i'm curious about just how big hogs get(both feral and the ones that have never been domesticated). we hear all the stories about the huge ones but i want to ask you guys to post any and all huge hog pics here so we can see some real big ones. i remember seeing one from europe that was suppose to be 800 lbs or something like that. anybody have that one? thanks...bud

Budiceale, as soon as I hear about anything over 100kg,(220lb) I start getting suspicious.
It's pretty hard to get pure wild pigs over than in most parts of Europe. The very cold areas in the North East do get them up to 280kg(600lb), that I have seen pictures and will believe.
Once you start hearing about pigs heavier you can bet there is domestic blood in them.

Domestic pigs can get bloody big, 800lb would not be unreasonable where they are plenty of food availiable and the right bloodlines.

I have posted pics here of pigs that were in the 200 - 250lb range and put a guessing game on it and got results up to 650lb.

Most peope either don't know how to judge them or exaggerate.

A lot of places, Texas comes to mind, freely brag 600lb hogs as the norm. Could be. But they would need to have a lot of food or supplements, plus a colder climate is more adept at breeding larger specimens.

The ears, tail and overall shape, not to mention colour and hair are the main giveaways to domestic blood.
Feral pigs are not to be considered any less worthy than wild pigs, as long as they were born into the wild. Some ferals that are only escapees would not be quite as switched on.

express..thanks...i agree that most reports are exaggerated. and not just on the weight of hogs. a lot of people around here catch some near record breaking largemouth bass...until they get to a scale and then they just have a normal but respectable fish. i'm just hoping to get some pictures of some of the really big hogs posted here, just for the fun of it. by the way..how's the PPC shootin? cheers...bud

I am with EXPRESS on this. I have seen pictures of hogs "claiming" to weigh anything from 400 to 600 lbs that I know would not break 250 lbs. I have killed a bunch of hogs here in Texas, only 2 went over 300 lbs. I have a scale that goes to 300 lbs. One hog that I weighed was over the limit of the scale, so we felt it was @ 325 to 350. It looked big as a Volkswagon Bettle hanging in the tree. I try to weigh all of the bigger hogs I kill, both before gutting and after. When they get to 275 and up I take a picture of the reading on the scale.
As a side note my favorite eating size is 250 to 275 lbs. Even the boars I have shot this size have all been very good eating. In fact the @325 pounder [boar] was one of the best pigs I have ever eaten. That size is just so big they are hard to handle.
Even those boars that were "stinky" when shot have tasted very well.
I have NEVER shot a pig and let it lay, the meat is just too good.

it was in the mid 70's I saw (2) two brood sows
one weighted 960 the other weighted 940
looked like VW's
they were belted hampshires
they were being sold at the local stockyard
as I recall they did not bring much per pound

Meet Big Bill, Minnesota's biggest boar, at the state fair
Peg Meier, Star Tribune
August 31, 2002HOGVAR


Big Bill, Minnesota's largest boar, is the talk of the animal barns at the fair.

Mother to child: "He's just a big old lazy pig, sweetie."

Farmer to suburbanite: "He's fine, don't worry. He can walk, but he'd rather relax."

Wife to husband: "Honey, yours are not as big!"

At 1,050 pounds and 5 1/2 years of age, Big Bill, of Jordan, beat out other hogs in the weight contest and won the privilege of being displayed in the swine barn at the Minnesota State Fair. Since 1976, an oversized hog has been featured each year. The purpose is to educate the public on how hogs formerly were fed to massive size -- decades before lean pork was valued.

Each day at the fair, the boar draws crowds, who marvel at his megasize, his calmness and his, ummmm, shall we say, his equipment.

Jerry Hawton, a University of Minnesota professor of animal science and superintendent of the fair's swine barn, sees fairgoers at the big boar's pen making hand gestures to each other. He knows what they're doing. Over many years, he's determined that the most frequently asked question about the boar is the size of the testicles. In case you're curious: They're between the size of a soccer ball and a basketball.

Next question.

The second most popular question is whether the boar is uncomfortable. Paul Lanoue, a swine-barn educator, said, "People always are concerned about his health and his treatment, as are we." Big Bill is fine, Hawton said. He's fed, watered, walked, sprinkled with cool water and given two apples every morning and two every evening. With more than an inch of back fat, he's unlikely to feel pats from little kids, pokes from teenagers or rubs from people who like to feel his bristly hair. Life is good, Hawton said. Big Bill is happy as . . . a pig in mud.

