Monster Pig - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Monster Pig was a controversial 2007 story that initially ran in the news media

News media

The news media are those elements of the mass media that focus on delivering news to the general public or a target public.These include print media , broadcast news , and more recently the Internet .-Etymology:A medium is a carrier of something...

as a report (and a series of accompanying photographs) of an eleven-year-old boy shooting a giant feral pig

Pig

A pig is any of the animals in the genus Sus, within the Suidae family of even-toed ungulates. Pigs include the domestic pig, its ancestor the wild boar, and several other wild relatives...

. The pig was claimed to have been shot during a hunt on May 3, 2007 by an eleven-year-old boy named Jamison Stone. The location of the shooting was the Lost Creek Plantation, a commercial hunting preserve outside Anniston, Alabama

Anniston, Alabama

Anniston is a city in Calhoun County in the state of Alabama, United States.As of the 2000 census, the population of the city is 24,276. According to the 2005 U.S. Census estimates, the city had a population of 23,741...

, USA. According to the hunters (there were no independent witnesses), the pig weighed 1051 pounds (476.7 kg) and 9 in 4 in (2.84 m) in length.

The story quickly ran into veracity problems with news organizations backing off on their coverage when inconsistencies in the story were revealed, including NBC, who canceled their interview with the Stone family last minute when they suspected the story was a hoax. It was pointed out right away that the photographs of the pig released to the media seemed to be purposely posed and doctored to exaggerate scale. It was later also revealed that the "giant feral hog" was a actually large domestic farm-raised pig named "Fred" that had been purchased by the hunting preserve's owner 4 days before the hunt in an apparent publicity stunt

Publicity stunt

A publicity stunt is a planned event designed to attract the public's attention to the event's organizers or their cause. Publicity stunts can be professionally organized or set up by amateurs...

. There was a 2008 grand jury

Grand jury

A grand jury is a type of jury that determines whether a criminal indictment will issue. Currently, only the United States retains grand juries, although some other common law jurisdictions formerly employed them, and most other jurisdictions employ some other type of preliminary hearing...

investigation of the event based on charges of animal cruelty that was later canceled.

Claim

The story, as told by the Stone's to the news media, was that on on May 3, 2007 11 year old Jamison Stone was hunting a huge feral hog with his father Mike Stone along with Keith O’Neal and Charles Williams, owners of Southeastern Trophy Hunters, on a 2,500-acre farm outside of Ashton, Alabama. Jamison told the media they were invited there by a "friend" who told them about a "big hog he had that was tearing up land". The Stones and the other hunters tracked/chased the hog through the woods and over 3 hours and Jamison Stone fired 16 shots with a .50- caliber Smith & Wesson Model 500 revolver equipped with red dot sight

Red dot sight

A red dot sight is a common classification for a type of non-magnifying reflector sight for firearms that gives the user an aimpoint in the form of an illuminated red dot...

shooting 350-grain

.500 S&W Magnum

The .500 S&W Magnum is a fifty-caliber semi-rimmed handgun cartridge developed by Cor-Bon in partnership with the Smith & Wesson "X-Gun" engineering team for use in the Smith & Wesson Model 500 X-frame revolver and introduced in February 2003 at the SHOT trade show...

Hornady

Hornady Manufacturing Company is an American manufacturer of ammunition and handloading components, based in Grand Island, Nebraska.The company was founded by Joyce Hornady in 1949 and is currently run by his son Steve Hornady who took over after his father's death in a plane crash in 1981.Hornady...

cartridges

Cartridge (firearms)

A cartridge, also called a round, packages the bullet, gunpowder and primer into a single metallic case precisely made to fit the firing chamber of a firearm. The primer is a small charge of impact-sensitive chemical that may be located at the center of the case head or at its rim . Electrically...

, hitting it 9 times before he killed it with a head shot. They hauled the pig by truck to the Clay County Farmers Exchange in Lineville where they used a scale, finding out it weighed 1,051-pounds. The hunters also claimed that the pig was 9 in 4 in (2.84 m) in length from the tip of its snout

Snout

The snout, or muzzle, is the protruding portion of an animal's face, consisting of its nose, mouth, and jaw.-Terminology:The term "muzzle", used as a noun, can be ambiguous...

to the base of its tail

Tail

The tail is the section at the rear end of an animal's body; in general, the term refers to a distinct, flexible appendage to the torso. It is the part of the body that corresponds roughly to the sacrum and coccyx in mammals, reptiles, and birds...

. However, this has not been corroborated by any source.

Controversies

It was soon reveled that the "hunt" took place in a 150 acres (60.7 ha) low fence enclosure within the larger 2500 acres (1,011.7 ha) commercial hunting preserve called Lost Creek Plantation.. A Later claim said that Mr. Stone had paid $1,500 to Eddy Borden, the owner of Lost Creek Plantation, so that his son could shoot a trophy wild hog in the commercial hunting preserve. Other facts were reveled expanding the controversy around this story.

Images

Several days after the story broke, suspicion mounted over the authenticity of the photographic evidence. Retired New York University physicist, Dr. Richard Brandt, used perspective geometry to demonstrate that either the pig was 15 feet long (far bigger then claimed) or the boy in the photo was standing several meters behind the pig, using forced perspective

Forced perspective

Forced perspective is a technique that employs optical illusion to make an object appear farther away, closer, larger or smaller than it actually is. It is used primarily in photography, filmmaking and architecture...

to create the optical illusion that the animal was larger than its actual size. Others claim the photographs were digitally altered.

