This wild boar was supposedly killed near Conroe, Texas. It is said to have weighed 1,800 pounds.
Without googling anything or looking for any comments I may have left on other blogs, what are your initial impressions?
I’ll give you the full answer tomorrow, but my guess is that once you google it, things will make a lot more sense.
Now it makes sense.
First impression: if those gents are from Texas, I’m Vladimir Putin.
That was my second impression.
Well things are BIGGER in Texas but not THAT BIG! I’ve been on many wild boar hunts and never seen anything like that especially in the Conroe area. Are they playing with the camera? What kind of car is that?
In the top picture, the guy is sitting way far behind the boar and the angle of the shot is purposely ‘enhancing’ the size. The last ‘giant boar’ story I saw had similar set ups.
Totally fake.
forget all the other camera trips and remember that Texas ranges from darn close to tropical to ‘not TOO freaking hot’ a significant portion of the year.
Then look at the hair on that thing.
I’ve got photos of hogs that we’ve trapped and hunted at the farm (we haven’t done as much trapping now that the numbers are under more control) and none of them have been much over 200ish pounds.
I live in west Texas, and we have wild boar here, but not very many, and we don’t see them very often. The largest one I have seen was somewhere around 30-33″ at the shoulder, I measured it against a bush it walked by after it left. The dogs threw a fit about it.
The bottom photo is definitely a composite. The lighting quality on the two middle guys is totally different than the two outside ones. There’s something not right about the background as well. The boar could also have been composited in.
The top photo uses very obvious forced perspective.
I don’t know if the photos are ‘shopped, but even if they aren’t, 1,800 lbs is really excessive estimate of weight.
An 1,800 lb horse is called a draft horse. That pig is big, but not THAT big.
Boarat
I don’t need to google anything. Still remembering Hogzilla.
What is it about big pigs, anyway?
FWIW, a 200-pounder is plenty intimidating when you are unarmed, accompanied by a snack-sized SAR dog, and mucking through a coastal swamp/debris field in Mississippi.
Hoping that they’d been getting plenty of crabs and garbage to eat since the storm … wondering how fast I could climb a tree with a dog under one arm.
Am I the only one who noticed the name on the truck in the top photo? “Nature Tours”? This is a captive animal (with a little forced perspective tossed on top).
P
I’m ever hopeful that someone will find a real “monster” someday but these things are inevitably debunked.
I saw Nature Tours too. Also, look at the grasses in each shot. Who was moving that sucker around for the photo-op?
My first thought would be heat retention – squared-cubed law and all that. Generally, the closer you get to the tropics, the smaller an animal gets due to heat retention issues. I can’t recall whether wild boar have sweat glands, but even if they did, I can’t imagine that guy would be very mobile except at night.
Ok, fine, that’s my second thought. My first thought was that he would put up a fantastic fight against Gamera.
No way in heck do wild boar get that large. Traditional breeds of “production pigs” don’t even get that large (unless morbidly obese). The largest pig we’ve had at the sanctuary – and she was obese – was 950 lbs. Most of the adult male pigs at the sanctuary are 500-850 lbs. Same with the females. We keep them trim and not fat, but even if they were fatter, I can’t imagine them getting to be a ton…that’s how much our Charolais steer weighs!
If you care to see some of the larger pigs at the sanctuary:
Bruce (probably 850-900): http://www.flickr.com/photos/rinalia/3364155548/in/set-72157622810354403/
Three sows: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rinalia/4151769950/in/set-72157622810354403/
Far right is prolly a mixie pig, weighing about 350-400; middle pig is probably 500 and left pig is about 550-600.
Patty is our biggest female, maybe 850: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rinalia/4158935876/in/set-72157622810354403/
The guys are certainly not american – rather russians or polish!
But don’t know where those pigs come from..
Keep in mind that Russians and Polish people have moved to American.
There is no “looks like an American.”
However, you are correct. These are not Americans.
Maybe a standard Wild boar placed in the foreground. The out of scale blades of grass and the Leaves around the boar are a dead give away.
And those turks run a really nice hunting excursion
http://www.naturetours.com.tr
;-)
We do import Russians here but again….NOT THAT BIG!
that is not as big as hogzilla
i got these same photos in an email two years ago saying this hog was killed in lousiana shortly after katrina and one of the captions on the photos was “I wonder where this bad bou was during katrina”
Notice the grass under the one then in the other photo no grass. The animal is sitting upright which if it was that large they wouldn’t be propping it up. But just the inconsistency with the grass around it when the animal is int the same position in both photos means its a fraudulent image.
Plus it doesnt pass an ELA test. http://fotoforensics.com/analysis.php?id=5010235c5cf447fafa8a343725d4d4972c5f76e6.31656