Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Alabama Boy Gets Death Threats for Hunting 1,000-Pound ‘Monster Pig’

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Fox News
Photo Provided by AP

When a 1,000-pound wild hog was shot last year in Alabama, 11-year-old hunter Jamison Stone couldn’t have been happier. But his prize photos of the 9-foot-long boar have continued to cause a stink, one the Stone family can’t seem to shake.

The backlash has only grown worse, with one group calling for the hunters' prosecution.
"It is unbelievable what my family has been through over the past year," Mike Stone, Jamison’s father, told the Birmingham News. "It has taken 10 years off my life."

An online petition has garnered more than 800 signatures from around the world demanding prosecution for what activists are calling animal cruelty, according to the newspaper.

Rhonda Roland Shearer, a New York City organizer who investigated the incident, said the pig suffered a "cruel and painful death," the result of 16 shots from a low-velocity weapon, nine of which hit the hog.

Shearer said that no charges are being pressed against the hunters, as the Alabama statute of limitations on animal cruelty has already elapsed.

Yet the Stone family is feeling the wrath of some critics.

"You should see some of the emails and hear some of the calls we have received," Jamison’s father said. "They are explicit. They tell how they are going to kill my son, like cutting his head off.
"It has had us scared to death ... All I did was to take my son on a legal hunting trip."

The prize pig, shot by Jamison Stone on an Alabama hunting preserve in May 2007, reportedly weighed 1,051 pounds and measured 9 feet, 4 inches from the tip of its snout to the base of its tail.

If the claims are accurate, Jamison's trophy boar would be bigger than the original “Hogzilla,” the legendary 800-pound, 8-foot-long wild hog killed in south Georgia in 2004.


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