13-Year-Old Girl Drops 750-Pound Hog

At first glance, Kristen Sharpe, 13, of Uvalda, thought she was looking at a cow when she peeked out the window into the 10-acre field behind her house.

The home-schooler was at home watching “Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman” on the television on Dec. 3 when her Beagle-Rottweiler mix Herby started barking. Kristen said Herby had been barking on and off all day, so she was about to step outside and tell him to hush when she saw the estimated 750-lb. hog in the field.

“I got scared, and then I called my daddy. He told me to go get the .30-06 and shoot it. So I did.”

At 5-feet, 5-inches tall, Kristen Sharpe, 13, of Uvalda, is dwarfed by the 750-lb. wild hog she killed in Montgomery County Dec. 3.

The Sharpes have been seeing hog sign in the field behind their house for several months, and Kristen’s dad, Michael Sharpe, killed a big 435-lb. sow there the same evening Kristen killed her giant pig. However, they had never even seen sign of a wild hog this big until Kristen laid eyes on it. Once she had the rifle in her hands, Kristen said she wasn’t scared to step outside.

“I knew if it started coming at me, I could shoot at it,” she said.

From about 70 yards, Kristen held the rifle free-hand, put the crosshairs on the hog’s vitals and squeezed the trigger.

“The first shot gut-shot him,” Kristen said. “He went about 10 feet and then lay down. Then I went up and finished him off.”

Kristen took her second shot at the hog from about 20 yards.

“I aimed right behind the ear,” she said. “I hit him right in the head.”

It took two hours and a truck for Kristen and her dad to get the hog loaded up on a trailer. They took it to Lumber City Meats, in Lumber City, for processing, where they got 425 pounds of meat off the animal. The lower tusks on Kristen’s hog measured about 4 inches, and the uppers measured an inch and a half long.

“Just the meat from mine weighed as much as the one my daddy shot,” Kristen said.

“I think I’ll have to take out a loan to get all that meat processed,” joked Michael.

With all the meat they piled up Dec. 3, he gave his hog to a friend.

Kristen has decided she may add hog-hunter to her resume, which already includes deer and squirrel hunter.

“I went from a tiny squirrel to a huge hog,” Kristen said. “I squirrel hunt, and I go deer hunting with my daddy. I’ve never hog hunted, but I think I’m going to start because I like going hunting. But I’m probably not going to shoot any more hogs for a while, because we have enough meat.”