Biggest Wild Hogs Ever Killed

At times it’s whispered, and in other instances, it will be shouted at the top of voices. But the question is almost always the same, whether asked by a curious novice or hunter worth his salt. The question that most people ask is, ‘what are the biggest wild hogs ever killed?’

Here’s a chronological list of the hogs that have made headlines, sparking mainstream and social media interest as the biggest wild hogs ever killed.

June 2004: 800 Pounder of Alapaha, Georgia

A giant feral hog was shot and killed on June 17^th, 2004 in Alapaha, Georgia. It soon gained the title HogZilla, as the wild pig weighed over 1,000 pounds and was 12 feet long. Well, this caused many to think it was a hoax.

In 2005, HogZilla was exhumed for a national geographic documentary, as he was to be researched by forensic scientists. Their study confirmed that the feral pig must have weighed about 800 pounds, but the length diminished to 8.6 feet.

DNA testing done on HogZilla, proved that he was a hybrid of a Hampshire breed domestic pig and a wild boar. One of his tusks measured 19 and the other 21 inches. Compared to previously seen hog breeds, it was categorized as unusually large. 

January 2007: 1100-Pounder of Fayette County, Georgia

Bill Coursey didn’t have what he considered a great hunting story around when he shot a 1,100-pound hog that measured 9 feet long. He was as amazed as his neighbors about how the story spread around the world on TV and the internet.

It all started on January 4^th, and by the time it was over. The world’s top media mentioned Fayetteville, Georgia, where a new world hog record had been set. Bill was contacted by everyone from Fox News, CNN, radio, or TV stations from Florida to Seattle and the Discovery Channel. 

Even the BBC called from London, intending to get a fix on the story about a 9-foot feral pig that weighed over a thousand pounds.

Spotting the Oblivious Pig

Bill’s wife had been driving home that afternoon with his son when they spotted the monstrous black boar, aimlessly wandering along a neighbor’s yard. This boar must have come out of the fields across the road, invited by the scent of water-oak acorns, which he was now munching on. 

When Bill’s family stepped out of their truck for a closer look, the neighbor asked them if they fancied shooting it. The son quickly ran home to call Bill, who returned armed with a Ruger 7mm. 

Bill says that he nearly lost his footing when he rounded the corner and saw the monster hog, despite his lifelong hobby as a hunter. When he approached the pig, it looked at him, a characteristic shared with the local deer due to being unaccustomed to humans. 

Shooting the Fayetteville Boar

The shot was fired from 35 to 40 yards, and the ballistic tipped round that Bill used dropped the hog on the spot. Once the huge boar was dead and hung on a tree, the circus came to town for Bill and fellow locals. Bill had never witnessed so many people than those that came to Fayetteville about his boar, and the New York Times interviewed him.

Later, they used a backhoe bucket, which was barely sufficient to accommodate the Fayette county pig to the county transfer station for weighing on truck scales. The locals were grateful to Bill for taking out the hog, which was rampaging around the entire county for years. 

May 2007: 1051 Pounder of Clay County, Alabama

In Alabama, an 11-year-old boy shot a feral pig with a pistol, killing it after a chase only to find that it was the biggest wild hog ever killed. From the tip of the snout to the base of its tail, the boy’s father measured 9.4 feet and got 1,051 pounds when he weighed it.  

Jamison stone was the boy’s name, and his claim to have shot the biggest wild hog ever killed meant that his pig outranked HogZilla, the south Georgia hog from 2004.

‘The Biggest Hog I Dang Ever Seen.’

One hunter told a local newspaper that it was the biggest hog he had ever seen. The feral pig was weighed in Lineville, at the Clay County Farmer’s Exchange. The co-op workers confirmed that this hog was weighed using truck scales certified by Alabama State. 

The aftermath of this hogs killing saw Jamison’s father put up a website that generated quite an amount of early internet buzz. Jamison gained fame as a hunter of note at 11, having killed his first deer at five years old, telling the associated press that he felt he’d done well, probably never to be so lucky again. 

This hog was nicknamed HogZilla 2, and he recalled chasing the gigantic feral pig he’d shot eight times with a .50 caliber revolver for over three hours in hilly woods. Once he caught up with the injured hog, he swiftly dispensed it with a point-blank shot. Jamison was alert through the chase of the infamous hog characteristic of doing an about-turn and charging at them.

