board77

Who knew there was a Hogzilla I? Anyway, I went looking for this story online cause I saw it in a local rag.

http://www.redorbit.com/news/oddities/9 ... index.html

The size of the Boar is undoubtedly impressive, but I was more concerned with the following quote:

Quote:

"It feels really good," Jamison, of Pickensville, said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "It's a good accomplishment. I probably won't ever kill anything else that big."

Jamison, who killed his first deer at age 5, was hunting with father Mike Stone and two guides in east Alabama on May 3 when he bagged Hogzilla II. He said he shot the huge animal eight times with a .50-caliber revolver and chased it for three hours through hilly woods before finishing it off with a point-blank shot.

Does anyone else find the idea of a child chasing an animal with a gun for sport to be offensive? I don't want to get into the whole gun control debate, or even an anti hunting thing, but surely an 11 year old kid should not be shooting a boar at point blank range, or indeed at distance? If you start to devalue life at such a young age, where killing for fun is considered not just acceptable, but an admirable achievement, where does it stop?

And to think I could never get my kids to even go up the road to the butchers for a pound of sausages.
I find it repellent too. Not the concept of a youngster hunting - different societies after all - but the pride in the drawn out slow murder of the animal. That is what I find morally deficient.

I most certainly find it offensive. I believe that hunting should be for the purpose of eating what you kill and not for entertainment value. Particularly for a child who shot his first deer at age 5.


That said, however, I can't help but notice that this kid is from Alabama. The sport hunting culture is so deeply rooted in that area that I can't see it going away any time soon, moral or not.

I find nothing offensive about an eleven-year-old hunting in general. Wild meat is extremely tasty, much better than anything you'll find in a supermarket. What I find repugnant is hunting an animal just to have a trophy, and letting the meat go to waste. That's disrespectful. If I were to go hunting, I would try to use all the parts of the animal, and I'd probably apologize to it and thank it for its sacrifice as well.

I'm sure it would feel much better then.

I'm probably going to be the only user here on b77 who went "That's awesome! I need to meet this kid..."

Regardless of what I think about him personally, this is a great achievement for an 11 year old -- for anyone, honestly.

And I'm not even sure that my amazement stems from the fact that he was 11...I mean, he chased it for 3 hours! How many Americans do you know that would chase an animal that far or long?

Quote:

I'm probably going to be the only user here on b77 who went "That's awesome! I need to meet this kid..."

Well I wouldn't call it awsome, but its quite an acomplishment for a kid.

I can't do sport hunting. The closest I've come is dove hunting, and even then I eat the things (taste like chicken). But it's not particularly needful, and unlike deer, I can't donate to local food pantries and help deal with overpopulation at the same time.

As a purely physical achievement, it's impressive. But one could say the same about beating someone up for 24 hours straight.

It's good that the hog is dead. Huge feral pigs are incredibly dangerous.

It is unpardonable that they used a pistol. You have to get close to hit what you are aiming at with a pistol, and the danger level to a child is unacceptable, even with adults standing by with rifles. That's just wrong.

It's also horrific that the creature was shot 8 times and had to be chased for 3 hours before it was finally killed. It's good that they did track it down and kill it-- it would be really horrible if they'd shot 8 times and let it suffer even longer before dying- but they really should have used something that would kill it with the first shot. Or let someone who could AIM shoot the darn thing!

People who can't kill with the first shot shouldn't hunt.

Quote:

His father said that, just to be extra safe, he and the guides had high-powered rifles aimed and ready to fire in case the beast with 5-inch tusks decided to charge.

They could have taken the boar out at any time, but chose to let it suffer for 3 hours so the kid could have his "kill". Doesn't strike me as much of an "achievement" under those conditions anyway.

Maria is right about feral pigs doing a lot of damage to the landscape, which hurts the native flora and fauna both. They are the one thing deer hunters in Missouri are allowed to shoot (if they see them during deer season) for that reason.

But--even if he had decent aim, a .50 caliber revolver is going to be hard for an 11-year old to handle properly. And for a hog that big, only a well-placed head shot would kill it in one (and that's not 100%, certainly not with even a big pistol load). So they were practically guaranteeing a long, drawn-out process. They should have just handed him a rifle in the first place.

Yeah, the more you look, the sloppier and ickier it gets. Hunting isn't playtime.

I agree with the general sentiment.

I'm not against hunting; I wouldn't do it myself but I'm not against it. But I always feel an extra pang when I see something especially big or old go down.

I don't like the idea that this child is being taught that it is okay to kill something for sport. I am all for hunting, as long as you eat what you kill. But, I don't like the thought of making anything suffer longer than absolutely necessary.

The website, monsterpig.com, says that "Sausage is all Gone". Maybe that means they did butcher it afterwards?

That makes it a little less bothersome. The sheer wastefulness would otherwise have made this ethically dubious. As has been noted, meat hunting is an important adjunct to the diets of more than a few rural folks. On the other hand, the fact that it was in a private game preserve still kind of bugs me, although obviously it wasn't of the "line 'em up and shoot 'em" variety, since it took hours to track the thing down. Still, it implies the people paid to be there. If they can afford to hunt on a preserve, that implies they weren't exactly going hungry. I know when some old acquaintances of mine went boar hunting on a preserve (with spears, so it was a tad closer to a fair contest--and they were WAY quicker than this crew) it was a chunk of change, and that was over a decade ago.

Those who don't have to hunt to get meat, but do so anyway...

What is the problem with that? I don't see one. Why do some people have a problem with hunted meat but not farm meat? They're both meat.

I think hunting on a preserve is ethically on par with eating factory farmed meat. It's expedient, but not strictly necessary. Subsistence hunting is more necessary.

Ironically, despite how it ended, this pig probably experienced less inhumanity during its life than most. Factory farms and all that.

Very possibly. But the last three hours sucked, when they didn't have to. And could have been 30 seconds.

I agree; but at the same time, it's hard for me to get too worked up about it with all the other troubles in the world...