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Jett Webb and dead hog (courtesy northcarolinasportsman.com)

“Under starry skies on Feb. 28, Jett Webb of Conetoe ensured there will be one less mouth to feed in the Indian Woods section of Bertie County – and a real big mouth, too,” northcarolinasportsman.com reports. “Webb took down a massive wild boar that bottomed out a set of scales certified to 500 pounds that’s used for weighing tobacco bales. Michael Mansell, president of the White Oak Ranch Hunting Club, said he weighed well over 500 pounds.” Wow, that’s a heavy president. JK. “‘He pegged the maximum weight capacity of the certified scales with his head and shoulders still on the skinning shed floor,’ Mansell said. ‘It was a true beast!'” And what’s that gun Mr. Webb’s cradling? Why it looks like one of them there assault rifles, with a forward assist! An AR-10, in fact. So wait. Does that make it a modern sporting rifle or what?

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111 COMMENTS

  1. I’ve always followed the adage “never go into the woods unarmed.” That picture suggests that a 1911 is woefully underequipped…..I’ma need a bigger gun…

    • Never go anywhere unarmed.

      The 200lbs animals in cities are just a dangerous as the 500lbs animals in the woods.

    • Peirsonb

      I highly recommend a revolver with a six-inch barrel in .44 Magnum for woods defense. The overwhelming majority of aggressive beasts that anyone would encounter in the woods typically run about 350 pounds or less and the .44 Magnum will usually drop them (or at least turn them away) with one decent shot. (Such beasts include wild hogs, cougars, and black bears.)

      Having said all that, bear in mind (pun intended) that even .44 Magnum is a touch on the light side for promptly stopping a 600 pound boar or black bear with one decent shot … but it sure would slow them down and one or two follow-up shots would probably finish the task.

      As always ammunition selection is very important. Commonly available 240 grain jacketed soft points are pretty effective for hunting and woods defense. If you want the capability to handle 600 pound beasts, I would go with a 300 grain hardcast lead bullet. Many people report that those bullets will punch a huge hole “stem to stern” even on BIG critters.

      • Good call on bullet selection.
        The bear hanging on my wall took two .44’s.
        The first hollow point exploded on its hind leg doing minimal damage.
        The semi-jacketed soft point went in the right armpit and out the left. In between it took both lungs and the top of its heart.

  2. And my liberal New Yorker ex-mother in law told me you can’t eat meat shot with an “assault weapon” I laughed so hard a little pee came out.

    • Really? Where do that get that stuff?

      The rifle is black to it poisons the bullets and taints the meat or something?

      (I know, it was probably bashing the caliber, but that’s just as much nonsense…crap repeated by people because they heard it somewhere).

    • If it was a pheasant shot at close range such that you spend most of your meal of roast game bird spitting out birdshot, she could have a point.

      Mike Mansell stating he weighs 500 pounds – takes a man to own up to that.

  3. Is it black? Does it have a .30 caliber magazine clip? It does? Then it’s probably a ghost gun. Probably said “boo”(m) and scared that defenseless pig to death. I mean, as obese as it was, it had to have heart troubles…

    • Well, to be fair, we don’t really call them carriages, either, which your comparison strictly suggests…if this were the SAT or something. 🙂

      • Fair enough. All I’m saying is do we really need the “modern” modifier for a rifle designed in 1957? There isn’t anything from 1957 that I would call modern.

        • I agree with you about the “modern” part, the term is too subjective.

          Semi automatic rifle seems to be more sufficient and better fitting.

        • Well if you want to be pedantic, ’57 was the modern era.

          The SCAR would be a contemporary sporting rifle.

    • That might be a little overkill, but I think my new minimum “woods gun” is going to be something in .500 WE.

      • Why not a sawn off quad barrel shotgun?

        You can find 4-barrel derringer plans online. Upsize them for 12/20 gauge and load a 50bmg bullet. I think a .50 bullet should fit in a 20 gauge.

        • It’ll fit, I’m not sure that’s entirely safe….

          Quick math using the ridiculous gage to diameter conversion puts a 20 gage at around 0.68″ (with a LOT of rounding at various steps to make my life easier). That’s a whole lotta slop.

        • I was thinking with sabot and the spitzer shape would help with penetration.

          Regarding African calibers: too expensive/rare.

