Huge wild boar taken with AR-style rifle

You don't want the hunter in front lest s/he look super-sized more so than s/he may be. Plus that would highlight the hunter more than the trophy.

It can be done with the hunter in back, but they need to be close.
 
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Coincidentally, I watched a National Geographic special on feral hogs and they went over the Hogzilla thing. Not only that...they dug up Hogzilla. It turns out Hogzilla was an exaggeration. The opinion is that it was still pretty darned big, but obviously not as big as the hype was.

I really don't see why you guys think he's lying so much on this one. 500 pounds is a big one, but it's far from the largest confirmed. Honestly, if I were him, the pose and position he chose is pretty much what I would have done. He justified the cost of his highly accessorized toy to his family with food and he did the community a favor by helping keep an invasive species down. I commend the fellow as someone making us look good.
 
I absolutely despise game pictures taken like the one in the OP which try to exaggerate the size of the game by putting the hunter some indeterminate distance in the background and then taking the picture with a small aperture so that everything is in focus regardless of how far from the camera it is.
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We bagged a truly enormous tree squirrel last year:
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If it is real, I'm surprised it was taken in Eastern NC.

Years ago, there were some 400 pounders in Western NC. This was in the Nantahalla area.
 
"Andy, exactly who has said he is lying?"

If some are saying he is posing the photo to deceive us and make it look larger, how is that not lying? If we state he's inflating the actual weight of the animal to deceive us, how is that not lying?
 
Okay, so YOU are the only one saying he is lying if forced perspective is being used.

You say he isn't using it, but if not, then why is he so far behind his pig for the photo? You can be right up close to it quite readily for the photo and it is easier to take that way as well. Why pose with the pig and yet be so far away?

I take my trophy pics right next to the pig, often with my rifle on the pig for scale - no forced perspective at all and quite easy to do.
 
If some are saying he is posing the photo to deceive us and make it look larger, how is that not lying? If we state he's inflating the actual weight of the animal to deceive us, how is that not lying?
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No one has said that he's inflating the weight. Since no one's disputing the weight claim (and the weight claim appears to be accurate), everyone seems to agree that the hunter isn't really trying to deceive us.

What some are saying is that the picture is obviously posed to exaggerate the size of the animal. Look at the leaf near the hog's foot. It looks bigger than the hunter's head which is obviously ridiculous. The picture's layout creates the appearance of deception where none is apparently intended--it's silly and irritating.
 
everyone seems to agree that the hunter isn't really trying to deceive us.
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Please don't include me in everyone.
Forcing perspective to enhance size is deception in & of itself. The exception would be the gag shot of the giant squirrel.
 
Huntinaz that is a nice grey squirrel. Around here it usually takes a big buck red to get that big!;) It does make the point that you have to be a little skeptical about what you see or read on the interweb. Whether the picture was staged to distort the size, or just a result of the photographer not knowing what he/she was doing really does not matter IMO; the picture does distort the size and brings the question of honesty into question.
 
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This is what I call a lie by implication, in several ways.

One, the photo is clearly, really beyond any question, forced perspective. Forced perspective is, in and of itself, a lie. It's not true perspective. If it were, it wouldn't be "forced". You don't have to force true perspective. The implication is that the pig is larger than it really is. The implication is a lie.

Two, the hunter says "...he'll feed his family for a year after he bagged a 500-pound wild hog...". That's another lie by implication. They may well still be eating some of this hog a year from now but even a family of two eats a lot more than the perhaps 200 pounds of meat they'll get from this hog. With the context of this supposed giant hog, the implication is that it is sufficient to support his family for an entire year. I shoot deer every year and we still have venison left a year later. I would never say "I'll feed my family for a year." from those animals.

On the forced perspective, the average male head is slightly over 6" wide. If the perspective is normal, that hogs is nearly 9 feet long. That would be nearly 50% larger than the typical max size.
 
Okay, so the guy shot a big hog, which nobody seems to dispute in terms of weight or size, but is lying left and right on some of the more subtle aspects (forced perspective [white I believe is intentional to make it larger than it really is] and how long he will feed his family with the hog).

Put on such terms, it makes for a convincing argument.

I do also find it odd that it was a 500 pounder. It wasn't 495 or 510, but 500. I wonder what method was actually used to determine the weight.
 
I do also find it odd that it was a 500 pounder. It wasn't 495 or 510, but 500. I wonder what method was actually used to determine the weight.
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One article I read said the scale they used to weigh it only went up to 500 so they know it was over 500 since it pegged the scale.

Edit: this is the article.

The North Carolina Sportsman reports that the massive wild board bottomed out a set of scales certified to 500 pounds, which is used ordinarily to weigh tobacco bales.

"He pegged the maximum weight capacity of the certified scales with his head and shoulders still on the skinning shed floor," Michael Mansell, president of the White Oak Ranch Hunting Club told the website. "It was a true beast!"
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So the implication is that they've exaggerated every point of information but they're supposedly dramatically UNDER reporting the weight... yeah... right.
 
IMHO it's not a question of the AR action being suitable for hunting as it is the suitability of the .223 they are usually chambered in. As noted the hunter used a 308.
 
I just don't believe the hog weighs 500 lbs. There should be photos of the hog on the scales being weighed with other hunters and the owner of the preserve standing around in awe and admiration since it was such a rare animal based on it's size. Penned domestic hogs can go 500 or better but in the wild the weight should be considerably less. If this one had been a penned animal until recently he would not have long tusks. Most pig farmers keep them cut back. Based on my experience hunting the state I would suspect the hog in the trail camera shots is closer to 275 which would still be big for that area. The hog may be a domestic/Russian boar mix but that would tend to keep the weight down. I killed a pure Russian in western N.C. 50 years ago. When we laid him in the bed of a 1960 Ford p/u he stretched diagonally from one corner to the other and he weighed 275 lbs. There can always be exceptions but I'd have to see real proof before I buy this story.:rolleyes:
 
There should be photos of the hog on the scales being weighed with other hunters and the owner of the preserve standing around in awe and admiration since it was such a rare animal based on it's size.
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Now that you mention it, it is kind of odd, given the proliferation of cell-phone cameras in this day and age, that absolutely no one present thought to take a picture of this monster hog bottoming out the scales at a quarter ton...
 
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