Trouble last year

Farmers don't raise humongous hogs anymore. Check around the swine barn for a better representation of how today's swine are shaped. They're far smaller. Since the 1960s, consumers have wanted leaner cuts of pork "and they don't want lard, except for the grandmother who still makes her pies with lard," said Doris Mold, an agricultural consultant who coordinates the fair's Oink Booth (also the Baa Booth and the Moo Booth; she's multilingual).

So Big Bill is closer in size to boars raised and shown at the fair in the early 1900s. Each of the whoppers was a regular boar, Doris Mold said, "that their owner decided to keep and continued to feed him. And feed him. And feed him."

Only a few hog breeders raise a boar for the fair's contest. Usually, six to 12 boars are entered. In early August, contestants are driven to local animal scales to be weighed. A weight must be verified by a county extension director or agriculture instructor. The biggest healthy boar gets the invitation to the fair for the entire 12-day run.

Last year, the procedure went badly. Two boars tied in weight. Because farmer Bernhardt Kline had a hog that had previously won the contest, the judges decided to give the other contestant's hog the prize. Hawton called the farmer. Bad news. His boar had died a few days earlier. So Hawton tried to call Kline and learned from his family that Kline had died of an aneurysm a few months earlier, at age 71.

Kline's friends, Mary and Richard Thomas, were kind enough to continue raising his hog and name him for Kline. They took the boar to the fair and put up a big sign:

"Big Bernie. 5 years old. Crossbreed. 1,100 pounds. In memory of Bernhardt Kline of Lonsdale, Minn."

That sign caused city people to hoot. Who would want a hog named for him? Kline would, his sister-in-law said. "It's an honor." She's Donna Kline, who married Bernhardt's brother, Bernard. (Bernhardt and Bernard's parents had 10 children, and eight of the 10 were given names starting with the letters B-E-R. The other two start with just a B.)

TV celeb

This year's boar was raised on the farm of Ralph and Myrna Wermerskirchen, of Jordan. Ralph, who is retired from his jobs as farmer and electrician, paid special attention to Big Bill as a hobby. Bill is a good old hog, Wermerskirchen said, and will spend time after the fair as a celebrity at an apple orchard. Then Bill will go home to the Wermerskirchen farm until he dies a natural death, probably years from now. (Tell the kids; no slaughterhouse for Bill after Labor Day.)

Wermerskirchen can't explain fairgoers' annual intrigue: "They're wild for some reason to see a big pig. They clap and holler when they see him get up. People want their picture taken with him, and lots of times they're 10 people deep around him. I can't figure it out. People are fascinated with him.'

Even odder is David Letterman's fascination. Four years ago, Wermerskirchen's hog, Big Blue, was at the fair as the state's biggest boar, weighing more than 1,100 pounds. Somehow Letterman heard of Big Blue and wanted him on his show. Blue was shipped to New York City, and the Wermerskirchens and their daughters were flown in.

All the attention was fun, Wermerskirchen said, but puzzling. "It's a hog."

Express:

Whoa there pardner.

If you'll check back on some similar threads, it is mostly Texans who are calling BS on those giant hogs.

While there are the occasional and very rare wild hogs killed in Texas that weigh 500 to 600 pounds (or even more, but I've never verified one) most of them weigh from about 10 pounds to about 250. My guess is that the average grown pig killed in Texas will weigh about 150 to maybe 175. I've killed 4 in the 275 to 325 range, all boars and I know of 2 that have been caught by dog hunters around here that weighed over 500 but that is over a period of several years and many thousands of hogs taken.

One poster on here who I consider to be reliable says there are bigger hogs around the peanut fields near Memphis, Tx and, given the type of food, that is likely true. But I'll still bet the average is well below 200.

Gatogordo, sorry mate if I unknowningly pointed the finger at some who aren't deserving it.

Bud, how are ya mate? The 6PPC is still going strong, have shoot a lot of stuff with it as well as some great groups. These days I don't shoot it paper with it a whole lot, the loads I need are pretty well sorted out. I am looking at developing some loads for the 58gn V-max and 55gn B-tip, so that might mean some more time at the range testing loads.

Express:

I'm glad you now understand that Texans always tell the truth. And be sure to tell your girl friends that things are BIGGER in Texas.

A lot of things have changed in my lifetime. When I was a child and young man, every farm (family farms) had an assortment of animals. Hogs were common and were always in a pen with a mudhole. They were fed a lot of things, but were "slopped" every day or so. Slop was a mixture of water and whatever else didn't get eaten by the family. All the hogs did was lie around, grunt and eat. And eventually get eaten.

