Pitting all the morons in the whole Monster Pig/Hogzilla trainwreck

The BBQ Pit
1

With each breaking story, it becomes harder and harder to tell who the biggest moron is in the whole trainwreck of a story.

For those not familiar, here is a synopsis of the events:

“Once upon a time a very fat little boy heard about the casting call for the Hogzilla movie and wanted to be in it. So it was arranged for “Fred”, a gentle, but very large pet pig to be bought from a local farm and taken to a fenced in “game preserve”. Four days after Fred was installed inside the fence, the boy was given a large handgun loaded with drastically weakened ammo, making it incapable of doing more than wounding a large animal. A group of experienced, adult hunters then located Fred ambling about in the woods inside the fenced area and each trained their high-powered rifles on him. But instead of doing a clean kill, they then sent the kid waddling after the pig. They stood by while the boy, blasted away ineffectually with his inadequte weapon, his aim so bad that he actually gut-shot the poor animal. The adults allowed this to go on for three hours, until the pig finally died. Then they did a bit of trick photography to exaggerate the size of the dead pig, created a website complete with advertising and monsterpig merchandise and waited for the fame, dollars and invitation to star in the Hogzilla movie to roll in.”

Who is the biggest moron?

The family who sold their pet to be killed?

The idiot owner of the canned hunting “preserve” who was too stupid to realize he’d be caught in his multitude of lies over the pig?

The experienced hunting “guides” who must have know that there is no such thing as a wild feral pig that size?

The father who first bought his 11-year old the world’s most powerful handgun (for $1,500), paid another $1,500 to let the boy shoot a pig in a pen with it, then set up a brag website about the kid’s “hunt”?

The obese little brat who gut-shot the poor animal, then chased it around for three hours taking pot-shots at the pig till it mercifully, finally died?

The entire Stone family for staging and photoshopping the pictures, thereby wrecking what tiny bit of credibility the story could have had?

The makers of the new “Hogzilla” movie, who gave the kid a part in the movie without even meeting him, thereby whipping the hype into a frenzy?

Or…the press for failing to detect a bunch of hogwash and splashing the doctored photos of the dead pig all over the world’s media?

2

I have not been following this all that closely, but I do note that the stories I have casually read seem to indicate two errors in your recounting:

Fred was not a pet, but the largest animal on the grounds of a family that was getting out of the pig-raising business. He was described by his previous owner in terms of his being a serious pain in the ass.

There does not appear to have been any significant photo trickery, as Fred was, indeed, described as rather massive. (He was initially not sent to slaughter with the rest of the hogs on his original farm because the people called to take the swine indicated he was too big for their processing eqipment.)
Now, as to sending small children with poor marksmanship and underloaded ammo out to inflict three hours of torment on an animal, I am in complete support of your Pitting, (provided that information turns out to be correct, of course).
However, your story works just as well with the actual facts as it does with the “enhanced” version.

3

Me? I read the OP and tomndebb’s response, then some background info, and now I’m in the mood for a BLT sandwich.

4

Not according to the article which first interviewed the pig’s owners:
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/stories/2007/06/01/0601monsterpig.html

Uh, there is indeed significant photo trickery. Please see this page, where a photoshop expert proves conclusively that there was major work done on the pictures. http://66.226.75.96/pig/ Which wouldn’t really be so bad if the father would just stop denying it already.

Um, no one is really doubting that the pig weighed a bit over 1,000 lbs. But the argument that he was too big to slaughter is absurd. Plenty of cows weigh a LOT more than that and they seem to manage just fine slaughtering them.

5

I read that as meaning Fred was too big to be shipped off to conventional hog slaughter in the conventional way. Certainly someone who was highly motivated and had plenty of time could find a way to slaughter Fred.

But Phil Blisset said they had decided to “sell off all their pigs”, which normally means that you sign a contract with a meat processor, and a big truck comes and gets your pigs. But the pigs generally all have to be within a certain size range, or else the processor won’t take them. It is possible to have custom slaughtering done on a pig-by-pig basis, but it’s expensive (and asking a custom slaughterhouse to deal with the likes of Fred would have been extremely expensive), and it’s not what Phil wanted to do. He wanted to have a big truck come and get his pigs.

Meat processors don’t like to process too-small or too-big hogs, because their systems are set up to run most efficiently with standard-sized hogs, and a pig that’s the “wrong” size causes all kinds of logistical headaches.

Here’s what’s involved in modern hog slaughter: right from the git-go, there’s a problem. “Weigh the pig on the scale in the holding pen.” Uh huh. Assuming it goes up that high (they had to look all over to find a scale capable of weighing Fred when they did get him dead.)

Then you “run the pig into the restraining chute”, assuming that he’ll fit…

Then you stun him with an electrical stunner, which is designed to stun 200 lb. one-year-old pigs, not 1,000 lb behemoths. Think it’ll work?

Then you “shackle with a chain just above the dew claws on one hind leg, and hoist the animal for bleeding”. Uh huh. It’s about this point that I think I’d put Fred back on the truck and send him back to the Blissetts.

But assuming that for some reason I was assigned to this task, then after I’d stuck him, and he’d finished bleeding, then I’d have to dunk him in scalding water–assuming I could find a tank big enough. And then scrape and dehair him, which would take forever.

