1100 pound Florida Hog

[bzzboyz]

This is the information I have read on it as posted on another board. I don't know any more.

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The fellow in the pictures is Larry Earley, He lives about 30 miles from Orlando, in the very rural community of Okahumpka, just off the Florida turnpike in Lake County, Florida. He has 20 acres of land and on it, a few cows and horses. Mostly it's pasture land that is fenced with woods surrounding him. He is neighbored by a larger cattle ranch. His neighbor has complained for several years that wild hogs had been raiding his cattle feeders and salt licks.

Last month he saw what he thought was a cow in his pond and went to see if it was stuck in the mud and would have to be pulled out. When he got close enough to realize it was hog, the thing made a charge at him. He had driven his truck down to the pond and carries a pistol in it (as any Florida redneck would, and I say that with genuine affection). He got his handgun and when it came at him again, he shot it twice and killed it.

Wild hogs in Florida usually run from 100-400 pounds with a 400 pounder being a monster. Because this one had been feasting on grain for several years it had grown to mamoth size. When Larry took it to the processor it weighed in at over 1100 pounds!


The meat has no wild taste, as it was grain feed and Larry is quite the hero. He has fed many fireman and provided the homeless
shelter in downtown Orlando with a couple of meals.

 

[bzzboyz]

OK. I had to reduce them a little. To much hog for the screen

 

[Shot]

Man that pic looks fake (photoshoped). Just look at the pistol in the first pic. The shading doesn't match, looks out of place. The whole area with the pigs head and the man's arms looks fishy. (thanks to a roommate who is a computer engineer, I anaylize everything now

)

 

[bzzboyz]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div>

(thanks to a roommate who is a computer engineer, I anaylize everything now  )[/b]

I wouldn't expect anything less from my JHO brothers. Conspiracy theorists all.

 

[Speckmisser]

Looks like someone's prize barnyard hog got loose and ended up in the wrong mudhole.

 

[bzzboyz]

Originally posted by Speckmisser@Dec 9 2004, 11:44 PM
Looks like someone's prize barnyard hog got loose and ended up in the wrong mudhole.

Now that sounds more plausable.

 

[larrysogla]

If it was feeding on grain most of the time, I say it was living "high on the hog". Seriously, why not??? Farm hogs grow 600-800 lbs. if left to live enough time instead of butchering at a young age for the market. Also, if raiding crop fields, then it was feeding on as much as the stomach can bear, as opposed to a farm hog that is feeding on as much as the farmer's pocketbook can bear or a pre-determined(limited) quantity of food. I do not wish to see such monsters as skinning & meat storage will be a monumental problemo!!! larrysogla.

 

[Tx_Hoghunter]

I have caught a lot of hogs in my life and it takes a very good wild hog to go over 300. To go over 1000 it would have to be domestic and very well fed. It would have been fun to try and catch that sucker though....LOL.

-john

 

[bayedsolid]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div>

It would have been fun to try and catch that sucker though....[/b]

It would be something to see. I've never caught a 1000 lb hog before, but I bet the dogs would have his fat ass stretched before I even got close. He doesn't look very nimble to me. Nice boar Tx-hoghunter. <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div>

I have caught a lot of hogs in my life and it takes a very good wild hog to go over 300.[/b]

I feel the same way.

 

[huntducks]

I watched on OLN where they shot a 800lb one it was as wild as they get matter of fact it killed and was eating a 150 lb hog, i'm sure they where gussing the weight on that FL. sucker, unless it's pure Russian then some where do the line it was barn yard at one time.

The photo does not look fake to me.

 

[spectr17]

Biggest pigs I've seen in CA are about 300 to 400. WHen I lived in Germany there were HUGE boars in the forest behind our town. I'm talking VW minibus size. The locals warned us not to walk in certain parts of the forest so naturally we did. They reminded me of buffalo they were so big. The European boars seemed to be more rounder than the pigs here who get longer and not rounder from what I've seen.

