Hog wild

SAVANNAH, Ga.

Roger Hosfelt travels the world hunting polar bears, giraffes, zebras and other big game, but he is especially proud of a trophy he recently bagged in Georgia: a monstrous wild pig that, he says, tops the legendary Hogzilla.

“He looked like a big ol’ brown bear. That’s a supersize pig,” said Mr. Hosfelt of Shippensburg, Pa. “People that take hunting as serious as I do, you’re always out for the biggest and best.”

“Hogzilla” has made headlines worldwide, been featured in a National Geographic documentary and inspired an upcoming horror movie since a hunter in southern Georgia killed the giant swine in 2004. Authorities estimate it weighed in at 800 pounds and measured up to 8 feet long.

Mr. Hosfelt, who says his hog was 1,040 pounds and 9 feet long, isn’t the first person to boast that he has killed a bigger pig. As Hogzilla’s legend has grown, so has the number of hunters offering similar pig tales.

In January, Bill Coursey of suburban Fayetteville said he shot a 1,100-pound wild hog in his neighbor’s yard. Last month, an 11-year-old Alabama boy and his father said the boy shot a 1,051-pound wild hog, which he called “Monster Pig,” on a hunting trip.

To one-up Hogzilla, a catchy name must be important for a challenger as its weight. Mr. Hosfelt, who killed his pig March 10 at a hunting plantation west of Savannah, has dubbed his hulking ham “Boss Hawg,” after the “Dukes of Hazzard” character.

Keith Egan, who has led hog hunts on his 3,500 acres for the past decade, said it required two shots for Mr. Hosfelt to kill it. To weigh it, they had to load the hog into the bed of his pickup and drive to a nearby truck stop.

They weighed the truck with the pig in back, unloaded it and weighed the truck again. The difference between the two — the purported weight of “Boss Hawg” — was 1,040 pounds. Mr. Egan said he could hardly believe it.

“When [Hogzilla’s story] first came out, I framed it and put in my lodge,” Mr. Egan said. “Hunters would come down and say, ’I want that.’ I’d say, ’The odds of finding one like that is probably one-in-a-million.’ ”

It’s tough to root out the truth behind these half-ton hog stories. In each case, including Hogzilla’s, the hunters buried or butchered the carcasses before they could be independently weighed. They took photos, perhaps kept the head and tusks, but the whole hog is gone.

Claims that these pigs were truly wild, rather than farm-raised, are likely hogwash, said Kent Kammermeyer, a retired Georgia Department of Natural Resources biologist who has studied feral hogs in the state.

“Monster Pig,” it turned out, had been sold to a hunting plantation by an Alabama farmer who had raised the hog and called it by a less ominous name: Fred.

“A hog can’t get that big in the wild, it takes so much food day-in, day-out to grow that large,” Mr. Kammermeyer said. “They at least spent some part of their life in captivity, probably a large part of their life.”

But Mr. Egan said he’s certain “Boss Hawg” was wild because he didn’t buy the pig and there’s no pig farms near his land. But hogs on his property don’t go hungry. He said he sets out corn in feeders and grows potatoes and peanuts to fill their bellies.

The man who made Hogzilla famous, Alapaha hunting plantation owner Ken Holyoak, also suspects most of Hogzilla’s rivals likely grew up on a farm. But not Hogzilla, he insists, judging by its huge tusks — the largest measuring nearly 1½ feet.

“I have them locked up in the safe,” Mr. Holyoak said. “That’s the only proof I’ve got that that’s a real wild hog.”

It’s proof enough to make Hogzilla the largest North American trophy in the record books of the Safari Club International, which has tusk measurements for 1,080 feral hogs, said Doug Luger, records manager for the hunters organization.

Mr. Luger said Hogzilla’s left tusk measured 175/8 inches long and 3 inches in circumference. Like the antlers on a deer, tusks provide a more permanent means of judging a hog because they don’t decay.

“We don’t record weight because you can’t go back and validate that at a later time,” Mr. Luger said.

Mr. Egan said the tusks on “Boss Hawg” measured about 8 inches — which Mr. Luger said wouldn’t even make the Safari Club’s top 10.

No matter. When Mr. Egan makes his next annual trip to Harrisburg, Pa., to woo clients at a hunting show, he plans to share his booth with “Boss Hawg” — stuffed, mounted and on loan from Mr. Hosfelt.

“I’m 100 percent proud of it,” Mr. Egan said. “We’re going to put it all over our booth and say, ’Come hunt with us at the home of Boss Hawg.’ ”

Mr. Holyoak said the publicity over Hogzilla has certainly paid off for him. Hunting trips at his plantation stay booked solid through the winter, he says, with hunters from around the globe.

“I get asked about Hogzilla every day, all day long,” he said. “I never would’ve dreamed that people would be so crazy about a hog.”