The Largest Wild Hog Ever Caught in Mississippi

In the United States, wild hogs have been an invasive pest and a hazard to crops, animals, and humans since the 16th century. It was then that European colonists brought domesticated pigs to North America. As they escaped their agricultural confines, some pigs turned feral, slowly threatening farmers’ livelihoods, especially in the southeast. It was beginning in the 1990s that the feral and wild pig population exploded due to the introduction of Russian and Eurasian boars for hunting. As these boars escaped, they bred with the existing wild hog population. Wild hogs are considered vermin in many states, and hunting restrictions are loosened and sometimes lifted. Read below to learn more about wild hogs and the largest wild hog ever caught in Mississippi.

Wild Hogs in Mississippi

Wild hogs are responsible for $66 million in damage to property in Mississippi every year, and it’s a growing problem. In 1988, wild hogs were found in 4% of Mississippi’s land area, covering 23 counties. By 2009, that number had risen to 38%. Today, they are found in all 82 counties. Harvesting wild hogs does not require a license in many states, as they’re considered pests. In Mississippi, though, a license is still required. Mississippi has established a Wild Hog Control Program to curb or eradicate wild hog populations. The Mississippi Department of Agriculture and Commerce (MDAC) will provide traps to qualified applicants who show evidence of hog damage.

Average Size of a Wild Hog

Feral pigs are not precisely the same as wild hogs. By definition, feral pigs have escaped domestication and gone wild. Livestock owners have bred pigs to enormous sizes, while wild hogs are lean and scrappy, subsisting on a less certain food supply. Wild boars also differ from feral and domesticated pigs in appearance, with long snouts and legs and larger heads. An adult wild boar typically measures no more than 75 inches long and weighs under 250 pounds. So, when there are reports of hogs larger than 1,000 pounds, these were probably feral pigs, not wild hogs.

The Largest Wild Hog Ever Caught

The record holder for the largest wild hog caught in the U.S. was a hog nicknamed “Hogzilla.” In 2004, Chris Griffin of Alapaha, Georgia, claimed to have killed a wild hog weighing 1,000 pounds and measuring 12 feet long. He had buried the corpse and only had a grainy photograph as proof of his trophy. To prove the veracity of his story, National Geographic exhumed the body and weighed it. Though not 1,000 pounds, the somewhat desiccated hog still weighed over 800 pounds and measured 8 feet in length. One tusk was over 18 inches long—a record for a North American boar. Testing confirmed that the hog had wild boar DNA.

Largest Wild Hog Ever Caught in Mississippi

Weiser Weight and Tusk Record Book

Weiser Weight and Tusk (WWT) is the only organization tracking wild hog records in the United States. WWT has accepted entries since 2005 submitted for inclusion in the Trophy Wild Boar Record Book. It has categories for boars and castrated boars (barrows) and whether animals were hunted in the wild or a fenced enclosure.

The scoring system WWT uses adds the hog’s weight, tusk circumferences, and the total length of the primary tusks multiplied by 50 (W+C+(Tx50)). A score where the majority comes from animal weight is indicated by a ‘W,’ while a ‘T’ means that tusk measurements comprise most of the score.

The WWT record book does not include “Hogzilla.” However, given the record of measurements by National Geographic, its status as the largest wild hog killed in the U.S. is accepted. The measurements for “Hogzilla” would give it a WWT score of at least 1,700.00T. The official WWT record for a free-range wild boar is 973.00T. This belongs to Mike Gordon for a boar shot in California in 2007.

The Largest Wild Hog Ever Caught in Mississippi

Mississippi does not currently have an entry in the WWT record book. However, news reports indicate they may have had eligible animals. One report refers to a hog that farmers claimed was nearly 700 pounds, though it was not weighed. It also refers to a 550-pound sow, though that also was unconfirmed.

The largest wild boar caught in Mississippi was a 428-pound boar with 3-inch long tusks taken in Meridian by Larry Carman. It took him two shots from a .300 Winchester Magnum rifle to take down the hog. It took five men to load it into the back of a vehicle and almost maxed out Carman’s 440-pound scale. A rough guess at a WWT score would have placed it at 730.00W. This would put it about 5th on its record list.