It has been shown that most of the pictures that were distributed to the media were altered through the use of digital enhancement and perspective
to make the pig look much larger than it really was. There were also claimes that there were other photographs from the Stone family owned Monsterpig.com website (since removed) that showed a more normal size/scale for the pig. Others claim the photographs were digitally altered.

Despite evidence that the photos were altered, the Stone family website continues to deny that the images were modified to make Monster Pig look larger than its actual size.

The Associated Press (AP) continues to keep the monster pig image in their archives with no disclosures of the forced perspective photo trick having been employed. The monster pig photo has an AP archive caption as if it is a legitimate photograph. The caption states: "In this photo released by Melynne Stone, Jamison Stone, 11, poses with a wild pig he killed near Delta, Ala., May 3, 2007. Stone's father says the hog weighed a staggering 1,051 pounds and measured 9-feet-4 from the tip of its snout to the base of its tail. If claims of the animal's size are true, it would be larger than Hogzilla

Hogzilla

Hogzilla is the name given to a male hybrid of wild hog and domestic pig that was shot and killed in Alapaha, Georgia, United States, on June 17, 2004 by Dr. Eliahu Katz on Ken Holyoak's fish farm and hunting reserve. It was alleged to be long and weighed over . It was originally considered a...

, the huge hog killed in Georgia in 2004."

Domestic versus feral

Shortly after the story hit the press, the truth about the origins of the pig were revealed. Four days before "Monster Pig" was shot, he lived on a nearby farm, a domesticated, part Duroc

Duroc (pig)

Duroc pig is an older breed of American domestic pig that forms the basis for many mixed-breed commercial hogs. Duroc pigs are red, large-framed, medium length, and muscular, with partially drooping ears, and tend to be one of the most aggressive of all the swine breeds.-Origins:The breed...

hog named "Fred." The owners, Rhonda and Phil Blissitt, stated that the pig loved to play with their grandchildren and his favorite treat was canned sweet potatoes. Previous stories reported that the pig had escaped domestication, however the Blissits in fact sold the pig to the game preserve, and he was released on the reserve four days before being hunted and killed by Stone. According to the Anniston Star report, the Blissitts had raised him from a piglet as a pet. The Blissitts had been selling all of the pigs on their farm, and came forward as they were concerned that Fred was being passed off as a wild pig.

Weight verification

As reported by the Associated Press

Associated Press

The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...

, the problem with the 1,051 weight was that the scale at the Clay County Coop, according to Jeff Kinder, the man who gave the keys to the scale to the plantation's owner, only weighs in 10 pound increments. Thus, the one-pound weight in 1,051 pounds could not have been measured and made the whole measurement, on its face, incorrect or in part an estimate. The father said he had misunderstood the reading on the scale and believed the true measurement had been 1,060 pounds.

Subsequent allegations

Later news reports brought forward allegations that the entire story was the result of a canned hunt

Canned hunt

A canned hunt is essentially a trophy hunt in which the animal is kept in a more confined area, such as in a fenced-in area, increasing the likelihood of the hunter obtaining a kill...

scheme cooked up by Eddy Borden, the owner of Lost Creek Plantation, and Keith O'Neal of Southeastern Trophy Hunters, to build up business for the then four-months-old Lost Creek hunting plantation, trying create their own news event along the lines of the 2004 “Hogzilla

Hogzilla

” event. Borden purchased "Fred" from the Blissitts for $250, released it in the enclosure, and passed it off as a wild hog to the unsuspecting Stones. It was also reported that they were told by a local TV station that it would only be a news worthy story if the boy shoot the pig.

Stinkyjournalism.org also archived this notice from Southeastern Trophy Hunters website:

"LCP is offering a once in a lifetime opportunity to harvest a truly giant boar...Eddy Borden, owner and operator of LCP, has just trapped another boar... this monster will weigh at least a thousand ponds - that is a half ton of pork! The beast is now roaming the worlds of Lost Creek Plantation. We are offering this hunt on a no kill = a no pay basis. The total cost of this hunt is fifteen hundred dollars and includes everything but the processing of the meat. The boar is jet black and has huge tusks. Keith O' Neal and Chris Williams will be on hand to help guide and video this hunt. if you ever wanted to take an animal of this magnitude, now is your chance! this beast will not last long, so if you're interested call us ASAP. Yours in hunting/fishing, Keith O' Neal Southeastern Trophy Hunters, April 28, 2007."

January 29, 2008 saw reports that an Alabama grand jury was investigating Keith O'Neal, Charles Williams, and Lost Creek Plantation owner Eddy Borden over the killing of the pig. The grounds of the investigation was that, since there was no "kill shot" delivered by Jamison Stone, it was animal cruelty to allow a pig to be chased and continually shot by an 11 year old until it bled out when there were experienced marksmen present who could have dispatched it. Clay County District Attorney Fred Thompson later canceled the grand jury without explanation and the case was never reviewed before the one year statute of limitations was up.

External links

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