And then eventually I’d have to hoist his carcass up on a gambrel. Gambrels for hogs are designed to hold carcass weights of about 200 to 300 lbs. So I’d have to go find a beef gambrel, which my hog processing plant isn’t normally equipped with.

Many-many problems. Not economically feasible to have Fred slaughtered. Why not sell him to a hog hunting park, let them deal with it.

6

::: shrug :::

7

:eek:

I saw a picture of this thing a week or so back and thought “wow, that’s a big pig. Wonder if they photoshopped that” and promptly forgot about it. I never imagined a backstory with so many varying levels of stupid and cruel.

8

I’d be a lot more impressed had they hunted it with a boar spear .

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IMO, the most asinine part of this story, is that if the father hadn’t 1) staged and doctored up the photos, then 2) lied and denied it, then none of the huge outcry and fiasco would ever have happened.

Why? Cuz the truth is that 1000 pbs domestic pigs really aren’t all that rare in the south. The only people who would have been impressed by the “hunt” would have been the kid’s schoolmates. Maybe. It was the denying of the obvious photo doctoring that got the harsh spotlight shone upon this pathetic story. Again, see http://66.226.75.96/pig/

As a result:

The “hunting preserve” where the pig was shot has taken down its website and are possibly now out of business due to the bad press.

The “hunting guides” that assisted in the hunt have removed all mention of “monster pig” from their website and are undoubtedly regretting ever having had anything to do with the Stone family.

A planned appearance for the kid on the Today Show was abruptly cancelled with the family enroute to NYC. They were turned around sent packing back to Alabama.

The Hogzilla movie has recinded its offer of a role in the movie for the kid and has removed all mention of this fiasco from their website.

If the story was on the up-and up, why all the running for the hills? :rolleyes:

10

That does seem a contradiction, although the claim that Blissitt said it wasn’t a pet and shook his hand comes secondhand via the boy’s father, whereas the AJC article says

Which sounds as though it was related directly to the reporter(s) by the Blissitts.

I’d say it’s either likely that the boy’s father is lying or that Mr. Blissitt was much less fond of the hog than his wife was, and made contradictory statements about it.

Tough call, since it’s pretty clear the Stones did alter the photos to make the hog appear larger, which lowers their credibility IMO.

11

I’m with ya on this mess. Indeed.

But I haven’t seen anything about handgun prices or weakened ammunition. Can you cite me some cites on those details? I’d love to read more about these twits.

Errr…cruel twits. Didn’t mean to leave that part out.

Sailboat

12

Here is the gun the kid used, they tout it as “the most powerful production revolver in the world.”:
http://www.smith-wesson.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10001&storeId=10001&productId=14807&langId=-1&isFirearm=Y

As far as the ammo, maybe a resident gun expert can drop by and explain. The weakened power of the reloaded ammo and the modification of the pistol was mentioned on several of the (hundreds) of hunting forums where hunters are outraged by this “hunt”. Apparently that is the ONLY way a kid that size would not get knocked down by the recoil.

13

Oh no.
No no no no no.

Haven’t you ever heard the old Hollywood maxim? “The only bad publicity is no publicity”? :wink:

They almost certainly took their website down only because their server wasn’t up to the challenge of thousands of media-generated curiosity-seekers every day; they’ll be back up in a week or two, never fear.

And as for “going out of business”? It is to laugh. You literally can’t buy this kind of publicity. Look for fat times and happy days ahead for Lost Creek Plantation.

And look for prices to go up: right now they’re charging $1.25 a pound for “feral meat hogs”. I predict that when they come back, it’ll have gone up.

And besides, they only opened up in January 2007; they’ve got too much invested to just shrug and close up shop now, they haven’t gotten any return on their investment yet.

14

Well, you’re probably right. But then, I’m not savvy to the culture of canned hunting. I mean, the kid and his family have thoroughly humiliated and discredited themselves and are the subject of internation scorn, in a large part b/c the canned hunting preserve tried to conceal the pig’s origin. My guess is that the kid wishes he had never even seen that pig, imagine the crap he’s getting at school even. For evermore, he will be known as “the little fat kid who gut-shot a tame domestic pig, posed for staged pictures and lied about the whole thing”.

Assuming you were into canned hunting, would you want to patronize this establishment after what happened with the Stones? I sure wouldn’t.

15

My vote for the media- hoaxes have been the rages since caveman times, but the media, after the 1000th reporting of a huge boar/housecat/snake, etc. should learn that almost none of these have ever turned out to be real. I know this isn’t like Watergate where big time fact checking is required, but come on.

16

That is one of the best step by step photoshop debunkings I’ve ever seen.

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My vote for biggest moron is currently the father/son. They just shot themselves in the foot again, and, if such a thing is possible, further damaged their “credibility”. By having the kid pose with the pig’s skull (which he easily holds in his hands and is narrower than the kid’s torso), they’ve stupidly overlooked the fact that they’ve provided more proof of the hog’s actual size and that the photos were deliberately misleading. :smack:

Hilarious photo analysis by well-known hunting blogger:

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And yet, the father still stubbornly and angrily insists that the photos were not altered, photoshopped or staged in any way… :rolleyes:

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Link? Did I miss it?

20

Second link in post #4.

Sailboat