          Are there spitzer shaped shotgun slugs?

        • Lolinksi,

          You could use a single-shot (break action) 20 gauge shotgun with whatever barrel length you prefer. Make sure you use Hornday SST slugs. I believe the 20 gauge version has a .50 caliber 250 grain bullet in a sabot with a muzzle velocity of something like 1800 feet per second. (Converting to metric: a 13mm diameter 16 gram bullet with a muzzle velocity of about 548 meters per second.)

          That is serious medicine for just about anything — including brown and polar bears.

        • I like the way you think, still going quad barrel though. It is simple mathematics, 2+2=4 and 4 is 100% more than 2. That and you can shorten the barrels to 20 cm (8 inches) wihthout affecting ballistics much and without messing with either a mag or gas tube.

          Regarding ammo, SST looks good but requires a rifled barrel and I am unsure how Hexolit32 would react against a 500 pound boar (and that stuff is expensive).

    • Anything dangerous, and I always start thinking of African dangerous game rifles. I’m sure a .470 NE double would suffice.

      Also depends on the situation, obviously .308 will work as long as you are hunting it, and it is not hunting you. Same standard that probably applies to big bears.

      • Well-placed shot, I agree. I would however offer that 500# is nudging the lower limits of “big game”, especially when it’s 500# of pissed-off and charging…

        I’d 100 yard it with .308/.30-06, but were I ‘actively engaging’ it up close and personal, I’d opt for a more substantive caliber.

        • If you are going to stop it at 100 yards with a 30 cal you are going to stop it point blank. The only issue is ergonomics. A large caliber handgun is probably going to be faster on target in a confined space or if you are surprised.

      • tdiinva,

        Just about any rifle in a popular caliber will kill a 500 pound boar at 100 yards with a decent shot. The key is not whether a particular caliber and bullet will kill a 500 pound boar, the key is whether one shot can stop a charging boar before it injures you. In that scenario .308 and .30-06 are on the light side unless you can strike the boar’s central nervous system.

        When it comes to BIG animals that are charging, you want BIG calibers with BIG HEAVY bullets that make BIG holes and penetrate at least 36 inches. And that is not .308 or .30-06. Rather, that means .44 Magnum, .454 Casull, .45-70 Government, and larger with 300+ grain hardcast bullets — preferably shot from long guns. Hardcast bullets in those calibers at something like 1600+ fps will create huge holes (1+ inch diameter) in charging beasts. That sort of wound usually functions as an excellent “off” switch.

        • One other thing. Someone who is hunting hogs is not using FMJ. He would be using modern bonded hunting ammunition which expands and does severe damage to tissue and organs when it hits the animal. I assume you have seen the results on a deer or elk from bonded ammo.

          The muzzle velocity, energy and momentum of a 30-06 are all greater than the handguns calibers. If 44 mag or 454 Casall will stop the hog so will the 30-06 or 308. Only 45-70 or similar round fired from a long gun is going to do better.. The advantage of a handgun at close range is time to get the shot on target.

  4. Liberals are in a froth over this story in all the various comments sections, the PETAs and other animal “right to lifers” are saying he should be ashamed for killing such a beautiful creature.

    These are the same liberals who applaud abortions. These people are truly scary.

    • he should be ashamed for killing such a beautiful creature.

      To which I always respond: Why don’t you go up and try to give that beautiful creature a hug and a pat on the head?

      • Reminds me of an advertisement we saw at a movie a few months back. It was a car commercial, but the “story” was a family out in the woods and deer came right up to the window and let the small girl in the back seat pet it.

        My wife and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes. Only a city person that has never set one foot in the woods could conceive a commercial like that.

        Lots of bad messages there…not the least is “If you buy this car magical things like this will happen to your family, too!” It’s the “buy this car and sexy girls will like you” version for families.

        But advertising manipulations aside…it was just so unrealistic in terms of how wildlife act and behave. Batsnot insane is how some people see the world, no doubt.

        • Excellent point.

          Those kinds of commercials (and other media such as movies) often perpetuate the BS outlandish or false rhetoric of extremists, be they animal rightists, environmentalists, gun grabbers or what have you.

          The public is lured into believing the extremists propoganda because they see it falsely portrayed as reality in other media not directly associated with the extremists disinformation.