Downing the Monstrous Tusker

At the time a sixth-grader, Jamison reported being excited but scared at the same time. His father, however, and hunting guides aimed their rifles at the hog the whole time. Luckily the 5-inch tusked beast didn’t charge, and the boy was able to put it down successfully.

Once downed, they cleared trees to make way for the hog to be brought out of the woods, from the creek bed in the Lost Creek Plantation, a 2,500 acre Delta-based commercial hunting preserve.

April 2009: 514 Pounder of Muskegon County, Michigan

Minutes before the tigers game began on TV that Sunday afternoon, a Muskegon, Michigan county couple spotted an old nemesis snorting around in their backyard bushes. Tina and Jim Boes knew the massive hog all too well, seeing as it had chased Tina and her dog into their house two years ago. 

This time around, however, the Dalton township couple was prepared. They went out and shot the largest of the pigs and three of its compadres. It was this larger hog, which turned out to be a female, weighing 514 pounds and measuring 6.3 feet from rump to snout. 

Tina was sure that it was this pig that chased her indoors the summer before last after downing the sow. A big and ugly bag of bacon as she named it, this incident was the first documented hog shooting in Muskegon County. It was also a warning knell that feral hogs had expanded their range into Michigan. 

October 2009: 780 Pounder of Mobile County, Alabama

Alabama, alongside Texas and Louisiana, has been fighting the worst feral pig infestation in North America. Adam Stagner, his son Elliot and friend Matt were looking at something at 300 yards, a shifty dark blotch foraging on the number 7 food plot of the big Oak Hunting Club.

Matt Pryor thought it was a black bear, while Elliott, only three years old, was sure they were looking at a cow. However, Adam held his opinion until he spotted dirt flying sideways from the beast’s massive head to uproot crops on the plot.   

The 26-year-old north mobile county Alabama native guessed a wild hog weighing between 300 and 400 pounds, and he was half right.

Not Enough Gun for a Giant Hog?

Stagner, matt, and Elliott raced back to the house and came out wielding a .30/06 would suffice the job at hand. When they got halfway through plot no. 7, all hell broke loose. The boar must have winded them or sighted them just about when they saw his dark bulk moving across the plot.

Stagner said he’d never have thought something so large could move that swiftly, and the two shots he fired didn’t seem to faze the monster beast. Adam started to doubt that his gun was enough to injure this hog, but a third shot caught his spine, and he fell.

Matt and Adam put him down with a fourth at close range. When it was weighed, the boar was 780 pounds heavy, measured 6.11 feet, and had a neck diameter of 51 inches.  

August 2013: 700 Pounder of Glendora, Mississippi 

When Larry Smith peered into the breaking light along the dirt road’s side, he saw a silhouette against a turn row of corn. Though Larry was sure that he was looking at the shape of a hog, the dimension proportions were off, too monstrous to his seasoned hunter eyes. 

Thinking that it couldn’t be right, that the first light was playing tricks on his eyes, Smith was rattled as the massive size didn’t match up with the body form of a hog.

Sighting the Gigantic Hog

A farm manager at Due West Farms in Glendora Mississippi, Smith let out an exclamation when he realized he was only 80 yards from the biggest wild hog he’d ever laid eyes on. He had never witnessed either a live pig or a dead hog, the size of which he was currently beholding. 

Larry knew he had to get this hog since no one would believe its size without evidence. And what better proof than a table fare ready pig hanging off a pulley with the hunter that shot it posing beside it in a newspaper article. He had no rifle in his truck, so Smith reached for his revolver, and then he carefully stepped off the vehicle.

His approach was too anxious, and the light was getting better for the hog to notice movement. By the time smith fired off several shots at the boar, he had turned and rustled through the corn, gone.

The farm manager hadn’t realized that Due West had a hog infestation, and hadn’t seen any crop damage in recent days. Larry felt confident that one of his pistol rounds had hit the giant hog, but he couldn’t spot any blood other than an area of corn that was completely eaten away.

This was not typical of the hogs Smith had seen, which eat the cobs while pulling off the ears or rooting up the plant. The gigantic hog he had seen was literally gobbling up everything, in essence raking the field down. 

Smith knew that the hog wasn’t running far off, seeing as he had fresh corn on the cob with plenty of running water at Due West. This was the first instance of hog sighting in over three years for Larry’s farm, despite neighboring spreads suffering wild pig infestations.

