This was to be the first hunting comp for the year for our South Island Ridgeline team. We also had a team on the same day at the Cromwell comp. This is the third year that we have judged the Horarata comp so we all knew where to set things up so that the traffic could flow on through once the lucky hunters started arriving. The competition is run by the locals as a fund raiser for their community.
The organisers do a good job of getting many of the locals along and run a very good comp. A lot of the younger ones get involved in the hare carrying races and the bigger ones carry a boar around the course. Also there was the possum throwing comp. These are always good entertainment for the spectators. The weigh in was between 11am-2pm and as at a lot of these comps the main amount of animals only started coming in after 1pm. This makes the judge’s job very busy for a short time. Up until 1pm it was looking like there was not going to be too many animals coming in. To counter this it is a good idea to have prizes for the first so many animals to come in so that the judge’s job is a bit more spread out.
Because we are independent judges we have to go by the rules of each particular comp and one rule that has caught us out, which all comps should be thinking about is having testicles attached to the animal. The reason for this rule is to make sure that the animal has not been tampered with as animals have to be from the wild. I can still remember when this rule came in many years ago and it caught a lot of hunters out as their animal had to be disqualified if they did not have the nuts attached. With this competition they had a section for deer and when some of the deer came in with out their nuts we had no option but to not accept them because of the rules. For a deer if the nuts are removed while the deer is alive they will not grow their antlers. At this comp there were two beautiful Fallow stags with nice heads and we had no option but to not accept these deer because their nuts had been cut out. Even with the boars and barrows for an experienced person you can tell the difference by one of two ways. A boar has a scrotum with very little hair whereas a barrow grows hair over the same area. Also a barrows tusks will grow differently, once they have their nuts removed their tusks grow at both ends so as they grow out of the jaw like normal but they also grow back inside of the jaw which gradually gets a big lump on the side of their jaws.
At this comp last year the weather turned nasty on us and poured down with rain so it was good this year to see a beautiful sunny day. Also last year they had a boar with a really good jaw and it was good to see this year another dam good boar come in with another impressive set of tusks on him.
Results
Heaviest Boar
1st Taylor Cleland 179 pounds
2nd Leon Reitveld 177 pounds
3rd Andrew Cole 145 pounds
4th Brooke Dickey 139 pounds
5th Jenny McMurdo 139 pounds
Heaviest Stag
1st Ben Fitzgibbon 285 pounds
2nd Richard Hill 219 pounds
3rd Rodney Inch 213 pounds
Average weight boar Brent Shearer 123 pounds
below average weight Tairi Mullen
above average weight Jenny McMurdo
Junior heaviest boar
1st Harry Smith 125 pounds
2nd Fergus Reitveld 119 pounds
3rd Sonny McAndrew 68 pounds
Junior heaviest stag
1st Harry Smith 233 pounds
2nd Jade McKay 142 pounds
3rd Kyle Horn 116 pounds
Junior heaviest wallaby
1st Ryan T 36 pounds
2nd Quinn Brown 35 pounds
3rd Mellisa Mattson 33 pounds
Best tusks Leon Reitveld 22 1/8
Best antlers Richard Hill