On the way home from work last night I received a phone call from a client that I was expecting to be coming up to train some dogs in the morning. At the last minute he decided that he was going to go hunting the next day instead of coming up training like he had arranged. I had all ready sorted out with Fonterra to get the day off so I would miss out on a days wages in the milk tanker to help another hunter with their dogs. So now I was at a loose end I and was not going to get paid for the day so I thought that I may as well get out for a night hunt with the dogs instead. This was going to be a night hunt with a difference as I would take out Jeff my all round dog and get a few possums along the way to feed the dogs and make some money out of the fur. The other two dogs on this hunt where Lightning and Fog.
I left the hut at 9 pm and headed around to one of my new neighbours who had just recently taken over another forestry block not far from mine. Craig was keen to come out and see what this hunting was all about. The first possum we got was with Jeff barking at the base of a pine tree and was easily dispatched with the 22. Craig was impressed with how easy it was to pluck a possum so he was keen to pluck the next one which was not far away. We got three possums before we parked the bike up and started walking in an area where I thought there would be a good chance of getting onto a pig. We had not walked to far along the open tussock ground under a nice clear sky with the moon up giving us enough light to pick our way along a game trail when Jeff gave a couple of yaks. Instantly I new that he was after a hare out the somewhere so I gave him a quick flick on the electric collar and he was back at my side very quickly. This left Lightning and Fog out having a good look around. Both dogs were out to four hundred meters when Fog started bailing. As I watched the GPS I could see both Lightning and Jeff arrive and then I could hear them join in on the bail. Craig and I made our way up to the bail which was in some real shit scrub. We managed to get within meters of the pig but could not see it. The dogs were bailing into the tunnel in the scrub and I was right behind them so I called them out so that I could see if I could get a shot at the pig but as soon as they backed off he was gone. The dogs took off back to the bottom of the valley where we had come from and then up the other side not to far away from the motor bike. Lightning was at 580 meters when Jeff put up a bail back at 470 meters. I think what had happened is that as the boar was trying to give the dogs the slip it had circled around on it self and back into Jeff as he was trying to catch up. It did not take long for the three dogs to be bailing away together again. Craig and I started heading in their general direction. On the way down I looked at the time and it was 12.10am, As I was looking for a way across the creek without getting my feet wet I commented to Craig that he was lucky that he had gum boots on as he could cross where ever he wanted. Just after saying this he slipped and as he was trying to regain his balance he slipped on another rock, if he had falling the right way he would have ended up on the bank but instead he slipped again and ended up to his neck in the water as he had falling over. All I could do at this point was laugh. Even now as I am writing this I am still laughing to myself as he was totally soaked through. As he picked himself up and got out he to could see the funny side of it. So one dry hunter and one soaking wet hunter carried on to the bail. At this second bail again this boar had taking to the tight stuff so I got Craig to wait back while I crawled into to the action in the dark. I had my head torch on and was only one meter from the boar but could not see him. After a while I climbed up on top of the scrub and realized that I would be better coming in from below. As I was moving around the boar fired up again and was smashing around in the scrub with the dogs not far from me until he came out into an open piece. I did not wast any time taking the first chance at a shot at him and hit him right in the middle of the head from front on so he was never going to get back up. He did roll about thirty meters down the hill before coming to rest. None of the dogs had been ripped so I gutted the boar and we dragged it thirty meters to the fence and then another thirty meters down to where we had parked the motorbike. We did not spot light for any more possums on the way out as Craig wanted to get back to his place and get some dry clothes on. We finally weighed the boar up at my place at 3am and he went 135 pounds.