Pig hunting with dogs wearing muzzles
After a recent hunt I decided to put muzzles on three of my four dogs on their next hunt. The reason one dog was not wearing a muzzle was because I only had three tracking collars and I would not put a muzzle on a dog without a tracking collar just in case the dog got lost. I have been using muzzles on dogs in my training block now for a few years so my dogs can hunt just as well with them on as with them off. The one big question that I hear from a lot of hunters is that the dogs will not be able to stop the pigs if they cannot bite them. For a hunter with hard dogs they only get to see a dog bailing a pig when it is a very good fighting pig that can keep the dog at bay. What I see in the training block is when a dog goes at a pig the pig will react, weather that is the pig running at the dog or away from the dog. What a dog needs to get into its head is that it is not out there to try and attack the pigs but stop them from running away and convince them to stay where they are until the boss arrives. I hear a lot of hunters talking about a good arse end dog that bites the pig on the arse to get its attention. This can have a negative effect on the pig I know that if someone tried to kick me in the nuts there would be a different outcome than someone wanting to talk to me. Some hunters think that a dog that won’t go in and fight with a good boar is a gutless dog. Yet if we look at the good old huntaway dogs they bark at sheep all day long and they are not scared of them they just know their job. The muzzles actually teach a dog to go around to the head of the pigs to get their attention then stand back and bail. I find the pigs stop easier this way as long as the dog can get up beside them.
On this hunt I left the bike and walked up a four wheel drive track to the top of the hill then headed along the ridge where I came upon some fresh pig rooting. I spent a wee bit of time waiting on the dogs to find the pigs and it was Fog who was stationary at 500 meters on the GPS. I had a feeling that he would be looking at pigs trying to work out his next move and trying to settle them down so they did not bolt. When he did give off his first bark it was a nice calm bark and one every ten seconds until the next dog arrived which was Snow followed by Lightning and Thunder. With four dogs their pigs started making a break for it. I was closing in through some ten year old Douglas firs and could hear animals running past through the trees. The dogs were running in all directions, I watched on the GPS as Fog went around the big knob on the hill then down into the gully on the opposite side of the hill from the bike. After a couple of minutes all of the dogs were tracking the same way as Fog. Finally Fog pulled his pig up 1km away down in the creek, on my way there both Snow and Thunder came back to me and I could see that Lightning had caught up with Fog and would have been bailing around the corner out of ear shot. I got to within 300 meters of the bail before Snow and Thunder heard the bail and took off to join in. I had a big grin on my face knowing that this boar was in the creek right beside the four wheel drive track so I would not even need to carry him at all. All four dogs were bailing well as I got some footage and a photo before I shot him. To get back to the bike I would either have to walk 3km over top of the range that I had just come over or walk 6km back around the four wheel drive track, the track it was and I made it back in just under one hour. Back at home he weighed 122 pounds and the only meat damage was from my bullet that had gone in through his head and down into one of his front shoulders.