"That's a whole LOT of bacon..."

The night was still. Even the crickets had ceased their chirping, even if but for a moment in that molasses-thick southern Georgia humidity. Something wasn't quite 'right' about the late summer night near Alapaha (which you may know as being just west of Willacoochie...).

Suddenly the silence was broken by a thunderous crashing through the underbrush, the very ground trembling under the weight of an unbefore-seen creature of gargantuan proportions. It's what every horror flick is based on (except most dark nights are stormy, too...)...its giant tusks were glistening in the filtered moonlight, with the hairy behemoth's 1,000-pound body pushing it along, almost 12 feet in stretched-out length...

HOGZILLA!!!

Back on June 17, 2004, this big pig was killed at River Oak Plantation near Alapaha, a wild hog hunting preserve to begin with. Rumors flew. The swine kept getting bigger and meaner...it was too big for the freezer...the head was too big to mount on the wall...luckily they had a backhoe to dig and lift the beast to it's resting place, along with a single picture of it for 'proof'. Snopes.com got to it early on (old version still posted), pooling the high-level of skepticism about the actual existence of Hamzilla, Hogzilla, whatever.

Alas, on March 22, 2005, a team of National Geographic specialists came to the plantation to exhume the carcass to see for themselves. Their findings?

True location, true critter, and one heckuva truck-load of barbecue gone to waste (probably was tough, anyway...). They did scale it back to an 800 pound porker and only 8 feet in length, but it was verified as the real deal.

Of course you know what that means...movie-time. Killer hog terrorizing the countryside. Feral hogs are serious business to begin with, and in the wild will grow their formidable tusks for rooting through the ground as well as for protection if you get in their way and spook 'em. Domestic pigs get pretty gosh darn big, as you know from going to any country or state fair, holding your nose as you go into the livestock display tent. But in the shooting world of preserves that raise game for profit-based hunting, practitioners did learn you get a pretty decent gaming animal by cross-breeding Russian boar bloodlines from Europe with domestic stock, which the ruling thought Hammy was.

Bottom line...that is one big animal, that had to have been a jaw-dropping sight in the wild. And you know what it liked best to eat?

Anything it wanted, anything at all...

Soooooo-ey, y'all!