Oh dear, I fear that The Times has been had.
THEY swear he is one of the most humungous hogs ever seen – and not just a giant porkie. A pig the size of a hatchback has been reported shot dead by an 11-year-old boy using a pistol.
The male wild pig, which is said to weigh half a ton and measure more than 9ft long, was apparently killed by Jamison Stone, a schoolboy from Alabama, while out hunting with his father Mike.
The dead boar has been hailed as a contender for the largest wild pig ever found, but the Stones are unsentimental about their trophy.
“We’ll probably get 500lb to 700lb of sausages out of him,” Mike Stone told Associated Press.
The pig, whose measurements have not been independently verified, is the latest in a series of giant specimens found in the backwoods of the southern United States.
Now I don’t say that it is impossible that a wild pig of this size exists, even existed and was shot. However, here’s the photo:
Here’s the one of the earlier claim to fame, Hogzilla:
Err, anyone else note the interesting use of perspective, of the distance from the animal to the human being used to compare the size?
Our young Jamison Stone is not shown leaning on the pig at all, he’s crouching, several feet behind it.
Yes, I know that National Geographic dug up the corpse of Hogzilla and measured it, finding it to be large, yes, but certainly no where near as large as the photo makes it look.
It’s them rednecks from Alabama having a laugh at us urbanites who will swallow this tale.
Update: More to the story here. As mentioned in comments, is this just a great piece of viral marketing for a movie?
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