else would have shot it," he said.

Feral hogs, popularly known as wild hogs, are domestic hogs that escaped from farms and began living off the land. They lay waste to corn and peanut fields and deprive more than 100 species -- including squirrels and deer -- of food.

"It's a big problem and it's getting worse," Kammermeyer said. "If you have a lot of hogs, you're going to have problems. Hogs are very aggressive. They run deer off and they can be dangerous if wounded or cornered."

Holyoak said he had to climb into a deer stand a few years back to escape a raging hog that circled around for six hours, foaming at the mouth and snapping at branches.

"They say bears get mad when you mess with their babies," Holyoak said. "Hogs don't need a reason to get mad and come after you."

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As part of a documentary on feral pigs, National Geographic sent an expert to Georgia to try to find the buried remains of the giant hog to both estimate its size and to try to figure out exactly what type of pig it was.
With the help of the hunting guide who shot the pig, Chris Griffin, the remains were found and it did turn out to be a really big animal.
The stories circulated on the Internet estimated its weight to be 1,000 pounds, which was close.
National Geographic estimated the original weight to be 800 pounds and said the pig was about 7 1/2 feet in length, a lot of bacon.
Through DNA tests they also determined that it was a mix between domestic and wild pig.

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In other news:
The birthday party went well. I didn't drink anything stronger than a Sierra Mist or Diet Pepsi. I still didn't go hunting yesterday because, although I didn't drink anything, it was still about 2AM when we got home. No way was I going to climb a tree and try to stay awake after only 2 hours of sleep in the past 24. No sense in testing my safety harness anytime soon.

Last night, we got together with several more friends to celebrate another birthday. Dinner at Ruby Tuesday's followed by a stop at a nearby nightclub for a few drinks and some dancing. Again, the drink of choice...Diet Coke, on the rocks. It's actually a lot easier than I thought it would be. Cheaper too. Designated drivers drink free at this club. =)
So maybe, just maybe, another resolution will hold fast this year. I'm sure there will be the occasional beer/mixed drink at some point in the future, but I'll accept that as a victory nonetheless. A drink or two all along will be a far cry from buying 2-3 cases of beer nearly EVERY weekend.

And today, the rain is back. But the radar shows a sizable break in the system so I may just ease over to the lease to see what's going on. If nothing else, to check my trail camera.