In my life I have killed some 300+ hogs in East Texas. Most are feral hogs that show some color of blooded hogs, but the build of "Piney Woods Rooter" stock and are definitely wild.
Most of these hogs will weigh 125-150 pounds. An honest 200 pound hog is uncommon, but certainly not rare. Any hog that approaches 300 pounds is bragging size.
Some 30 years ago a group of hunters brought in hogs that were supposed to be pure bred Russian stock. Of course , being hogs, they soon escaped the property where they were held. Most of the larger hogs we see show definite signs of having Russian blood in them.....and sometimes appear almost pure Russian.
Occasionally (rarely) I have seen hogs that would weigh 350 pounds or more. I personally have taken 2 animals of exceptional size.
One of these was somewhat of a fluke (or freak). This hog looked like a pure blooded hog. It was snow white and the only "wild" trait was it's tail that was like a wild pig not a domestic breed.
This particular animal had lived and fed on a local farmers property that was planted in corn. When I shot this animal I thought I was shooting a huge sow, but upon rolling it over It was discovered that someone had been "working" hogs in the past and cut this hog when it was young. Such "cut" animal tend to grow quite large.
We put this hog on a scale and it weighed 435 pounds. It had very small "tushes" for a hog of this size....maybe 2 1/2" long. This hog had 4" of fat covering it's entire body. This was the only "wild" hog I've ever killed that we could obtain bacon from due to the excessive fat. This hog was a fluke as it obviously had a lot of blooded hog in it's history, had exceptional food and was "cut" at a young age. However it was a wild hog and did weigh more than 400 pounds.
By far the largest hog I've ever killed (or seen) was what appeared to be a pure Russian boar. For years I'd heard the stories of 500 pound wild hogs. Most of the "500 pound" hogs I'd seen were 300 pound, not weighed, hogs killed by others. I'd have bet you $100 that there was no such thing as a wild 500 pound hog....until I killed one.
We caught this hog in a trap and when we first saw it couldn't believe what we had. This hog stood some 4 1/2 feet at the shoulder with tushes better than 7" long. It was pure Russian (apparently) with high shoulders, tapering to smallish hips. A ridge of stiff hair stood along it's back and neck and the head alone was more than 2 1/2 feet long.
When I shot it we tried to drag it out of the trap, but three men could barely move it. We finally tied a rope and used the truck to drag it out. Fortunately there was a swale where we could back the truck so the tailgate was level with the ground and loaded the hog. He was so long that we had to "fold" his head down to close the tailgate. Laying on his side in the back of the truck, his off side was 6-8" above the sides of the truck bed.
At the camp we tried to weigh him but our scale only went to 450 pounds....and it bottomed out. We finally caught the guts in a tub and weighed the guts, head, hide and meat separately. The total came to 525 pounds. Considering the blood loss and such we "estimated" this hog would have weighed 540-550 pounds "on the hoof". Even if we guessed a bit high this was definitely a 500+ pound (525 actually) wild hog.
I never expect to see another hog like this one and have never seen any killed by others that comes close. A very large wild hog will go 200-250 pounds. An exceptional animal might go 300.......but there are the rare (very rare) "freaks" that will go over 400 pounds. From personal experience a 500 pound wild hog is not impossible.....just damned unlikely.
