The Largest Wild Hog Ever Caught in Alabama

Wild and feral hogs have been a problem in the United States for many years. These omnivorous pests devastate crops and pose a danger to other animals and humans. In the 1500s, European settlers brought domesticated swine, descended from the Eurasian boar to North America. Those that made their way into the wild became feral. In the 1990s, hunters brought Eurasian and Russian wild boars to the U.S. for sport. Today’s wild and feral pig populations consist of these and recently escaped farm specimens. Most states classify them as vermin and allow hunting. So, read on as we discuss the largest wild hog ever caught in Alabama.

The Largest Wild Hog Ever Caught in Alabama

The Largest Alabama Wild Boar, According to the WWT Scoring System

According to the Weiser Weight and Tusk (WWT) record book, the record free-range wild hog shot in Alabama was a boar with a score of 610.88W taken down by Rod Hardy in February of 2008. This beat the 584.13W boar shot by Jason Hester in 2006. Scoring is done by adding the weight of the boar, the circumference of the tusks, and the combined tusk length multiplied by 50 (W+C+(Tx50)). The “W” in the scoring system indicates that most of the score is made up of the hog’s weight.

The WWT has taken entries since 2005 and is the only official agency recording trophy boar hunting in the United States. WWT will differentiate between boars and barrows (castrated boars.) They also distinguish between hogs hunted in fence-enclosed properties for sport and those caught in the wild.

Not Quite Contenders

Sometimes, people hunt boars in enclosed or “high fence” game preserves. Preserve owners purchase these from farms where the pigs have outlived their usefulness or proved problematic. Other hogs shot in the wild are sometimes pigs from farms or that have recently escaped captivity. Hogs that grow in the wild tend to weigh a maximum of about 500 pounds, so larger animals should be viewed with suspicion.

What was once thought to be the largest wild hog ever caught or killed in Alabama was shot by a hunter who also runs a taxidermy shop. Wade Seagos of Samson, Alabama, a city just north of the Florida/Alabama border, heard his daughter scream, and his dog began barking. It was then that he saw the boar. He fired three shots from a .38 caliber pistol, dispatching the hog in his front yard. After shooting the hog, he weighed it on a commercial scale. He said the hog topped out at 820 pounds. However, it appears that the hog escaped from a neighbor’s farm.

In another incident, an 11-year-old boy shot a “monster pig” at Lost Plantation, a 150-acre enclosed gaming area. The pig succumbed after a three-hour chase through the preserve. It weighed over 1,000 pounds and measured 9 feet long. However, the plantation purchased the hog from a local farmer who raised the pig and sold it for slaughter. Technically, the hog is considered feral as soon as it is released, but farm-raised pigs can grow to sizes more than 2,000 pounds, far outweighing their wild counterparts.

World Record Wild Hog

The world record hog was an internet sensation, earning the nickname “Hogzilla.” Chris Griffin shot and killed it in Alapaha, Georgia. Griffin posted it with a blurry photograph, which many dismissed as fake. To settle the issue, National Geographic had the hog exhumed. The hog weighed a little over 800 pounds. One of the animal’s tusks took the record for a North American boar at over 18 inches long. The hog’s DNA was partially from wild hogs.

The photo featured at the top of this post is © iStock.com/xalanx