The Real Story behind Gentle Giant Fred
The so called “wild hog”, wasn’t wild at all, it was a family pet, owned by an older couple in Alabama, reports Fox News. The large hog escaped four days prior to being killed, by an 11 year old, after being hunted for three hours. The pig named Fred and considered a “gentle giant” by its owners Phil and Rhonda Blissitt, was a 2004 Christmas present to Rhonda from Phil since the pig was 6 weeks old.
I don’t know what makes me sadder, the fact that Fred was hunted for three hours and shot to death by 16 rounds, or the fact that it came at the hands of an 11 year old shooter.
Fred weighed an astonishing 1,051 pounds and is probably gonna go down in the books as one of the largest hogs ever discovered. The pig was so large, that rumors swirled around the internet that the photos were fake, but pet owner Rhonda confirmed its natural size.
The shooters father claims that the pig was feral and they did not break any rules. I’m pretty sure Fred disagrees with that sentiment.
June 4th, 2007 at 02:46
Stories like this make me an incredible combination of sad & mad.
Kids should NOT be hunting. (Personally, I feel adults shouldn’t either…but kids! KIDS!)
A couple years back I went with my husband to the local DNR establishment so he could take his wildlife rehabilitation test (which he passed :-). I sat in the waiting room for about an hour and what did I see? At least 50 people pass by me to get their hunting licenses…several of them children. All they had to do was pay a fee & they received a license. Here my husband had to sit through a difficult test (one of many stages) to get permission to simply train, to help and save injured wildlife. He still needs 2 years of volunteering before he can get a rehab license.
There’s something so very wrong with that…it’s backwards if you ask me. 🙁
June 5th, 2007 at 19:03
Geez! Why do people love hunting 🙁
I am not a vegetarian but yet I feel that it’s cruel that people enjoy chasing animals which are inferior to them and finally killing them.
June 14th, 2007 at 07:11
Just nasty. I have been running into that picture for weeks now, but i did not know until you told me, that it was a pet. The poor thing. Nice blog btw, i just started a veg blog of my own, feel free to check it out.ciao
SoVeg.com
June 18th, 2007 at 23:26
This is sad indeed, am not a vegetarian, but gosh I am human.
And it is wrong to hunt animals down like that and kill them, its sad to know that no one did anything about it…
August 1st, 2007 at 12:40
I have been following this horrible story since I first saw that grizzly photo. Just to clarify, the family who considered this hog to be a “family pet” sold it because it got too big to control. They knew full well that what the fate of the hog would be. They sold it to a guy who makes living from charging people to hunt on his land. In my mind that makes them just as bad as the hunters. How could someone ever raise a creature as a family pet and then orchestrate his death?
August 3rd, 2007 at 03:38
This was so sad when I read about it. Poor Fred.
I blogged it here:
October 8th, 2007 at 16:20
Wow i never seen anything like that in my life