Yesterday I went out for a hunt with a client, Hayden Manson. Hayden was turning 30 years old and wanted to catch a pig for his birthday with his dog, King. For this hunt I took Bro and Gus who were wearing muzzles and Woof. We parked the bike up and started walking up the 4wd track we had walked about 800 meters when Bro and Gus bailed a pig below the track. They had this pig bailed for about a minute before it broke down through the crap towards the river. Woof and King took off after the action. This pig tried hard to give the dogs the slip in some pretty shitty conditions but Bro and Gus are well trained in finding and stopping pigs. We heard when they stopped the pig and when Woof and King arrived and jioned the bail away down by the river. I said to Hayden that he could head down to the action while I ran back to the bike then rode 1.2km around to the other side of the river. We had just had 35 mls of rain the day before so the river was flowing good. I had trouble finding a way down my side as there was a fifty meter cliff above the action. I did manage to find a spot where I could slowly lower myself down through the scrub. As I approached the bail from down stream I could see Hayden on the upstream side of the bail. However Woof was not at the bail. When Hayden had arrived, Woof went back looking for me. I talked to Hayden explaining that I would shot the pig if he jumped into the river to grab it before it floated away. The shot was nice and clean and we secured a 105lb pig.
With the pig dead I looked at my GPS and discovered that Woof had tracked back up looking for me and was now back where I had grabbed the motorbike from. This was a good chance for him to work out how to find his own way back to me. We gutted the pig and tied it’s legs up so that Hayden could carry this pig up to the road. While it was not going to be a long carry it was a real gut buster of a climb through scrub on a near vertical face. I managed to make a sort of track for Hayden to follow and he done well. At the bike I watched the GPS as Woof tracked back down to where we got the pig but he could not get up out of the gully even though I was only 30 meters from him. He did listen to me and realized that I was heading up stream so would have had to swim up river to where I knew of a pig crossing. It was good to see that he did not panic and worked out how to get out of there.
While Woof isn’t quite finding the pigs yet he won’t be too far off as he loves working.
Awesome experience for young wood.no panic or barking fool head off. He learning well. Nice pig.
Sorry that should read Woof,not wood. Good the young pup just got on with finding his own way back to where the “boss” last was,then work out how to get back to where you were,without panicking and howling as lost n lonely like so many young dogs do till work it out.