The "Hogzilla" "documentary" exhibited a lot of license for a National Geographic production. It attempts to do for feral hogs what "Jaws" did for sharks in terms of public perception . I felt that it was mostly an infomercial for the old boy's paid hunting operation .

As far as the "conclusions" vis-a-vis Hogzilla's size, well, the 8 feet and 800 pounds that the "experts" pronounced in their post-mortem was well within the normal allowance for a hunter's claim of 12 feet and 1000 pounds, so as far as I'm concerned, the Hogzilla size claims were "close enough for government work". After all, claiming 1000 pounds for an 800-pounder is a lot closer percentage than the typical claim of 350 pounds for a 180-pounder .

Here is another link to a different story with more information. The documentary will be rebroadcast on Wednesday and Thursday.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/03/22/hogzilla.ap/index.html

Seems strange that a hunting guide would kill a hog this big and then bury it immediately without getting that huge head mounted. If money was an issue, why not just get a skull mount? At a minium, you'd think the "hunting preserve" owner would do something with it. The damn thing had 18" and 16" tusks and was a north american record!! Something just doesn't add up. What am I missing?

I'm sick and tired of people getting so carried away on the weight of the these boars with questionable origins. For goodness sakes that "Hogzilla" pig had floppy ears, a dished face and was PINK!!!!

For the 3 degrees in wildlife management I did I ended up reading almost every scientific paper about wild/feral pig research published in English. I don't recall any scientist in any part of the world documenting a wild/feral pig at much over 400 lbs. Some of these researchers put their entire career into scientific sampling. They take this stuff really seriously. If they published a paper about a pig weighing 600 lbs., or some other crazy weight, their peers would want evidence that it was wild/feral.

Sure there will be a few exceptions but it's a rough world out there. A feral/wild pig isn't just going to keep adding weight until it explodes. You don't see most bull elk weighing 800 lbs. (for example) and an occasional bull tipping the scales at 2,000 lbs. Or an occasional white-tail buck weighing 700 lbs. Why do some hunters choose to believe people when they claim their "wild" pig weighed 800 pounds?

There must be some pig farmers out there to back this up: It's NOT unusual for a domestic breeding boar to reach 1,000 (and well over) lbs. I've personally been involved with take of around 1,400 feral pigs. Many of these pigs were living and feeding in agricultural crops and we have yet to weigh one over 400 pounds.

Why do people keep falling for these Hogzilla type stories??????
(This question is rhetorical: PLEASE don't answer that you believe these stories because your brother-in-laws neighbors cousins barber once said he shot a "real" wild pig that they weighed at 789lbs. on the local truck scale so it MUST be true.)

Sorry, I guess I'm just venting because so many people asked me about this junk. It just seems silly that people even consider it.

Great hunting with great hunters,

Kyler

quote:

Originally posted by Kyler Hamann:
Sure there will be a few exceptions but it's a rough world out there. A feral/wild pig isn't just going to keep adding weight until it explodes. You don't see most bull elk weighing 800 lbs. (for example) and an occasional bull tipping the scales at 2,000 lbs. Or an occasional white-tail buck weighing 700 lbs.
Kyler

Kyler,
in Texas, a 140 # buck is HUGE... Yet the record whitetail was 643#, shot in canada. (that's near your threshold of 700#)...

In texas, a 240 # WHITETAIL is a pet, not game. In michigan, it's a decent but not great buck. 75# is the dressed average (at least 6 years ago it was)

As feral hogs are generally hybrids with wild boars, and hybrids generally are larger than either parent (see liger/tion) it is understandable that, in perfect circumstances, a feral hybrid could be larger than a wild cousin.


Feral hogs, in texas and most of the southern parts of the US,once they reach about 250#, have ZERO natural predators... none.... with the exception of man, cars, and trains, the only thing they have to worry about is food and other hogs.

If it is POSSIBLE for a 100% domestic hog to hit 1000# on a special diet, there is NO REASON that genetics wouldn't allow a feral to get that big. DIET wouldn't allow it to get that big. What I am refuting at this point is your statement that they don't just keep putting on weight... yeah, they CAN, there just may not be the food source TOO.

Generally hogs top out, in a densely populated environment, about 250.. that's the hog herd/troop type setting... the lord of the woods, there, is 350, and you'll never see him.

