Boris is a very large boar that was giving to me by George Brite. Boris belonged to his father but was getting a bit big and hard to handle. When I first received him he would have weighed 250 pounds but has lost a wee bit of weight since as he now has so much ground to walk around in. I gave Boris two weeks in the block with out dogs so that he could get used to the area with out being hassled. Mike and Jordy traveled down from Christchurch with their dogs for some training.
For a start we had my dog Fog, Jordy’s black bitch that was about two years old but had yet to be on a good bail and Mike had two eight month old pups a bitch and a dog. Fog found Boris for us and we walked to the bail with the other three dogs as they did not want to go to the barking. Whe:n we first got to the pig the other three dogs were a bit intimidated by the size of Boris so stayed back a bit. Boris was starting to get a bit worked up so the three of us all climbed a tree for safety reasons. For a start Boris was not paying enough attention to Fog so I took his muzzle off, this quickly changed the game as Fog nipped Boris on the arse the next time he turned his back on him. As the tempo went up a bit Jordy’s Bitch started to join in along with Mike’s bitch pup. At this point I could see that Jordy’y bitch was not going to do anything stupid so I took the muzzle off her. I had not put muzzles on the pups as I did not think they would go in and try to fight with any pig at the stage that they were at. After about twenty minutes on Boris Mike asked if he could also let his nine year old main bitch in as this was the dog that he wanted his pups to hunt with. This bitch came running in full of go and not thinking about what could happen.
With out hesitation she ran straight into Boris, there was a quick scream and she came back to us within the first couple of seconds with a good hole in her front shoulder. I have seen this happen a lot of times over the years and what causes this is a dog that catches a lot of smaller pigs that they can handle so their confidence goes right up and they see them selves as inadvisable. I had a quick look at her poke and realized that it was not life threatening just a good lesson for her. So we let her go back in. This time she showed Boris the respect that she should have shown at the start. As time went on Mikes other young dog pup started getting keener all the time. His first barks were from a way back from Boris but by the time we called them off he had gained a lot of confidence. At one stage we wanted to see if the young dogs would go and find Boris themselves so we called the dogs off and walked away for a couple of minutes then I held onto Fog and Mikes Bitch while they walked the younger dogs down to where we had the previous bail. Boris had not moved and the young dogs bailed well. The second time we called the dogs off and walked away Boris must have decided that he had not yet finished with us.
When he found us up the gully a bit he charged at us and the dogs, Mike knocked me off balance as he moved around me to get away from Boris and Jordy tried to run but tripped and rolled down the bank hitting a number of good sized rocks as he went. The dogs were quick to back Boris up in the creek ten meters above Jordy who was laying down yelling not to let Boris get him. I couldn’t help but have a good laugh and Mike grabbed out his camera and got a photo of the big tough pig hunter lying down. Eventually Jordy got up and brushed himself off, he did get a couple of good bruises but no broken bones.
So hunters nil Boris one dog and one hunter, cant wait for the next run.