This hunt has been a long time coming. When my youngest son Bryce was young he would always be out on the hill with me hunting. But as he had settled down with his wife Megan and they had two sons, Bryce was kept busy on their farms. It was his oldest son Lachie that had said he wanted to go pig hunting with Grandad.
Bryce had two really good pig dogs, Dusky and Buck. While Dusky is still alive she is too old for pig hunting but Buck was still up for a hunt even though he had not been out for years.
For this hunt I had Bro and Gus who were wearing muzzles along with Buck who did not have a muzzle on.
It helped that one of my neighbors had contacted me earlier in the week to see if I could come up to catch some pigs as they were making a mess. As we were driving along the road I noticed a rock that was not there last week so we let the dogs out of the box.
It did not take them long to pick up a scent. For a start they were looking the wrong way but finally Crossed the road. My two dogs mucked around in the creek where the boar had crossed while Buck carried on up into a shitty face of native. He spent a bit of time tracking around in there as the boar must have been trying to give him the slip but as he came down lower Bro picked up his air scent and went up. While we were waiting we saw a Wallaby sneaking out and then thirty seconds later Bro tracked out after it so I gave him a tone on the collar. He immediately stopped and went back into the native only to reappear a minute later chasing a good black boar. This boar made it around the corner to where we heard Bro open up with a nice bail. Gus came running past us to help out and Buck was obviously on his way. We jumped in the truck and headed around and across the creek to where we parked less than fifty meters from a good three dog bail. Lochie wanted to go into the scrub with Bryce but I got him to stay back on the track with me as this sounded like a good stroppy boar.
Bryce said as he was getting close he saw the boar charge the dogs and as they retreated the boar turned to break but then saw Bryce so turned away from him and that was when Bryce shot him up the bum as he tried to escape. The shot dropped him straight away so Bryce quickly put his pig sticker to good use.
Lachie had a big smile on his face when he saw the boar. We only had to brag him twenty meters to the track where we gutted him then Lachie gave me a hand to drag it to the ute.
With our boar on board we moved the ute onto my neighbors drive and parked up. The plan was to walk up their driveway giving the dogs time to work. We noticed a bit of fresh pig rooting but the dogs did not track off too far until we were near the top of the hill. At first the dogs tracked over top of the hill but as we climbed higher they came back and tracked down into a block of Douglas firs. Gus was first to come up stationary at 350 meter and we watched the GPS to see the other two dogs arrive with Gus. We got within 200 meters before we could here a good solid bail. As we approached Bryce was filming with Lachie beside him as I went out to his right where I could see a black and white boar bailed in the creek. He once charged at the dogs but quickly backed back in to an overhanging bank. As I lined him up with the 44 Buck was bailing close in so I had to wait for him to back off a little giving me a clean shot. The bullet placed nicely between his eyes as he dropped. I jumped down and put the pig sticker in to make sure he was not going to get back up. Bryce done a good job of gutting this boar then we got a couple of photos.
Even though Bryce has not carried a pig for a while he is in good shape and easily carried this boar out to a track to be collected in the truck. Back home we weighed the two boars with the black one weighing 144 lb and the second boar weighing 116 lb. Buck did get three pokes from the smaller boar but nothing a bit of time and rest won’t heal.
The meat from these two boars will be minced up and donated to the Geraldine Foodbank.
The two jaws have been cleaned up and will be giving to Lochie as the start of his trophy collection.