These hogs got pretty big.

Today, the feral hogs might get fairly large, but, if they have to forage for a living and dodge hunters and dogs, they can't all (or many) attain great size. It's not to their advantage to be real fat. After a few years in the wild, the hams of the hogs become definitely smaller because big hams aren't an asset in the wild.

A 200 pound pig is a big pig. I've shot quite a few but only one big one, hung a sow on the scales that weighted 220 or so can't remember, shot it in the Texas hill country. Every now and then a big pig is shot in South Texas or Mexico. One of my hunting buddies shot a Big boar in Mexico about 7 yrs back and it was a monster, I would have guessed it to be 350 to 400.

In the mens room at The bass pro shop at Katy mills mall in houston texas is a picture of a boar killed in Mongolia 1400 something pounds if I remember correctly, says world record but I don't believe anything I hear and only half of what I see, but its a big pig non the less, about as big as they get in my books.

Here's some eye candy for y'all:

















It would be safe to say that these are some big boars, the first and second are the only ones that go anywhere near 300lb.
The little boar shot with the levergun was probably only 35kg(77lb) but sported 21cm of tusk either side!

Enjoy.

there was a 600 pound stuffed hog at the winter ga. sci meeting.. i have killed over 100 hogs with only 2 pegging out 300 pound scale..i hunt about 30 miles south of augusta on the savanna river on a 4800 acre working farm.

thanks to all for the replies. express...that's a bunch of good lookin hogs. i'm on my way to work so no time now but i'll be back after work. i know that somewhere out there there is a picture of an 800 pounder ...bud

old post---



http://steglich.net/red/redpubs/1-25/1251.htm

i, myself, haven't killed 300#er.. 250-280, on a scale.. few and far between....

I've SEEN an estimated 340ish # (pig weighed with guts out, guts weighed in a bucket seperately) in the bed of a truck, right next to a 250ish .. the bigger was HUGE HUGE HUGE

I like 125-175#.. and the meat is nearly always good.

In the us, it's the "rare" that you get "russian" blood.. thats why they are called feral hogs here.. no illusions that these are russians... but, then again, these aren't barnyard porkers....

jeffe

I had read that the rarely seen african bush pig can attaine sizes of 500lbs and above. They are also very well respected and apprently very dangerious. Not much id known about them as they are hard top come by and are nocternal as well.
Jim L

Gotta give credit to those Texas Hogs (and sometimes to the Texas hunters for reasons that will become obvious in the telling of this TRUE story).



I was hunting for hogs on a ranch between Dallas and Houston a few years ago when one of the ranch hands met us on the road late at night. In the back of his beat up 4x4 F-150 was one hell of a hog he had just taken with his sawed off Mossberg 500 (he shot it WHILE chasing it through a field and from the moving car . . . I have it on pretty good authority that alcohol was involved here ). While we were driving it to the scales, it occured to me that the little guy had been by himself in the truck! How the hell did he get it in there? Well, we eventually got the thing on the scales and it, of course, bottomed out the 300 pound scale . . . for a short period of time. It had been up there for a just a few minutes and then crashed to the ground. It had broken the heavy steel ring that was connecting the scale to the hoist. We all looked at each other with wide eyes and I promptly "called bullshit" that the ranch hand had actually loaded it himself. I was absolutely sure that this kid (who was about 5'6" and 140 pounds soaking wet) had dropped a helpful buddy off at the ranch house just before meeting us on the road. Just to prove his point (and on flat ground) this kid propped the back end of this hog up on the tail gate, gave that pig a big bear hug and man handled it into the back of that 4x4! We pulled the hog out of the truck again so I could give it a shot. At the time, I was working out regularly and came in at 5'10" and 225lbs. I came close, but couldn't get that thing the extra inch or two off the ground necessary to clear the tailgate. I guess Wild Turkey is the magic potion necessary to accomplish championship hog hoisting feats!



Best,



JohnTheGreek

Hell, that little weakling was probably third string on the local high school football team. He didn't even lift the truck.

BIlly,
I've seen that pic.. i think it's 1165#... and it has trowels for tusks!!

jeffe

Jim, I suspect you're thinking of the Giant Forest Hog, Hylocerous meinhertzagengi found in Central and Eastern Africa. There are two subspecies, the more easterly population is somewhat smaller the the One found in the Congo region. He is one of the ugliest pigs on the earth, it has a huge nasal disc that can reach 50cm across and can reach 250kg.


The Bush pig and red river hog are relatively small suids with small tusks although their body structure is similar in form, not size to the forest hog.