Craig Gibb came up from Oamaru to give two of his bitches a bit of extra training.
The older bitch, Mindy was going on pigs but was holding all of the pigs Craig was catching. This was something that Craig was hopping to change. Mindy’s biggest pig to date was 137 pounds and she had not yet been ripped by a boar. Craig’s younger Bitch, Ruby was only six months old and quite shy so he was hopping to get her onto a boar in a controlled environment. Also while Craig was here we where going to get out for a hunt with my son Bryce.
For our first run in the block it was still quite hot. We took Fog and both of Craig’s bitches, When Fog put up a bail it was up in the rough stuff so I said to Craig that he could let Mindy off the rope, if she tried to hold the boar she would not be able to as she was wearing a muzzle and the boar would break down closer to us. When Mindy arrived she gave out a couple of barks which surprised Craig as he had not heard her bark on a pig up until now. She did not stay with the boar for long though before returning to us. Young Ruby did not want anything to do with the boar.
As we headed up to the bail the boar kept on moving on us. Both of Craig’s dogs where a bit reluctant to stay with Fog and the boar so I suggested to Craig that he keep following them while I head back down to the dog kennels and get Breeze as I thought with an extra dog working things up Mindy would be more likely to want to join in. Once Breeze heard Fog’s bail she headed up there as quick as she could ! That’s a fast walk for a ten year old bitch!. Once she was their I could hear three dog’s bailing so Mindy had joined in.
They were only bailing for a minute when the boar broke down past me with three dogs hot on his tail. Craig later told me that the boar ran straight over top of Ruby when it broke and gave her a hell of a fright. As I was heading down to the next bail in the tight stuff I meet up with Mindy coming back looking for Craig. When Craig caught up with me down in the creek below the bail we tried to send Mindy up to the other dogs but she was a bit reluctant. Because it was still quite hot I called my two dogs off and we headed back to the hut for a well earned beer. When we got back up into the block we only had thirty minutes of light left so I put some food in for the pigs this way we did not need to go looking for them and I was hoping to get the dogs onto the ginger boar as he is the best fighting boar in the block. When I put Lightning and Breeze in with the pigs they started to scatter with the ginger boar and one of the large grey boars breaking away together so I got the two dogs to chase these two. It did not take to long before there was a bail in the creek for us to head to. It turned out that the dogs had the grey boar with a good intense bail going on.
While Mindy was having a few barks she was being very cautious as this was probably the biggest boar she had ever seen. After a couple of minutes at the bail I decided to take the muzzle off Mindy to see if it would make any difference. She did not once try and go in for a hold and got a lot of encouragement over the next fifteen minutes until it became to dark.
Next morning we were up bright and early well before the birds started to sing. We were going to meet my son Bryce at 6 am at a farm that we had not hunted for over
a year now. The plan was to walk up a big native gully then head back around the tops. We had made it as far up the gully as we were going to go and were heading up one of the side gully’s towards the tops when I noticed the dogs staring to get keen on some scent. We had only just got out onto the edge of the farm land when Lightning opened up with a nice bail up a side gully only one hundred meters away. As we all stood listening we could hear each extra dog arrive and join in on the bail. Finally we had five dogs bailing Lightning, Fog, Mack, Dusky and Mindy while young Ruby was still with us as she is still a bit to young yet. As we headed to the bail the boar broke once, closer to where we were coming from. Bryce’s Superior fitness shone though as he left Craig and I behind. We where about thirty meters from the bail when a shot rang out. Bryce said that when he arrived the boar had one
of the dogs up against the bank and was giving it a real work out so he did not hesitate to take the shot as soon as the opportunity presented itself. Mindy received a three inch rip above her tail which Craig thought was well overdue and he was impressed with the way she bailed with the other dogs. Lightning received two small pokes to the neck and that was all of the injuries. With the boar gutted Bryce volunteered for the first carry up out of the creek to the edge of the paddocks. We had about six hundred meters of up hill ahead of us before the two km around the track and the last five hundred meters dragging the boar down to where we could get the truck too. By the time we made it back to the truck we were all soaked to the bone but very happy with our day out.