'That's a lot of sausage': Monster boar makes big impression on social media

Pat Martin had seen glimpses of big boars on his family's property in pictures from the trail cameras they had set up. 

When he came face to face with one for the first time, it was a monster. 

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After shooting the animal, he kneeled for a picture with it and sent the image to his relatives. 

But it wasn't until the picture started to go viral that he realized just how big the beast really was. 

Public reaction

"Watching other people's reactions to it, people were kind of disturbed by the picture," Martin said. 

The image had been shared on social media more than 900 times since it was posted online.

Martin shot the boar east of St. Brieux, Sask., about 170 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon, on Nov. 27. 

He said the 200-kilogram animal walked into his sight on its way to eat from some bales of hay. 

Martin usually prefers to hunt game such as moose, elk and deer. But he decided to try his luck when the pigs started appearing frequently in photos from the trail cameras. 

He said he wasn't hunting the boars to protect the land because they don't cause any problems for his family.

Instead, he said the wild pigs are worth hunting because "they're good eating" and they make for a lot of meat.

'A lot of sausage' 

"I'm going to get the skull mounted. They've got the big tusks too so they look pretty neat," Martin said. 

"The rest of it is getting ground up and made into sausage." 

He expects to get about 45 kilograms of meat from the animal after it has been processed.

"That's a lot of sausage," Martin said. 

After such a memorable start to his boar-hunting career, Martin expects he will try his luck again during weekend visits to the family property. 

"There's lots of time on your hands when you're hanging out out there so I'm sure I'll go and sit in an evening or in a morning and see what comes in," he said. 

Earlier this year, the government amended its wildlife and stray animals regulations to make it easier to hunt boar, which have become a nuisance to farmers in more than 60 rural municipalities in the southern half of the province.