 

[Maverick]

The local high school FFA students were very up set when Arnold the blue ribbon pig didn't return after his bath.

 

[larrysogla]

People are always skeptical of "big" fish, "big" boar, "big" buck. At the Bass Pro Shop in Katy outside Houston, in the men's room hangs an enlarged photograph of supposedly the biggest wild boar caught anywhere. As my faulty memory serves me I seem to remember that the photo caption gave the weight as 1,600 lbs.????(I hope I am correct). But I kind of remember the figure as something way above the hogzillas/hognisaurs that come up on this forum as exceptional heavyweights.
I believe it was 1,600 whopping pounders & it was a wild boar shot in Texas(where else!!!) Do I say hogwash!!! Nah!!! it was probably the offspring of a wayward bull messing around the pigpen. I kind of tend to believe it as the photo would not be allowed in a Bass Pro Shop without some semblance of credibility. They can still be fooled though, but what the heck the picture was big but the boar in the picture is so big I had to look hard to realize that dinosaur is really a hog. I guess there is also dwarfism & gigantism in nature too. God Bless. larrysogla.

 

[Shane]

Talking to ranchers and outfitters, there seems to be quite a few places with 700 to 1000 pound hogs anymore. I saw a 900 lb. full-body mounted hog at a sportsman's show last year.

 

[Timjackson]

Larry... If that pic you are talking about is the same one we have at the Bass Pro Shop in Dallas I believe that it was killed in Mongolia (or somewhere like that)....

 

[Mike D. Johanson]

Neat picture, looks authentic to me. I don't know anything about pigs though so my opinion on that is worth nothing. One thing that appears to not square with the story though is that the guy appears to be wearing a holster - if he retrieved the gun from his rig, what was the holster for? And if he was being charged, I doubt he took his time to strap it on. Maybe he slipped it on after for the picture though, who knows. Those are some big balls on that pig.

 

[larrysogla]

Timjackson,
That big pig shot in Mongolia weighs 1,100 lbs. approximately. You can do a search here at JHO & type"Mongolia biggest boar" & click most recent. The one on the picture at Katy Bass Pro-Shops weighs somewhere around 1,600 lbs. + & it was shot here in the U.S. Makes you shiver a little bit when you are in the swamps trying to catch a hog. Those thousand pounder porkers can & do hunt for fresh meat on the hoof(rabbits, the young of other animals). God Bless. larrysogla.

 

[jjhack]

This big F;orida hog does look like a farm escape hog. One of the things I learned doing wildlife management for so long was that wild animals have limited natural growth do to parasites. Inoculations to keep an animals digestion clean and 100% functional goes a long way towards increasing it's growth rate, and maximum size. Generations of this care increase the size of most domestic animals until some functional limit is reached. Turkeys are another good example. One of the main reasons wild hogs over 300 pounds are so rare is that they are typically filled with parasite( worms) This is an especially consistant problem with wild swine because of what and how they eat. Their sizes are some what limited to the parasites they have and the food available. The wild european hogs do get to the 400-700 pound range on very rare occasion but only after 7-10 years old and then only in the most rare occasions. These wild hogs are genetically superior to feral or domestic hogs in that they have developed some immunity to the action of parasites over 1000's of years of evolution.

To see any "wild" hog with big floppy ears over 1000 pounds does not really do justice to the actual wild hog populations of Florida or anyplace else. The real true wild hogs with a long snout and legs, trim waist and big shoulders with erect ears are actually naturally born wild hogs. This fat floppy eared farm pig cannot be considered the same.

It's nice he shot the pig, I'm glad for him. However the relationship is the same as shooting a wild Dairy cow. I rather doubt this big pig grew to it's size 100% natural on it's own without inoculations and parasite control. Somebody gave this hog one heck of good start in life with proper vet care to get it that big. It may have exceeded it's use for the owner and or escaped at some point. But I would not believe that it was born wild and grew to 1000 lbs on it's own.