Hogzilla on the National Geographic Channel
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Art Eatman
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Heck with the hog. I wanna fish in that guy's pond! Looks like a ton of fun with a flyrod!
, Art
, ArtCindog
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I still don't get why the guy buried the hog when he could have used it to promote his 1500 acre fish farm and hunting preserve.
Don't hate me for this, but just for kicks I went back to one of the old threads about Hogzilla to revisit some of the original comments people made. Now granted it was 8ft and 800 lbs, not 12 feet and 1000lbs but some posters here insisted with quite a bit of certainty that the picture was fake.
Here are some of the comments:
What picture were you lookin' at anyway?!
Here's someone who had a good idea after all!:
Twoblink didn't care how big it was, he was just hungry:
H&H Hunter apparently heard about it from The Weekly World News:
Hawkman applied some brainpower and came out pretty darn close:
Matt G. was sleepy:
And me? Well...I didn't say a thing because I knew eventually some jerk would come along and point it out to everybody.
brad cook
Here are some of the comments:
Third Rail said:
nemesis said:
Mannlicher said:
joab said:
What picture were you lookin' at anyway?!
Here's someone who had a good idea after all!:
manwithoutahome said:
Twoblink didn't care how big it was, he was just hungry:
Twoblink said:
H&H Hunter apparently heard about it from The Weekly World News:
Hawkman applied some brainpower and came out pretty darn close:
Hawkman said:
Matt G. was sleepy:
Matt G. said:
And me? Well...I didn't say a thing because I knew eventually some jerk would come along and point it out to everybody.
brad cook
Chawbaccer
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"I still don't get why the guy buried the hog when he could have used it to promote his 1500 acre fish farm and hunting preserve."
And why not have the head mounted? those tusk were huge.
And why not have the head mounted? those tusk were huge.
Fake doesn't necessarily mean photoshopped/completely bogus.
The story was fake (numbers were dramatically inflated), and the photo was designed to support the story.
The man was positioned behind the hog and was standing in a hole. The effect was to make the hog look a good bit bigger than it was. Even trying to measure the size of the hog from the picture yielded a number that was off by about 10% due to the placement of the man farther from the camera. However, even with the canny arrangement, it was obvious that the hog was nowhere near 12 ft long.
The story overstated the length of the hog by AT LEAST 50% and the weight by around 20%.
If I ran a story claiming I was 9 feet tall and including a staged photo, would you call that fake? It's the same percentage of exaggeration...
The story was fake (numbers were dramatically inflated), and the photo was designed to support the story.
The man was positioned behind the hog and was standing in a hole. The effect was to make the hog look a good bit bigger than it was. Even trying to measure the size of the hog from the picture yielded a number that was off by about 10% due to the placement of the man farther from the camera. However, even with the canny arrangement, it was obvious that the hog was nowhere near 12 ft long.
The story overstated the length of the hog by AT LEAST 50% and the weight by around 20%.
If I ran a story claiming I was 9 feet tall and including a staged photo, would you call that fake? It's the same percentage of exaggeration...
Lonestar.45
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I'm still confused as to why the guy would bury those tusks and the skull. Sure, the meat from a huge boar like that probably wouldn't taste very good, but those tusks were huge! That head would've made a heck of a mount! He coulda sold it if nothing else! Just don't get it.
Of course, if he'd have done any of that, I doubt he'd have a National Geographic forensic team doing research on it either.
Of course, if he'd have done any of that, I doubt he'd have a National Geographic forensic team doing research on it either.
One more thing...it's possible that there is a middle ground between the official estimates and what they originally said. The difference between 800 and 1000lbs on a big hog..well yeah that's an awful big stretch of the truth but I can accept that as exaggeration moreso than hoax. 800 is still damn big and in my book still qualifies as hogzilla. Plus who knows if the estimate is correct after the fact. Afterall an estimate is an estimate because it's not a calculation or a measurement.
The other thing is that, and maybe I'm totally wrong here, maybe the guys who originally measured it did so from the tips of the toes on the hind legs to the end of the snout as it hung from that backhoe while the experts who exhumed it measured it from snout to butt. With a hog that size that could mean a difference of two feet which brings it more into exaggeration levels than hoax levels in my book. Yeah, maybe the guys got carried away but it'd be different if they were trying to get it in a record book or something. As it is they buried the monster and had a good story and picture. I can accept that they weren't purposefully trying to pull a hoax. To me it looks like he's right behind the hog up close and by my rough estimate it would still put the hog at about 8 feet from snout to butt. Does anyone know how tall that guy actually is?
