Les Jones

Science > Monster Pig

Via email from Mark O'Dell: Boy Bags Wild Hog Bigger Than 'Hogzilla'.

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 Alabama 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.

It's amazing to me that new animals of record size are still being found in an area as settled as the lower 48. It sort of gives me hope.

For gun folks, the two-tone "pinto" look of that gun - with its black receiver and barrel and silver cylinder and recoil compensator - immediately signalled that the revolver is almost certainly a Smith & Wesson, which has a long history of producing limited runs of pinto guns. From the size and the fact that it killed a half ton hog it has to be one of Smith & Wesson's X frame revolvers, which would mean it's chambered in either .500 Magnum or .460 Magnum. It may very well be the Performance Center 460XVR, which has the same silver recoil compensator on the end of the barrel.

That's a limited run of 500 guns. After news of this gets out I have the feeling they'll all get snapped up pretty quickly as "the gun that killed MonsterPig™." Ya gotta love a revolver that's so big it comes with swivels for a rifle sling. "Go ahead, pig. Make my day."

- MonsterPig.com
- Snopes entry on Hogzilla

UPDATE: A commenter points to this Sports Illustrated article that says the gun was a ".50" which would mean it's the .500 Magnum.