Gus is now just over 23 weeks old and ready for his 1st hunt. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve noticed Gus grow up a lot and he can keep up with the other dogs.
For this hunt I am leaving Tig the possum dog and Fog the old dog behind as I want Gus to see a bailed pig. So my trio today is Gus, Bro and Rastus.
Because I have already done a lot of training with Gus he knows all about the motorbike which makes things a lot easier.
The first few km were uneventful then the first animal that we encountered was a possum.
This is where a hunter needs to know their dogs well enough to understand what animal the dog is indicating without seeing the animal. Both Rastus and Bro have watched Tig catch thousands of possums so they know that they are not allowed to catch them but rather target the pigs. It was Bro that stopped on the track to indicate to me that their was a possum in the slash on the ground below the track. Meanwhile Gus is wanting to poke around which gets the possum to scoot up the tree. Gus gets to see that the other two dogs are not showing any interest in this animal and when I say outside to Gus he quickly loses interest in the possum and comes back to me. Fifty meters along the track and I get to see Gus sniffing another possum that I can’t see so I just repeat, outside and Gus happily follows me away.
Up near the top of the hill and Rastus and Bro are away tracking a pig so I’m standing on the track with Gus and looking at the GPS following their progress. They tracked 300 meters up around the top before splitting up on two different pigs and it was Rastus that was tracking back towards Gus and I. I put a bullet in the gun to get ready with Gus beside me when a 70 lb sow jumped down onto the track right in front of us. Gus was a bit ensure what to do as the pig got a fright at seeing us and turned to run away down the track. As Rastus jumped down about 5 seconds behind the pig Gus perked up and chased him down the track. Rastus caught up to the pig in about seventy meters with Gus also getting there. There was only a couple of barks after Rastus had turned the pig before it bolted through the bush down hill. Gus returned to me while Rastus gave chase. This pig knew it was running for its life and made it 800 meters down hill and around into the next gully. As we were making our way there Bro came past me and tracked off to join the bail.
As I closed in on this bail I made sure I had the camera going as I wanted to catch Gus’s first reactions. At first he was ensure what to do but I did record that first bark.
This pig did do one more break but only made 50 meters which Gus did give chase. I kept this bail going for quite some time to give Gus a chance to learn. While Gus did spend a bit of time standing back with me every time the sow charged he got keen to have a bark. In the end I called the dogs off and let her go for another day, happy in the fact that Gus had a successful first hunt.
Gus looking a bit worn out after a big day on the hill.
