Switcheroo rocks hunting comp Pig ring-in leaves a sow taste
IT is the scandal that will forever be the talk of grunter hunter conventions around the nation.
A giant pig on the cusp of being named the winner at last weekend’s Collinsville Bacon Buster’s pig hunt competition was a fake, and not a feral.
It turned out one of the “hunters” was telling porkies about his porker.
The dodgy pig scandal has sparked a furore up that is up there with the horse racing industry’s Fine Cotton ring-in affair of 1984.
Collinsville police officer-in-charge Sergeant Adrian Browning confirmed a giant 198kg porker that was on the cusp of being named the Bacon Buster winner on Saturday afternoon was found to have been removed from a Bowen address the week before.
The Bacon Busters Competition revolves around the hunting, killing and weighing-in of wild pigs. Entering of domestic pigs, especially ones that have been illegally removed from their sty, is considered unsportsmanlike and is not permitted.
Sgt Browning said the pig was placed at No.1 on the leaderboard after being weighed in on Saturday. He said a hunter at the weigh-in station saw the pig and suspected it was not feral and that it might be from a sty in Bowen. He alerted authorities.
Sgt Browning went to the weigh-in station and spoke to the person who had weighed in the pig. Sgt Browning said he later issued the man with an infringement notice for trespass.
He said the pig’s rightful owner later arrived from Bowen and spoke to the man who had entered the pig in the competition.
Sgt Browning said he was “relieved” that the two men reached a mutually acceptable agreement.
“The circumstances surrounding the pig’s owner and the hunter were settled civilly,” he said.
Sgt Browning, who has been in the police force since 2007, said the case of the ring-in pig was unusual, even for Collinsville.
“It’s up there with the most bizarre I’ve had to deal with,” he said.
One Collinsville local who spoke to the Townsville Bulletin said if no one had “squealed” the ring-in pig might have won the competition.
“It even had floppy ears, which made it look more like a domestic pig,” he said.
The nation’s thoroughbred racing industry was rocked on August 18, 1984 when champion horse Bold Personality was disguised and entered as the plodder, Fine Cotton, at the Eagle Farm races.
The scam – the most notorious ring-in scandal in Australia’s racing history – has been immortalised as the Fine Cotton affair.
And now there is the Collinsville Bacon Busters’ Fake Feral scandal of 2019. Collinsville, incidentally, is regarded as the pig dog capital of the world.