In a more sparsely populated environment, that moves up about 100 pounds in the bracket

this is one of the reasons WHY DEER ARE SMALL IN TEXAS, as we have too high a population, and size is not a selection factor in genetic immorality.. being there is.

I, myself, have seen what happens when a pure russian is crossed with a "pure" feral.. and then farm raised.....

Huge toofeses
HUGE body....
growth rate about 2X that of a domestic

when released into a preserve (not a hunting field) he fell from over 700 to under 500 and seemed to have stabilized there... he was killed by a poacher 20 months after being released, but the poacher couldn't DO anything with him, and was chased off the property before he could hack off the head.

One of the reason people don't jump out with their "over 300, 400, 500" # pigs is that they SEE the GD thing, laying at their feet, and all the scientists what to tell them it aint possible. or it's a barnyard animal....

Hmm, the gorillia was a mythical beast, to KNOWN science, too.

Kyler, they dug up hogzilla.. it weighed over 800#.. that's the proof a fella needs

I have not seen a 100% wild hog that was at or over 500#....

i have seen and shot several in the 300+#

I have seen some in the 400+ range....

jeffe

Hi Jeffe,

I see what you mean about the deer weights. But those are subspecies that have naturally diverged evolutionarily. Specifically your citation is demonstrating what is known as Bergmann's Rule in ecogeographic biology.
Bergmann's Rule: "Warm-blooded vertebrates, races from cooler climates tend to be of larger body size and hence to have smaller surface-to-volume ratios than races of the same species living in warmer climates." In-other-words, stuff living in colder climates (further north in this case) will tend to evolve large body size.

That's a bit "apples and oranges" compared to the results of feeding hybrid domesticated/feral/wild animals to see how large they can get.

Kyler

jeffeosso:

While certainly not common, there have been several whitetails killed in this area of Texas well over 200 pounds live weight. Most of the average 3 year old bucks on my ranch will weigh about 135 to 160, again, on the hoof. Biggest I've killed weighed 133 field dressed which would have put him about 170 or so live. Most of our mature older does weigh 80 to 90 FD wt. Biggest we've taken weighed 94 FD. Most 1 1/2 yr old does weigh about 60 to 65. All of this is real recorded wts, not guessing.

Personally, having an 800 pound hog laying at his feet proves nothing but that the hunter shot him. What I want to know is where he came from and how long had he been "wild". I'm not saying its impossible, but I find it really hard to believe that a feral hog can find the amount of food necessary to reach or maintain 800 pounds.

Put me down as a "he's dead, but I don't believe he's very feral".

There are a lot of issues in the "Hogzilla" epic that don't make a lot of sense. Some of that is undoubtedly because the reporting on Hogzilla hasn't been all that accurate, including the NG television special which was rife with hyperbole.

Here's what I've pieced together (none of which is at all conclusive because it is based only on the admittedly inaccurate reporting):

1. Hogzilla was taken on a 1500 acre private hunting operation, where, presumably, there was an abundance of both naturally occuring food and suplemental feed.

2. Hogzilla was taken not by a paying hunter, but by a paid guide (!?)

3. An analysis of Hogzilla's DNA indicated that it had both European Boar and domestic swine lineage.

First, the DNA. This is a surprise? ALL hogs share some European Boar DNA; after all, this is what they were bred from. DNA analysis is far from an exact science, and there is no real indication of how many generations back in Hogzilla's parentage a "pure" European Boar ancestor might have been. For all intents and purposes, Hogzilla was your common feral domestic hog. How long he had been feral and under what circumstances is unanswered.

Having been taken on private land where a great deal of feeding was going on, it is not impossible for a hog to reach Hogzilla's ("expert estimated") weight of 800 pounds. But how does a hog get this big and this old in a place where people pay money to shoot big hogs?

Speaking of paying money to shoot big hogs, what the hell is an employee doing shooting the biggest meal ticket the owner has? Do hunting guides go around shooting 170 BC bucks on South Texas ranches where the clients pay four or five thousand dollars in trophy fees for such a buck? I hardly think so.

My theory (and worth ever penny you paid for it ): Hogzilla was "obtained" from some source and shot and publicized in order to draw attention to the owner's hunting operation. In other words, Hogzilla is an advertising gimmick, and the media has swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. Oh well, it's more entertaining to me than the Michael Jackson trial.