What will likely turn out to be the largest wild boar ever recorded made his way to the pearly gates of Hog Heaven Jan. 3 after being caught red-handed by Bill Coursey while chowing down on front yard delectables on Chappell Road near Brooks.

Coursey hauled the Brooks Beast to the Waste Management transfer station in Fayetteville to get an official weight. The beast tipped the scales at 1,100 pounds. Measurements taken by Coursey and his son Russell later in the day showed the boar to be eight feet long from snout to tail.

Coursey said he received a call from a neighbor, grabbed his rifle with 7mm-08 “light magnum” slugs and went to the location around the corner from his Morris Drive home. What Coursey saw when he arrived was stunning.

“I’ve been a hunter all my life and I’ve never seen anything like this,” Coursey said, the amazed look on his face reinforced by the large black creature with three-inch tusks positioned beside him after being hoisted on a large tree limb. It was a truly awesome spectacle. “If I’d seen something like this in the woods I’d be running as fast as I could.”

Coursey said he had heard reports of large wild hogs in the area since moving to the south Fayette neighborhood seven years ago. During those years, one or more wild boars made easy work of plants and sod around the neighborhood and, on one occasion, even chomped down on plastic decorative flowers in a nearby yard.

Coursey said another local resident claimed to have seen three other boars of similar size during the past few years, though the trio might have met the same fate.

Hog Hunter Magazine Senior Field Editor Gary Dowdy said Monday most all wild boars in the United States have bred with a domestic pigs at some point. Yet Coursey’s boar provides plenty of reason to recognize that the 1,100-pound monster is certainly anything but a farm-raised hog. That evidence includes its enormous teeth, small ears and the absence of noticeable body fat, Dowdy said.

“He exceeds the size of Hogzilla [in south Georgia] that was shown to weigh 800 pounds,” Dowdy said, adding that wild boar can reach 400-600 pounds.

For his part, Coursey said he is fielding numerous inquiries and awaiting confirmation that the massive Brooks Beast is officially one for the record books.