I was over due for a trip down south as Richard Hand had made me some more muzzles for the dogs so that was a good enough excuse to get a hunt in while I was down their. As it turned out one of Richards main dogs is pregnant to my dog Fog’s brother and I have my name down for the second pick of a male if she has two that is.
Tony had also heard about this upcoming litter and gave Richard a call to see if he could also get one of the pups when it was born. Richard has hunted with Tony on a number of occasions and while they where talking Richard mentioned that I was coming down for a weekend to go for a hunt and Tony asked if we would like to come out for a hunt with him on a large farm that he regularly hunts on that has a couple of pigs.
I drove down to Richards on the Friday evening after spending the day driving a milk tanker. It was a four hour drive so I was looking forward to getting out from behind the wheel after sixteen hours and sit down to enjoy a nice cold beer.
Next morning Richard and I meet up with Tony and drove to the farm he had jacked up for the next two days. The farmer meet us at the homestead and offered us the use of one of their bike trailers so this saved me from having to get squashed on the side of the bike which was good. Once we had got all of our gear ready we where off on the long ride out to the back hut 32 km away where we would spend the night. We could be hunting all the way out and back. We had four dogs with us Tony had a 14 month old dog Hemi, Richard had a 14 month old Keith and I had Keith’s brother Fog and 3 year old Lightning. We did not catch any pigs on the way out and we had plans of dumping all of our gear and having a quick look around before dark. By the time we got our gear sorted the fog had started to roll in cutting visibility down so it was an easy decision to stay at the hut and empty as many beer bottles as we could to make it lighter to cart out the next day.
Next morning started nice and cool so we headed to one of Tony’s favourite spots where he said he never misses out. As we were riding down the track Keith and Fog were running along out in front when they picked up on a pig scent. Lightning was sitting on the bike when he spotted them and jumped off in hot pursuit. As we got off the bikes the dogs were already out to 400 meters away so we were off after them. They made it out to 700 meters from were they started before they realised that they were heading in the wrong direction. I was watching the tracker as Fog and Lightning reached where the bikes were parked. At this point Fog stopped and came back towards me, as soon as he saw me he carried on to catch up with Lightning. Both Keith and Hemi were hanging back with us until we where 400 meters past the bike then Keith tracked off after the other dogs. As we approached a gully 700 meters from the bike we could hear the three dogs bailing and Hemi took off down at this point to join in. from 100 meters off at the top of the gully we could see the four dogs bailing a good boar. At one point the boar tried to break and made it about 70 meters before he was stopped by Keith running up beside him and having ago at his face this caused the boar to try and attack him as he stopped on the spot. As the three of us approached the boar was standing in the creek with the dogs bailing out in front of him. Tony had a head camera filming which left his hands free, Richard was holding his video camera getting some footage and I had my wee camera taken photos. While we were filming the boar went to break as I managed to get a shot away when he had only moved one foot. This was enough to through him off balance but was not a fatal shot as I had hit him through his top jaw. Lightning was straight onto his back end with Fog and Keith going for his head as Tony jumped in to stick the boar. Tony got right in the middle of the fight when the boar managed to get around and tried slashing between Tony’s legs, so he had grabbed the boar by the bristles above his shoulders and turned it around to get a hold of the tail then the leg so that Richard could step in beside him and stick it. Once the boar stopped kicking I got a bit of a ridding about my shot, all for a bit of fun. Tony Gutted the boar and tied the legs up using dog collars. Richard had mentioned to me before I meet Tony that he was very fit as he has competed in bike riding for New Zealand, he did not disappoint as he put the boar on his back and walked the couple of hundred meters back to the four wheel drive track making it look pretty easy. All three of us took a guess at the weight of which Richard was bang on 129 pounds.
On the way out it had started to really warm up again so it was good to get back to the trucks after such a long ride.
It had been good to hunt a different property that I had not been on before and also hunt with another new person who is just as passionate about the sport as myself.