The weather does not know what it is going to do, two days ago it was that hot you just could not take your dogs out for a hunt without the fear of heat stroke. Then yesterday a cold front came through with cold winds, rain and even a small drop of snow. Waking up and seeing the snow on the tops outside of my window I just had to get the dogs out for a run.
The conditions were perfect and the dogs were keen so my expectations were quite high. All of my pig dogs were going to be coming along so I had to put muzzles on Lightning, Thunder and Snow because 4 dogs would be too much pressure on a pig so Fog was the only dog without a muzzle. I had planned a nice walk that would have taken me a couple of hours and I would have covered up to 6km. I parked the bike up and started walking. About 200 meters from the bike my other dog Jeff turns up the little shit had escaped from his kennel and tracked us 4km around the tracks too catch up so I was now going to be hunting five dogs. I would have made 600 meters around the track when I saw Lightning put his nose to the ground and take off at top speed I was quick to try and get the other three dogs onto the scent but they would only go as far as the creek. Fog was already well in front of Lightning. For the next 15 minutes I watched my Tek 2 tracking gear to try and keep up with the dog’s progress. This boar must have not long heard me and the dogs coming and taken off in the fastest run he had ever done in his life because he knew that his life depended on it, the dogs and boar went about 400 meters around the hill on the other side of the creek before turning straight up hill until he was 500 meters out of the creek then they ran through the next gully and up onto the next ridge before heading down into the next gully and doing a big loop back into the previous gully before trying to come back on the same track that the dogs first smelt him. I was back on the four wheeler by this stage trying to follow the dogs around as they had not yet bailed the boar. When I turned the bike off at the place where the dogs had first tracked away on this pig. I could hear the action about 50 meters above me. This boar was totally exhausted that big run had taken it out of him so he did not have the strength left to fight the dogs so I was pleased that I had the muzzles on three of them. Fog had grabbed him by the ear right on the fence so I only had to reach through the fence to grab his tail and stick the pour bugger. Once he was dead I took the muzzles off the dogs and gave them all a good feed of heart, liver and kidneys. We were under some mature pines so I did not even have to get a sweat up to drag the boar to the bike, too easy.
Just skinned this boar and did not find one dog bite on any part of the boar.
