Wow, anyone for bacon sarnie

[tm4tj]

THEY swear he is one of the most humungous hogs ever seen – and not just a giant porkie. A pig the size of a hatchback has been reported shot dead by an 11-year-old boy using a pistol.

The male wild pig, which is said to weigh half a ton and measure more than 9ft long, was apparently killed by Jamison Stone, a schoolboy from Alabama, while out hunting with his father Mike.

The dead boar has been hailed as a contender for the largest wild pig ever found, but the Stones are unsentimental about their trophy.

“We’ll probably get 500lb to 700lb of sausages out of him,” Mike Stone told Associated Press.

The pig, whose measurements have not been independently verified, is the latest in a series of giant specimens found in the backwoods of the southern United States.

One, nicknamed Hogzilla, is to star posthumously in its own film, The Legend of Hogzilla, which will start filming next month.The animal was said to have reached 12ft and weighed more than 1,000lb when it was killed in 2004.

However, when its remains were exhumed, scientists estimated that its real weight had been closer to 800lb and its length 8ft. the man who had buried it claimed the difference was because Hogzilla had shrunk after burial, “like a grape turning into a raisin”.

In January this year William Coursey claimed to have killed a pig weighing 1,100lb in Georgia, although his claim has not been independently confirmed. The Alabama pig is reported to weigh 1,060lb and to measure 9ft 4in in length.

Jamison, an accomplished hunter who killed his first deer at the age of five, was with his father and two guides in eastern Alabama when he bagged the giant pig.

He said that he shot the animal eight times with a .50calibre revolver and chased it for three hours through hilly woods before finishing it off with a point-blank shot. The animal died in a creek bed on the 2,500-acre Lost Creek Plantation, a commercial hunting preserve near the city of Delta.

Throughout the hunt the group were worried that the pig would turn and charge them.

“I was a little bit scared, a little bit excited,” said Jamison, who added that once he had brought the animal down he felt “really good”.

“It’s a good accomplishment,” he said. “I probably won’t ever kill anything else that big.”

His father said that for safety reasons he and the guides had high-powered rifles aimed and ready to fire in case the beast, which had 5in-long tusks, decided to attack.

After the prize pig died, trees had to be cut down and a mechanical digger brought in to bring it out of the woods.

It was hauled onto a truck and taken to the Clay County farmers’ exchange in Lineville, where it was weighed. Jeff Kinder, who runs the exchange, said they used his newly calibrated scales to weigh the hog.

Kinder’s scales – the old-fashioned type with sliding weights – measure only to the nearest 10, but Mike Stone said that it balanced one notch past the 1,050lb mark. “It probably weighed 1,060lb,” he said. “We were just afraid to change it once the story was out.”

The hog’s head is being mounted by Jerry Cunningham, a local taxidermist, who said that the animal measured 54in around the head, 74in around the shoulders and 11in from the eyes to the end of its snout. “It’s huge,” he said. “It’s just the biggest thing I’ve ever seen.”

The animal’s statistics could, if confirmed, make it the largest wild pig, although the world record for the heaviest pig so far is held by “Big Bill”, a Tennessee domestic Poland China hog that tipped the scales at 2,551lb in 1933 with a belly that dragged on the ground.

Many of the wild specimens in America are hybrids of domestic pigs and descendants of European wild boar. These hybrids are known for their prodigious appetites and aggression.

Stone’s son has been offereda small part in the Hogzilla film, although he said he would now retire from killing giant pigs and stick to shooting pheasants instead. “They are a little less dangerous,” he said.

[tm4tj]

Wow again, this one is just bizarre, taken from BBC news site:-

Snake bursts after gobbling gator 

The predators died in the clash

An unusual clash between a 6-foot (1.8m) alligator and a 13-foot (3.9m) python has left two of the deadliest predators dead in Florida's swamps.

The Burmese python tried to swallow its fearsome rival whole but then exploded.

The remains of the two giant reptiles were found by astonished rangers in the Everglades National Park.

The rangers say the find suggests that non-native Burmese pythons might even challenge alligators' leading position in the food chain in the swamps.

  Clearly, if they can kill an alligator they can kill other species

Prof Frank Mazzotti

The python's remains were found with the victim's tail protruding from its burst midsection. The head of the python was missing.

"Encounters like that are almost never seen in the wild... And here we are," Frank Mazzotti, a University of Florida wildlife professor, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press news agency.

"They were probably evenly matched in size. If the python got a good grip on the alligator before the alligator got a good grip on him, he could win," Professor Mazzotti said.

He said the alligator may have clawed at the python's stomach, leading it to burst.

"Clearly, if they can kill an alligator they can kill other species," Prof Mazzotti said.

He said that there had been four known encounters between the two species in the past. In the other cases, the alligator won or the battle was an apparent draw.

Burmese pythons - many of whom have been dumped by their owners - have thrived in the wet and hot climate of Florida's swamps over the past 20 years.