Calling in the Expert with the Hogs

When the same hog was sighted again by a farmhand, Larry smith knew who to call. He had a friend who was an agricultural consultant, Michael Mims of Mims Ag, Minter City, Mississippi. Mims was the expert hog hunter in the region, using trained dogs to run down wild pigs for the area’s farmers.

The hunt began at 5.30 am, but this hog would prove enormous and problematic than both Smith and Mims expected. Fresh tracks were spotted, and the dogs were let loose, baying and howling after hitting on the hog after around 150 yards. Everyone had to scatter when the hog came out of the turn row, the size of a small horse.

Typical of wild boars, the hog ran back into the corn, and two pit bulls were let off after it, the perfect takedown dog breeds. But no dog could stop this feral pig, and he came out of the corn again, throwing off dogs sideways into a slough. 

Putting Down the Enormous Feral Pig

After over 250 yards of brawling with the hunters and dogs, the hog wore down and stopped. But he was too large for any of the hunters to get into a kill position. His brawn also prevented the catch dogs from holding him down, so that a hunter could get in close for a stab behind the ears. 

This hog had to be stabbed through Mims’ heart and lungs, as it was too wide to leg over. It was a domesticated pig breed that had escaped the pen possibly over ten years earlier, and it stood at 48 inches tall. He had a lower tusk on the left side that measured 7 inches long, while the right side was broken at 5-inches.

Though Smith didn’t weigh the tusker, his sharp farm manager eye estimated the hog was at least 700 pounds. In the hog’s rib was found lodged a .45 caliber bullet that Smith had shot the previous week.

January 2015: 707 Pounder of Caswell County, North Carolina

Bruce Florence of Caswell County, NC, came face to face with a feral hog, razor-sharp tusks and all, racing at him full throttle. On the frosty morning of January 16^th, however, Bruce was scared but didn’t lose his cool. He squared off with the beast charging at 20 yards and let off a round from his .25 caliber rifle.

Luckily, that was the only round in the chamber, although his sidearm was fully loaded. He shot the feral hog broadside and clean, deep in the woods of Transylvania, on the Jackson county border. 

Bruce was hunting with his son Jonathan who helped to flush the boar out of a laurel bush thicket, accompanied by three sows. The Caswell county hog measured 7.4 feet from its snout to its tail and weighed 707.5 pounds.

Florence took the entrails and weighed them at a nearby friend’s house, totaling to a whopping 127 pounds. An avid hunter, Bruce, and his kin made table-fare off the huge boar, getting over 150 pounds of sausage and 5.10-foot tenderloin.

March 2020: 488 Pounder of Liberty County, Texas

The latest monster hog-killing happened in liberty county, Texas, where a 488-pound feral pig was bagged in The Preserve this Saturday. This wild boar was shot by a couple of Nuisance Wildlife Removal hunters, who also dispatched six other hogs.

While not in the league of either HogZilla 1 or 2, the hunters came across the pig in a group of others, clustered around a pond. Nuisance Wildlife Removal owner John Dudley and his friend, Mike Huckabay, were performing hog eradication due to their numerous populations.

Hunting Hogs with Night Vision Gear and Thermal Imaging

These are nighttime hunters, using night vision scopes, and thermal imaging to spot the hogs’ nocturnal activities. Instead of traps or dogs, Huckabay and Dudley simply track the wild pigs when they are primarily active at night and shoot them when they come into range.

Around one of the many community ponds in the area, they saw the humongous boar standing with others less immense. They approached the hog’s location, but he had disappeared, so they resumed tracking again.

Mike caught sight of the boar at 20 yards on the scope and opened fire, killing the pig instantly. Some of his compatriots charged at the hunters, and they also had to be put down. 

Dudley, a 15-year veteran of the hog hunt who has featured in hunting shows, said the Saturday pig was the largest he had ever encountered. The rest of the pack consisted of some gigantic hogs, most of which exceeded the 250-pound weight mark.

Nuisance Wildlife Removal utilizes a degree of skill to shoot hogs in close populated proximities. The hunters also use low caliber ammo, which does not exit the pig, only dropping them where they stand.

The Texas Hog Problem

Southeast Texas and Liberty County, in particular, have experienced feral hog problems for a while now. The wild pig population in the state is estimated in the millions. There have been dangerous, even fatal encounters with feral hogs.

According to Dudley, using cutting edge thermal scopes is of great assistance to a hunter getting within 10 to 5 yards of the hogs. He advises locals not to put out the bait as a means of trapping hogs, as this only attracts more pigs to an already overpopulated area.