    • Obviously I’m against laying waste to the environment as I think everyone else here probably is, but the PETA/green types tend to be of the opinion that somehow humans are separate from the environment. Somehow we are an alien plague or something. A bear kills another species in the woods and that’s normal(until they decide it’s not). A human kills a destructive animal on his property that he will also use to feed his family, and that is a crime against nature because we are interfering with the “natural order” of things.

      • “A human kills a destructive animal on his property”

        You can read that another way, too, and it gets pretty much the same reaction.

        They know what they are saying. At the end of the day, it’s not about saving the animals (to the leaders of the movement, that is…).

        They have and follow the exact same play book whether the issue private ownership of firearms, hunting (for any reason), school choice, ownership of private property, etc.

        And, it sure seems that that playbook was written by Marx and Engels.

  5. I think it’s funny, especially right after another picture of likely the same pig just resurfaced again, as it has numerous times in the last few years.

    That one supposedly from Cut and Shoot, Texas. Texas Piney Woods Rooter, they called it. Spoof, big time! PhotoShop!
    But really came from Turkey about ten years ago!

  6. That pig was born in the wild.You can tell by the long snout.

    It’s hard for wild pig to grow that big without people feeding it, it must have lived very close to good food source.

    This thing is freaking awesome.

  7. That thing looks like it is half bear. Look at the fur!

    If I shot that thing we would dig a pit in my back yard, fill it with coals, bury the pig and invite the entire neighborhood to my backyard luau in Kansas. That thing would feed them all and send them packing with leftovers. And because its Kansas, the whole neighborhood would show up and talk about the guns we use to put food on the table. For hours.

    I moved here from CA nine years ago and you know what? Kansas is awesome. You folks in CT, NY CA, MD and IL should move on out. It is pretty amazing to live in a place where the small minority has gun-O-phobia. I will never move back to CA.

      • There are jobs. I don’t think its like TX or ND where the job market is exceptional, but there are jobs. I drive a tractor-trailer reefer, and my income is in the 60K range. In CA that didn’t amount to anything, but out here its very comfortable. I bought a house (fixer-upper) for 37K nine years ago. Its almost paid off completely. Mortgage payment is $500 and I rent it out now for $750/mo. SO, financially, the housing market in KS makes living here way more doable than many other places in the country.

        To me, the best part is $17 tags for world class whitetail. and they are EVERYWHERE. I even see them inside the city limits all the time. I never buy meat at the store anymore. My freezer is stocked with non-gmo, grass fed, organic venison at a total cost of about $1/lb. So good.

    • Outside Cook County,Illinois there are huge areas of Illinois that are VERY friendly to hunters & 2A RIGHTS. Everybody & their dog have a shotgun or rifle downstate. But wow that’s a BIG PIG.

  8. Yeah, I’m from Long Island but still, I had no idea wild hogs in North America could get that big. I mean HO-LEE $#!+. His ear is as big as the guy’s head!!

    • Exactly. That is something that the people at PETA and others should take into consideration. Pigs are not an apex predator and, except for a couple of various species, animals that aren’t apex predators don’t get that big in the wild. Something eats them. The fact that they get to be that size means that, OMG, something ISN’T eating them….

  9. It’s nothing but a photoshop of the one shot in Turkey some ten or so years ago. It’s been routinely appearing on the internet from time to time ever since.
    Wild hogs in the US average about 150 lbs, with few even approaching 500 lbs.

    Seen this extra hairy bugger appear twice before, just this week, with the original picture taken in Turkey, with a truck with “Nature Tours” on the side. Even the real, original weight was enhanced to something like 1780 lbs, when it really was about half that.

    They think they are fooling some people, and I guess that they are right.
    So was PT Barnum.

    • Was wondering about that. I knew wild hogs can kill humans, but I was shocked upon reading of some being 500 lbs.

    • You said that upthread and I asked for any kind of proof.

      Keeping repeating something does not make it true. If it is false, I want know it.

      I’ve emailed the Editor of that publication asking for additional substantiating information. If I get anything back from that end, I’ll post it.

      But, if you have any kind of evidence supporting your assertion, would you please post it?

      If not, it won’t help to keep saying it over and over again.

      • I agree. If you intend to dismiss the validity of the article you should be ready with valid sources of your own. After all, Farago provides his source of the article. What are you providing? – Just your opinion at this point.

