'Massive' bear-sized hog captured near school bus stop

Dec. 18 (UPI) -- Wildlife trappers in Florida said they captured a "massive" hog that was so large that it looked like a bear in some photos.

Professional trapper James Dean said he was first told about two weeks ago that the hog of an unusual size was tearing up sod at a playground near a school bus stop in Palm Bay.

Dean said he was sent a photograph by a witness of an animal so large it looked like a bear.

"I took a deer trap out there. With the pig being that size, very seldom do you run into something that big. So what I did is, I used hurricane straps to strap that trap down -- but the pig would not go into the trap at all after about a week and a half," Dean told Florida Today.

"Very seldom do we ever run into hogs like this, that are so massive and so big," he said.

Dean enlisted the help of some trappers, hunters and tracking dogs Saturday to locate the hog.

The pig tangled with some of the dogs before the men were able to hogtie it.

"A lot of the times when we run into calls like this, it's usually people who pen a hog up up in their backyard and grain-feed it, and then they'll go ahead and slaughter it. Because there's really not a substantial amount of woods for that hog to survive for the amount of time that it has," Dean said.

Dean said the hog was later euthanized, as licensing regulations prevented it from being relocated.

A wild boar went viral in Hong Kong earlier this year and was dubbed the "king boar" after it was caught on video eating from a trash container.