My son Bryce and I headed down south for a hunting trip with Richard Hand and Tony Hogg on a large station. One year ago we done the same trip and ended up with ten pigs on that trip so expectations were high. We were going to head out to a hut at the back of the station which is fifty km back off the road. On the first day the weather forecast was not looking to good so Tony jacked up the shearers quarters for us to stay in and we would hunt the front of the place.
Tony was going to be late to arrive on the first morning due to work commitments so it was just the three of us on the four wheeler heading to the first paddock. Richard was that confident that we would have a pig within the first ten minutes of getting into this block that he was willing to put a 24 pack on it. As we were riding up to the gate there were five fellow deer standing waiting for us. The farmer had said to us that he would like a fellow deer for some steaks if we could get one.
Richard stepped off the bike leaned on the gate and shot two out of the five deer and let the rest walk off. We could almost ride the bike to them so they were quickly gutted and put into the shade. We reminded Richard that his ten minutes was just about up and we did not have a pig yet. As we rode down the first spur there was another fellow sitting down in the sun just watching us. We left this one in peace as we did not want to take any more fellow on this trip. On the third spur that we rode down Fog and Keith tracked off down into the gully.
While we were waiting on the dogs to find something we saw more deer grazing. The dogs did not take to long to put up a bail so Bryce went down to them while Richard and I went around on the bike. Bryce had the pig sorted out by the time we got there. We were on the board for the trip with a sixty pound boar. Next pig we hit not long afterwards with Fog, Keith and Dusky. This pig made it right down into the gully beside a small river and I got some good footage on Bryce’s camera as the young boar was charging the dogs.
In the end Keith grabbed it followed by Fog and then Bryce finishing the job. This boar was 87 pounds and managed to take Dusky out for the rest of the trip as she got a small poke under her mouth that just did not want to stop bleeding. The carry out was under two hundred meters but step and we only got one carry each. When we got back on the bike we had only just started heading out when Keith put up a bail just on the edge of the scrub. Fog seemed to be mucking around and standing back as Richard and I had our guns pointed towards the barking ready to fire as soon as the pig charged out at the dog. We both cracked up laughing when a ten pound pig ran out. On the way back to the truck we ran into Tony so we went back to the truck to swap dogs before heading out to another spot for another hunt. As we were riding along I pointed out a dead cow to Tony and he said that it did not look as if any pigs had been around it yet, but then he looked up and there was a pig running as fast as it could away towards the skyline. We did catch up a bit on the bike before we got to the fence into the block called no man’s land that has a lot of gorse. The dogs were quick to take off and we could hear the odd bark as they were trying to stop a pig. Richard and Bryce pulled up not far behind us and their dogs were gone as soon as they stopped. Richard rode his bike down through the gorse as far as he could towards where the dogs had a bail going. As we were heading down to this pig the young dogs kept coming back to us leaving only Lightning with the pig. As we got close this pig just kept breaking and the young dogs seemed to have had a bit of a fright as they were not wanting to mix it with this fella. Tony managed to shot this boar that weighed 148 pounds. Mack had taken a beating with a hole in his front shoulder and another one in his back leg so he was now out for the rest of the trip. It was a gut buster getting this guy out but with two really fit guys in Tony and Bryce we managed. Half way out and Richard called us up on the radio to say that he had an accident he had falling over and his gun had gone off and accidentally shot another fellow. This trip was turning out very successful, still day one and we had three boars and three fellow deer. Thinking that the hunt was over, we were driving back to the shearers quarters when we came around a corner and there was Tony stopped in the middle of the road leaning on his bonnet shooting at four red deer that were running away. End result two more deer to add to our tally. The beer tasted good that night.
Next day we done a lot of riding around looking and it was not until later in the day before we got onto some animals. By this point we had split up and it was Richard calling us on the walkie talkie to tell us they had a big sow and he could see some pigs breaking down towards our direction. Tony and I headed to where Richard said and it was Fog that was only fifty meters away from us in the tight manuka that found one of the pigs. At first he was stationary with the pig but not barking, I knew that he would have been trying to settle the pig down before going into a bail. The other younger dogs did not know about the pig at this stage. As we slowly moved towards the pig Thunder picked up on it and moved in. We got to about thirty meters from it when the pig tried to break. He did not make it far before a good bail started up. I was within a few meters of the bail when two of Richards dogs, Keith and Bro turned up and things went from a bail to a hold. Tony ended up sticking the 115 pound boar. Tony carried this boar back to the bike and we rode up to Bryce and Richard to give them a hand as they had caught three pigs and were carrying them out. We ran out of hooks in the killing shed so had to tie some of the pigs up on the rails.
This room was starting to fill up and we still had one more morning to go. Next day we went to yet another one of Tony’s hot spots and the dogs tracked off straight away down into a very step gully. The dogs were only 160 meters away when they put up a bail but it took Bryce and Tony a long time to get down to them because of the steepness and bluffs. They both done very well carrying the 110 pound sow out while Richard and I stayed up at the bikes. The last pig that we caught for the trip was a young sow and while I was carrying her out through some dead broom I slipped over and a stick went into my eye, it was not a nice feeling and I was lucky that I did not pop my eye, it was saw for days but did come right eventually.