A 12 foot long wild hog? Nah…
From here:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/South/07/28/hogzilla.ap/index.html
It seems to be quite a mystery.
I read about this this afternoon on MSNBC. I was amused by what the hunter said: “We killed it because we didn’t want to take a chance of him getting away. Somebody else would have shot it.”
“Soooo-weee, Lonnie! We’d better kill that sumbich before somebody else does!”
The guy is standing in a hole and is at least a few feet behind the hog. It looks like a case of forced perspective.
Even if he really didn’t want to slaughter the hog for meat, I still find it hard to believe that if someone shot a hog that’s really that big they wouldn’t throw it into the back of the pickup and drive it around town to show it off before disposing of it. Or at least save the tusks or something as better proof.
If they had to lift it with a backhoe, how did they get the pig to the backhoe? Or did they drive a backhoe to the pig? Seems unlikely. I believe in the Patterson film more than this picture.