    • I agree. Though it may not be photoshopped. We only have one photo of the hunter squatting behind it, and without his hand on the beast, we don’t know how far behind he is. Around here, lots of photos are taken, even with the big animals sprawled in the back of pickups. This guy said to CNN it barely fit into his pick up. So why not show a shot of that? I’m not saying the boar isn’t big, just not that big.

    • The picture from Conroe, TX is a different hog.

      I’ve looked at Google for evidence that THIS photo is a fake and I have not found anything.

      Is your assumption based pretty much on that you can’t tell one hog from another?

    • Wow, you claim something is fake and photoshopped. It takes a good eye most of the time to spot out the little details that give away its a photoshop job, yet you can’t even tell the difference between two different hog. Do you really expect us to believe your wild claim of this being a fake?

      Something doesn’t seem right here. You are either a little too obsessed with this turkey picture or jealous of this guys hunt.

      • ” wild claim of this being fake?”

        Dude, chill. Don’t you know that everything in the internets is fake?

        Even this post. I made it up, out of thin air! 😀

  10. These things travel in packs. Whatever gun I had it would need to be multiple shot. A .470 double rifle might kill the first two piggies, but the third and fourth porker might do you in.
    Would also want a heavy caliber side arm for back up. You know these thing not only can kill you, but they eat what they kill sometimes.

    • What I’ve read, and seen on videos, is that pigs tend to scatter when fired upon–which is a good thing if you are worried about being charged, and a bad thing if you are trying to eradicate a pack.

  11. It’s cool to see the Modern Sporting Rifle in action.

    And though I’m sure some animal rights people would be horrified by the shooting of a pig, they can be very destructive to ecosystems. That’s why they’re considered invasive in so many areas. It’s definitely best for other woodland critters (and people) when wild pig populations are kept in check.

  12. I happen to believe it’s true. Now, remember Hogzilla from a few years back down in GA? That one seemed like a hoax at the time.
    My father lives in rural middle GA and noticed something tearing up his property, rooting it up, feasting on his garden plot, tearing up his strawberry patch. Made a huge mess of the place. Then one day he decided to set a trap. Caught six small feral hogs. Not wild boar, but feral hogs. We speculated they were the offspring of domesticated farm pigs & whatever wild swine that roams the bush in GA. They had no tusks, no mohawk down the spine. Just looked like hairy farm pigs, and they were young. Some were brown, some were black, some were both brown and black. So my dad kept them in a pen for a good long while. Even named them. Fed them oats & sweet potatoes and dinner scraps. Fed them very well. They were about 50 lbs when they were trapped, and about 450 or so when my dad called the butcher man to come and deal with them. Ended up giving them away live save for one, and my dad DIDN’T EVEN SAVE ME ANY CHOPS OR BACON. Said it was very tasty. Doh! I was upset.
    I think it is entirely possible for a feral hog to grow to that size, especially in a rural area where there are abundant food crops being grown. Pigs are growth juggernauts, they don’t stop. They just get bigger and bigger as long as the food is there.
    I do question the taste of the meat from a massive wild boar like that though. That’s a BOAR, not a hog. I’ll bet it’s pretty gamey, Wonder if they bled the thing out properly before they dressed it, also I wonder if the animal adrenaline dumped either before or after it was shot. Affects the quality of the meat negatively. The animal must be calm and unsuspecting before it is taken, and the kill must be instant or you will taste the adrenaline in the meat. I’ve tasted it before in cattle that was distressed before being butchered, I can only imagine how horrible it must taste from a wild boar. But as Crocodile Dundee would say, “you can live off it, but it tastes like sh*t”.

    • <joke>
      Some Bohunk farmer dressed out a hog, slung the carcass over his shoulder, and carried it a couple of miles into town, to sell to the butcher. The butcher weighed it and said, “330 pounds even.” The Bohunk farmer retorted, “You just leave him up there about ten minutes or so.. He’ll get heavier!”
      </joke>

  13. I always love forced perspective photographs. Stand 15 feet behind the subject to make it look several times as big as it really is.

  14. Holy sack of bacon! That thing needs to be cast in the next Alien vs. Predator movie!

    New rules, never go into the woods with anything that starts with less than .4, and never go into the woods unless you bring someone you can outrun!

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