By the time the news hit the wires, the kid already had a Web site, conveniently sponsored in part by Lost Creek Plantation, the 2,400-acre hunting area where he killed the pig. The site proclaimed that he had killed the largest hog ever for an 11-year-old and that a video was coming. I'm sure people will be buying the video and buying hunts at Lost Creek, which advertises preserve hog hunts for a $2 a pound trophy fee.

To get that big, though, the hog had to have been fed out in some way, not grown wild to a thousand pounds. By late in the week, an Alabama pig farmer came forward to say that the pig was his originally, and that it had been bought and placed in the enclosure just four days before the hunt. The boy's dad added a long disclaimer to the Web site, stating they never claimed it was a record pig, that killing the hog was still a great accomplishment and that nobody did anything wrong.

People have done worse for no money, of course, but this was wrong. They claimed it was a feral hog. It wasn't. They planned to sell videos, and the plantation planned to sell hunts for pigs that belonged in someone's barnyard. It's too orchestrated, whether it's illegal or not.