Honestly until the recent story came out I leaned more towards "this is an outright hoax." However, I should have known that at the very least it was pretty sizeable because, contrary to what nemesis originally said, that hog most certainly does exhibit the physical attributes of a big hog. I've never seen a small feral hog who has nuts that bulge out to the extent of hogzillas. Add that to the sizable tusks and it should be obvious that it's a big hog. I never looked at it that close to begin with but I guess I should have.
brad cook
The other thing is that, and maybe I'm totally wrong here, maybe the guys who originally measured it did so from the tips of the toes on the hind legs to the end of the snout as it hung from that backhoe while the experts who exhumed it measured it from snout to butt. With a hog that size that could mean a difference of two feet which brings it more into exaggeration levels than hoax levels in my book. Yeah, maybe the guys got carried away but it'd be different if they were trying to get it in a record book or something. As it is they buried the monster and had a good story and picture. I can accept that they weren't purposefully trying to pull a hoax. To me it looks like he's right behind the hog up close and by my rough estimate it would still put the hog at about 8 feet from snout to butt. Does anyone know how tall that guy actually is?
Honestly until the recent story came out I leaned more towards "this is an outright hoax." However, I should have known that at the very least it was pretty sizeable because, contrary to what nemesis originally said, that hog most certainly does exhibit the physical attributes of a big hog. I've never seen a small feral hog who has nuts that bulge out to the extent of hogzillas. Add that to the sizable tusks and it should be obvious that it's a big hog. I never looked at it that close to begin with but I guess I should have.
brad cook
BTW, DigMe, thanks for posting the thread. I knew there was going to be a special aired but managed to miss the show.
Those kind of pics are kind of a pet peeve of mine. Someone shoots a monster (deer/bear/moose/hog) and rather than just take a simple, honest picture. Say next to a yardstick or some other relatively standard measuring item, they'll pose with the animal in the extreme foreground and the hunter standing behind it in the next county.
They always look staged/rigged and make it seem like they're trying to put one over on the viewers.
This was a classic example. An 8' 800lb hog is HUGE! I mean really, REALLY big! The tusks were records!
They could have just told the true size and weight and it would have still been a legend. Instead they messed around taking the picture, buried the body without showing anyone, and inflated the numbers so much that when the truth finally came out, everyone's talking about how badly they exaggerated instead of what a monster they killed...
It's sad.
It's like Lance Armstrong claiming he's won the Tour 9 times, or like Bill Gates trying to convince everyone that he's really worth 40 billion.
Those kind of pics are kind of a pet peeve of mine. Someone shoots a monster (deer/bear/moose/hog) and rather than just take a simple, honest picture. Say next to a yardstick or some other relatively standard measuring item, they'll pose with the animal in the extreme foreground and the hunter standing behind it in the next county.
They always look staged/rigged and make it seem like they're trying to put one over on the viewers.
This was a classic example. An 8' 800lb hog is HUGE! I mean really, REALLY big! The tusks were records!
They could have just told the true size and weight and it would have still been a legend. Instead they messed around taking the picture, buried the body without showing anyone, and inflated the numbers so much that when the truth finally came out, everyone's talking about how badly they exaggerated instead of what a monster they killed...
It's sad.
It's like Lance Armstrong claiming he's won the Tour 9 times, or like Bill Gates trying to convince everyone that he's really worth 40 billion.
Jalexander
Member
It was an interesting show, although I had to laugh at how they had to streeeeeeetch to make an hour. A history of the domestication of pigs, forsooth. I particularly liked watching the face of the guy who shot Hogzilla when the NatGeo folks measured the beast. He looked a little sheepish. "Naw, naw. I wasn't there when Kenny measured him. That's what he told me." Then along comes ol' Kenny to say that they measured Hogzilla together. Oops.
The part that I found most interesting was the speculation about the potential for more Hogzilla-type critters running around. I guess that the hog that Larry Earley shot down in Florida must have come to light after the show was filmed, otherwise how could they have left it out? I checked the distance from Hogzilla to the Earley hog, and they're not that far apart. I don't know what the range of a feral hog is, but I while I kinda doubt that the two hogs were related, it is curious that two such enormous critters would appear in roughly the same geographic area. Makes me wonder what's in the water down there in north Florida and south Georgia.
Here's the link to the Snopes.com Earley hog page and the Hogzilla page with updated info.
What fun.
James
The part that I found most interesting was the speculation about the potential for more Hogzilla-type critters running around. I guess that the hog that Larry Earley shot down in Florida must have come to light after the show was filmed, otherwise how could they have left it out? I checked the distance from Hogzilla to the Earley hog, and they're not that far apart. I don't know what the range of a feral hog is, but I while I kinda doubt that the two hogs were related, it is curious that two such enormous critters would appear in roughly the same geographic area. Makes me wonder what's in the water down there in north Florida and south Georgia.
Here's the link to the Snopes.com Earley hog page and the Hogzilla page with updated info.
What fun.
James
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