Deer hunter kills Hogzilla
Don’t think there are huge wild hogs in the state?
This 760-pound wild hog was killed by a deer hunter near Rush Springs.
Early last week Winston Brown took his crossbow and climbed up into a tree stand near Rush Springs in hope of harvesting his first deer of the season.
Instead he came home with 760 pounds of wild hog. It took three arrows from Brown’s crossbow to kill the beast, which is perhaps the largest feral swine ever killed in Oklahoma.
That morning Brown had his eye on three does in the area when they seemed to be frightened off when the hog appeared.
‘I’ve seen a lot of hogs in this area, but nothing like the size of this one,” Brown told the Lawton Constitution. “He was doing a lot of damage.”
Wild hogs like this one and the damage they cause are whyy the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry has started a Feral Swine Directory to try to connect hog hunters with landowners who are willing to allow hog hunting on their land.
Application forms for hunters, trappers and interested landowners can be downloaded from the agency’s website.
The agency hopes the online directory will be another tool to help farmers and ranchers deal with wild hogs which cause millions of dollars in damage each year in Oklahoma.
Feral hogs can be found in all 77 counties in Oklahoma.
The animals are omnivorous and will eat anything from grain to meat. Cultivated crops make up a large part of their diet, but they also prey on ground-nesting birds, like quail and turkey.
Feral swine even will kill and consume lambs and kid goats. Crops commonly damaged by wild hogs include wheat, sorghum, soybeans, corn, peanuts, hay, watermelons, pecans and vegetable gardens.
State agriculture officials hope more hunting and trapping will reduce wild hog numbers or at least help control their spread.
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[...] Deer hunter kills HogzillaNewsOK.com (blog)Early last week Winston Brown took his crossbow and climbed up into a tree stand near Rush Springs in hope of harvesting his first deer of the season. Instead he came home with 760 pounds of wild hog. It took three arrows from Brown's crossbow to kill …Hunting 'Hogzilla'KSEE [...]
LOL. That looks like the neighbors Old Hampshire boar got out and this idiot shot it. I guess since he got out of his pen that makes him wild? Come on people.
LOL is right @Tbird, you must be a city slicker…..
first, it’s a sow, NOT a boar
second, these feral hogs are expanding rampantly across the state and they must be controlled.
thirdly, even if this family “boar” got loose, which is how the feral hog problem got started, then the owner should have rounded “him” up and taken care of his property because a “boar” that big is doing lots of damage to the property that it lives on. Tearing up fences, damaging crops, eating the quail and turkey eggs, not to mention tons of other problems.
Well Bob you might want to look a little closer, that thing in the middle of his belly proves it is a male not a female.
As far a “wild” hog, many feral hogs are domestic breeds and crosses that have either escaped their pens or have been turned out to fend for themselves. There are European breeds of swine that have been also turned out and now are “feral”. As far as color many wild hogs are various shades of tan , brown, black, spotted and many times have the same color as their domestic cousins.
Is this a wild hog? I don’t know I was not there, but any hog that weighs 700+ pounds just might be the “wild thing”. If it was out and running around in the woods in an area where wild or feral hogs frequent, I would put him down just like this guy did. Let’s prevent as many as we can from reproducing and destroying anymore habitat and real wildlife.
LOL Bob, look again. Not a city slicker, just an old pig farmer. Look at the short snout, short legs and heavy muscling. Not common characteristics of wild or feral hogs. Looks like one of my old hampshire boars to me. Im not opposed to killing wild hogs or my own for that matter for meat. Oh well it made for a good laugh and photo.
Is this “Hogzilla” actually wild? A very good friend of mine works for the OK Dept. of Ag. as an animal damage control specialist, and sometimes kills 200 or more wild hogs a week as a routine part of his job. They rarely go over 300 pounds. I wonder how this very large “wild” boar was castrated. It is obvious from the photo that it does not have the football size tackle that an uncastrated boar of this size should sport. In my humble opinion, this hog was housed and well fed long before being released into the wild. True wild animals don’t have the luxury to lay arould and eat enough to fatten up to this size, simply because they are competing for food, and this doesn’t even take into account that this hog was killed during the worst drout in my lifetime when wild animals are starving! Any one that watches TV should have seen the popular shows that present the terrible problems that we are dealing with concerning wild hogs. As a lifelong Oklahoma hunter, outdoorsman and conservationist, I am glad that the general public is beginning to learn of the plague that swine have become in our great nation.
Well the gender comments are cracking me up! Finally texomadog nailed it! This is indeed a barrow not a boar! Barrows have the ability to gain massive amounts of weight plus they loose their testosterone aggression thus resulting in a weight gaining eating machine! Now, as far as wild or not, yes it is wild. Most like a first genereation hog that has either escaped or been released. The genetics of the new farm raised animals now on commercial sites is staggering! This would be an average size boar on a Tyson farm! Yes that is true. So just imagine if he had been able to reproduce and spread his genes around amongst the wild sows out there! That area would have “hooved dozers” working the fields and countryside over.One last thought and my opinion on “Wild Hogs” if they cross my line of sight in the woods they are dead. Period end of story. To all my fellow deer hunters out there, if they eat kid goats and lambs what other small four legged spotted animals might they be eating in the Spring? Get a clue folks ferral or wild hogs are a massive problem here in OK and we only need to look south to Texas to see how bad it can get.
These comments have been very entertaining but you might want to get more info. Texomadog…his “boys” were still very much there, they show in the picture where they were washing the dirt off of him, if you’d like a picture, I’d be more than happy to e-mail it to you. To T-bird and Bob…not a city slicker…just a good old boy out hunting, sorry he didn’t dress up for the pictures…thought camo was what one wears hunting…go figure. He not a farmer of any kind. But opinions of this vary and all are entitled to free speech. Thanks for the entertainment!
As many of you have said it WAS a farm hog gone wild. No true wild hog gets that big unless they have more food than they can handle around to eat. I’ve hunted hogs for 15 years in 5 states and have taken a couple close to 500 pounds in California and South Carolina in the late fall after they have been stuffing all summer and fall on grains and such.
It takes 3 generations of a demestic hog to go truely ferrel and a big key is they big floppy ears. True wild hogs don’t have floppy ears. Would I have taken a shot at him if I saw him, sure would as he’d fill a freezer quickly.
Hogs are a major problem and they need to be delt with.
Man that is a huge hog. Amazing. The hogs at http://www.peartreegameranch.com are a bit smaller. Still fun to hunt though.
I have hunted in Africa and killed seveal big warthogs, one was the 4th largest ever killed in the counrty of Namibia, Africa. But nothing the size of this wild hog. Sure would like to do a little of this type of hog hunting.
that is a the hugest hog I have ever seen, how long did it take you to kill him?