After two local businessmen had a much-publicized barbecue "cook off" 14 years ago, the Chamber of Commerce decided to cast a bigger net and invite barbecue cooks from across the state to the "Big Pig Jig." The folks in Vienna, Ga., had a different opportunity come along. "There's not much you can do about fire ants, so we try to laugh at them a little and have a good time," said Pam Whisenant, tourism director for the Chamber of Commerce. Or look further south to Marshall, Texas, and its Fireant Festival _ a weekend of contests and parades, sales and nonsense, centered on the local insect. "Now it's become a tradition as much as anything else." "This will be our 57th annual Rattlesnake Roundup and the whole thing got started as a way to get rid of some snakes," said Pam Davis, editor of the Okeene Record newspaper. It tends to be on the scaly and fanged side _ as in rattlesnake. Take note of the wildlife around Okeene, Okla., for example. Not every town in America is lucky enough to have a cuddly groundhog pop its head out of a hole looking for a shadow, while the town merchants see profits no matter how many remaining weeks of winter are forecast.īut some towns make the best of what they do have. Often imitated but not yet duplicated, BIG PIG JIG® remains the Southeast’s largest and Georgia’s oldest and OFFICIAL barbecue cooking contest.STORIES BY PETER ROPER THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN More than twenty-five events similar to BIG PIG JIG® have appeared across the Southeast since 1982. The Dooly County Chamber of Commerce awards more than $17,000 in prizes, and trophies to BIG PIG JIG’s top cooks and continues to accommodate crowds of festival fun-seekers at the facility now known as BBQ CITY, U.S.A. The event attracts scores of spectators and requires more than 100 judges, countless volunteers, plus hundreds of pounds of pork. A new site located on Interstate 75 near Georgia Highway 215 in Vienna was purchased and developed for the ever-increasing number of participants.ĭecades after the idea took shape, the contest draws approximately 100 teams cooking nearly 400 entries of hogs, shoulders, ribs, plus kettles of Brunswick stew, barbecue sauce, and barbecued chicken. The setting was ideal, so a fall festival was born. Once the smoke cleared, the crafters packed and headed home, and the hogs were “gone to market,” the community recognized it had a winning combination. STUMP & SON, a team from Marietta, Georgia won the grand prize on their “train” grill. Twenty teams competed cooking whole hogs only, at BIG PIG JIG® in 1982 and $1,000 in prize money was awarded to the top seven contenders. Most notably the festival was featured on the Food Network’s “All – American Festivals” plus a one-hour special entitled “The BIG PIG JIG®”. The contest has also been named multiple times to the Discovery Travel Channel’s top ten list of “World’s Best Barbecue Contests”. The BIG PIG JIG® was listed in the New York Times best seller “1001 PLACES TO SEE BEFORE YOU DIE” by Patricia Shultz. In March of 2004 the festival was awarded the Spirit of Barbecue award from the National Barbecue News proclaiming BIG PIG JIG® Event of the Year. BIG PIG JIG® was listed by Travel Agent magazine as one of America’s Top 500 Festivals, touted by Tom Clynes, author of WILD PLANET!, as one of the world’s 1,001 Most Extraordinary Events. The merging of events has grown into a festival named twice by the American Bus Association as one of the Top 100 Events in America, three times acclaimed as one of the Top 20 Events in the Southeast by the Southeast Tourism Society, and recognized by Southeast Festivals and Events Association and International Festivals and Events Association with more than twenty five awards, including Best Georgia Festival. The History of Georgia’s Barbecue Cooking ChampionshipīIG PIG JIG® was born in Vienna, Georgia when a group of self-professed gourmets made wagers on who among them could cook the most succulent pig! That year, 1982, those creative people recommended combining a barbecue cooking competition with an established and well-attended arts and crafts fair and the county’s livestock association annual hog show.
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