Not long ago I received a mayday call from John (Baldy) asking if the Ridgeline team could help out with their hunting comp in just under two weeks time. With a last minute email around we managed to put a team together, Matt Simmons from Waiau. Bill and Bryce Westwood from Geraldine and Cory Rose from Ashburton. Also on the 2nd of June we had the help of two of the locals for lifters, Mike Benny and Rob Shaw. Mike really earnt himself a beer with the amount of pork and venison that he moved around during the day.
This comp also had a section for sows to keep the local farmers happy. The publican Kate Fairbairn was a nice young lady and very grateful for the help of the Ridgeline team as this was the first competition that she had organised. I think she may have been stressing slightly about how things where going to turn out. She did not need to worry though as the comp went off well.
Like many comps that don’t have prizes for the first animals weighed in things started slow. The weigh in was from 10 am – 2 pm and it was not until closer to 1 pm before things started getting very busy for the Ridgeline team as the animals started pouring in. The weather could not have been better as it was not to hot that the animals could go off and it was not could enough where everyone heads in side to bar. Normally the deer section does not interest me much as I am a die hard pig hunter but their where some very impressive animals weighed in. one big stag was shot by a fourteen year old boy and it was his first deer.
The top two stags were only .4 of a kg apart in weight. I would not be surprised if one or two of the heads end up on some ones wall somewhere.
In the pig section their where some very good boars taken and the one that won the best jaw was easy to pick just by looking at them which saved us having to measure to many jaws, it measured up at 18 6/8.
Their was even one boar with purple nail polish on its toes, I think it may have been a hunters daughter trying to make it look pretty. It certainly did stand out. Normally at pig hunting comps you can get a good idea how many pigs will be weighed in by how many entries there are, but this can depend on the rules as some comps have the rule of one animal per category. With this comp there were no limit on the amount of animals any hunter could weigh in also their was the section for sows. Because of this we ended up weighing a lot more animals than I would have expected for the 80 entries.
Maybe this could also be a sign that their are a lot of animals around at present. Another thing to take into account is that pig hunters are travelling a long way to go to some of the comps now days. I talked to one hunter who said that he had driving up from South Otago to weigh his pigs in. That would be a drive of 5 – 6 hours each way. I also know of another two hunters who were travelling down from the North Island to hunt near the bottom of the South Island for their comp in the North.
As we are still in the early part of the pig hunting comps for the year it will be interesting to see weather we still see good numbers of pig in the later comps or weather pig hunters start to take their toll on the pig population.
Results
36 boars weighed in
Heaviest boar Reynard Reimink 182 pounds
2nd Brad Carswell 172 pounds
3rd Josh Leppens 161 pounds
4th VaughanCampbell / Neil Boocock 149 pounds
Average weight boar Ashley Duckworth 115 pounds
One above Daniel Fleming 119 pounds
One below Steve Pauling 113 pounds
19 sows weighed in
Heaviest sow Nigel Taylor 122 pounds
2nd Francis Drake 95 pounds
3rd James Barkle 94 pounds
Average weight sow Tari Mullen 85 pounds
One above Tom Manahi 86 pounds
One below Steve Pauling 75 pounds
Overall average weight Tom Manahi 103 pounds
Best tusks Josh Leppens 18 6/8
14 stags weighed in
Heaviest stag
Clint Stringer 302 pounds
2nd Paul Harrison 301 pounds
5 hinds weighed in
Heaviest hind Duncan
Mackintosh 203 pounds
2nd Tari Mullen 181 pounds