On Sunday the 3rd of February I left home at 3.30 am to drive to Christchurch so that I could fly to Auckland then drive down to Hamilton for the NZPHA committee meeting. I was travelling to and from Christchurch with Garry Ottman so I had someone to talk to on the trip.
There was a good turn out at the meeting and we went through a number of things.
The hunter who has just been prosecuted for cruelty to animals got a big mention. I personally have not seen the footage but was told that there was four separate pieces of footage, two in a fenced off paddock and two in a pig pen. The pig hunter had a knife his rifle and his dogs with ripe collars and tracking collars. When he put his dogs in the pig pen he encouraged them to attack the captive pig before sticking it in the side then letting his dog carry on the attack while encouraging it on and filming the pig still standing there with blood dripping out of its shoulder. Then he stabbed the pig in the other shoulder and kept on filming while his dogs where still attacking the pig, finally he grabbed the pig by the back legs and encouraged his dog to grab the pig by the head before he finally stuck it. This guy got off with $7.500 court costs and a $500 fine. When Warren Petersen the president of the NZPHA was interviewed by the TV news he said that pig hunters in general do not condone this kind of behaviour and believed that the hunter got off far to lightly and should not be allowed to own a dog for the next 15 years until he grows up enough to know how to treat an animal. During the court case they said that this was how to train a pig dog and that he had read Bill Westwood’s book and was following his techniques. The lawyers have obviously not read my book as I do not like seeing one animal attack another animal and that is one of the reasons why I am trying to give pig hunters more information so that we don’t get ourselves into these situations. The stand that the NZPHA take on this matter is that they do not condone the unnecessary harming of any animal. We do not have a problem with any dog trying to stop a pig in the wild that has every chance of getting away as long as the hunter is doing their best to get their and finish the pig off as fast as they can. Training a dog on a pig in a pen is ok as long as the dog is not attacking the pig as it is no different than a sheep dog working sheep, but if you have a pig in a pen and you put a dog on it with the intention of letting that dog attack that pig then the NZPHA will not support you.
The new GPS system has arrived in the country and is currently on trail in the north island and seems at this stage to have the same coverage as the garmin tracking collars but the new system does have an advantage if you have more collars out their they can talk to each other giving the hunter greater coverage. Both the hand held unit and the collars are bigger than the garmin ones. The map on the hand held unit does not zoom in as far as the garmin one but I am guessing that this is only a case of the sim card map needing upgrading.
The biggest advantage this new GPS has over the garmin one is that it is operating on a legal frequency. Hopefully all of the testing can be done on them and on the market before the coming winter months.
The 1080 issue was again brought up as two guys from the Hawkes Bay turned up and mentioned about a lot of their local forests are about to be poisoned again. Some of the poisoning was to begin at the start of winter which would mean that their club members could not hunt there over this coming winter. This has had the affect of them losing a number of club members as their club gets access to these blocks. They said that they do not have a problem with the forestry company themselves as they are being dictated to by the animal health board AHB about when and where the poisons will be dropped. One of the proposals put forward by the NZPHA was to go to the AHB and see if they can put their poison operation back to the end of winter that way they can still hunt there and every one is happy. It will be interesting to see if they have any joy. One of the reasons that AHB prefer to poison over the winter months is because there is less food around so the animals are more inclined to take the baits.
One of our committee members had an accident on his four wheeler recently. He was riding down a track when the bike took off, quickly he realised it was in two wheel drive so he changed it to four wheel drive. This caused the bike to go straight over forwards pinning him underneath the bike causing some bad injuries. A lot of pig hunters use four wheelers now days myself included so just be careful out there. We don’t want to give the law makers any excuse to make every bike rider wear a helmet as you can not hear a dog barking with a helmet on.
The NZPHA are going to get some more bumper stickers printed as these seem to be a popular choice for pig hunters also there are still some caps with the NZPHA logo on them left. They can be purchased through the NZPHA web site. Web address www.nzpighunting.org.nz
As Gary and I where travelling back towards Auckland I got one of those phone calls that no parent likes to receive, my oldest son Sloan had come off his motor bike on a trail ride and was being airlifted to Christchurch hospital with a suspected broken back. Luckily it turned out that his back was not broken but he has a whooping bruise to show for his effort. He said the guy on the bike behind him was wearing a helmet cam and filmed him as he over shot a corner and went 15 meters out and 7 meters down before he hit the ground hard.
I finally got back home late on the Monday night.
thanx heaps for the updates on your training aswell as everything else you do.. you are a assest to the greater hunting community. Thanks heaps for your hard work much appreciated..chur