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| Jamiston
Stone and his huge hog |
MONTGOMERY,
Ala. (AP) - 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. Jamison is reveling in the attention over his pig,
which has a Web site put up by his father — www.monsterpig.com
"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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Associated
Press writer Jay Reeves in Birmingham contributed to this report.
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