11-year-old hunter bags 'monster pig' in Alabama / 'Monster Pig' was really farm-raised 'Fred'

I'm not sure what I can add to these two news stories. With the parts I have boldfaced as commentary, they are pretty self-explanatory.

Although I would like to add the dictionary definition of "feral," from Merriam-Webster Online:

a not domesticated or cultivated : WILD
b:having escaped from domestication and become wild

Poor Fred definitely doesn't meet either of those definitions, and for the wildlife officials to say otherwise is just wrong.

And to expand on the commentary indicated by the boldface, how can anyone call shooting any animal with a handgun hunting, especially the part about finishing it off point-blank? It would seem to me that if you can get close enough to shoot a pig with a handgun, he's clearly not wild. But it seems that there is a new sport of handgun hunting I haven't heard about. If you scroll to the end of this item, you will see that it's even more fun than that, another preteen boy killed one with a knife .... I'm sorry, but this is the end of civilization as I knew it.

While some may debate the morality of meat-eating, as long as we're doing it, there's nothing wrong with a good old-fashioned hog-killing on a farm to understand where meat really comes from. But to make a sport of it out in the swamps and glorify the manliness and excitement of stabbing an animal to death just disgusts me.

UPDATE: I feel even less sorry for the "hunter" and his family - apparently in an effort to profit from their unsportsmanlike slaughter of handfed Fred, they faked the photos on the website they quickly put up - the photos which then were used by the media across the country.

From the Wilmington Star News:

Montgomery, Ala. | An 11-year-old Alabama boy used a pistol to kill a wild hog his father says weighed a staggering 1,051 pounds and measured 9-feet-4 from the tip of its snout to the base of its tail.
.....
Regardless of the comparison, Jamison is reveling in the attention over his pig, which has a Web site put up by his father - www.monsterpig.com - that is generating Internet buzz.
"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."
.....
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. Through it all there was the fear that the animal would turn and charge them, as wild boars have a reputation of doing.

"I was a little bit scared, a little bit excited," said Jamison, who just finished the sixth grade on the honor roll at Christian Heritage Academy, a small, private school.

This story really grossed me out to begin with, but it got worse in the next news cycle.

From ESPN:
'Monster Pig' was really farm-raised 'Fred'
Not-so-wild pig sold to Lost Creek Plantation four days before it was hunted down
FRUITHURST, Ala. — The huge hog that became known as "Monster Pig'' after being hunted and killed by an 11-year-old boy had another name: Fred.

The not-so-wild pig had been raised on an Alabama farm and was sold to the Lost Creek Plantation just four days before it was shot there in a 150-acre fenced area, the animal's former owner said.

Phil Blissitt told The Anniston Star in a story Friday that he bought the 6-week-old pig in December 2004 as a Christmas gift for his wife, Rhonda, and that they sold it after deciding to get rid of all the pigs at their farm.

"I just wanted the truth to be told. That wasn't a wild pig,'' Rhonda Blissitt said.

Mike Stone said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press on Friday that he had been under the impression that the hog was wild, not farm-raised.

Stone said state wildlife officials told him that it is not unusual for hunting preserves to buy farm-raised hogs and that the hogs are considered feral once they are released.

Stone said he and his son met Blissitt on Friday morning to get more details about the hog. Blissitt said that he had about 15 hogs and decided to sell them for slaughter, but that no one would buy that particular animal because it was too big for slaughter or breeding, Stone said.

Blissitt said that the pig had become a nuisance and that visitors were often frightened by it, Stone said. "He was nice enough to tell my son that the pig was too big and needed killing,'' Stone said. "He shook Jamison's hand and said he did not kill the family pet.'' The Blissitts said they didn't know the hog that was hunted was Fred until they were contacted by a game warden for the Alabama Department of Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries. The agency determined that no laws were violated in the hunt.