It was one day before my 49th birthday and I had a spare day due to a dog training session being cancelled at the last minute. I had not caught a pig for over a week so was keen to get Fog and Lightning out to see what was around. Because I was on my own I had planned an easy hunt to walk up the hill on a track then across one gully and back down to the bike. As I was heading up I could see that Fog was having a good look around and had headed into the next gully over that I knew had a sow in it last time I was in there. This is where Fog is so good as he does not get to worked up with sows and can work through them to find himself a boar if there is one around. As I headed up the ridge above Fog he came tracking out of the gully past me at a fast rate. Now I had been standing in this spot for up to a minute and did not see an animal break out but I knew that Fog could smell a good pig as he looked very excited. As Fog tracked down into the next gully over Lightning came up to me and was working the scent that Fog had just tracked though on but was not going out far enough. It did not take Fog too long to put up a nice bail at which Lightning took off with me following. I watched the GPS as Lightning closed in the last bit slowly and joined Fog without the boar trying to break. As I came though the gully I came across a nice big wallow fifty meters short of where the dogs had their bail going. I could tell that it had been used by many pigs recently and that barking fifty meters away really had the excitement going.
Closing in on the bail I could see both dogs out in front of the boar under the Douglas firs, I did start filming from here but could not get a good view as I had some scrub in front of me that the camera had focused on. The sun was also coming through the trees into my eyes so I tried to get up towards the next tree for a better position to get a shot. I would have been about seven meters away from the action when the boar got spooked by me and broke. The dogs done well to pull him up again so quickly and at this bail I did not muck around even though I did have the camera going when I shot the boar. It was a nice clean shot as the boar dropped and I had to grab a hold of him before he ended up to far down the hill while his nerves kicked their last. Now that he was dead the real work had to start, gutting him was easy the hard part was going to be carrying him out. I only had to go about 150 meters but the ground was very steep with the Douglas fir needles on the ground that consisted of soft dirt. Just getting the boar up on my back I lost five meters of ground simple because my feet just could not get any traction. At one stage I was pushing through some of the lower branches of one of the trees on some step ground and I knew that the branches were holding me back so when they let me go I shot forward, I could not just put my foot down to stop myself so instead I had to line myself up on the next tree down the hill and just before I hit it I spun around so that the boar took the blow for me. I managed to stay on my feet but I had lost another six meters of ground and had to keep climbing back up. At another stage I was really struggling looking ahead I wanted to try and get another twenty meters up the hill but my legs were starting to want to cramp up on me so I just had to put the pig down. When I had had a rest I went to stand up again with the pig on my back and slid back down to the next row of trees before I could get my feet to hold on the ground. It took me three carry’s to get the boar out to a main ridge where I could roll him down 800 meters to the track.
Back at home the boar weighed 145 pounds, I thoroughly enjoyed sitting down having a beer afterwards and reflecting on my great early birthday present. One day earlier I was watching Jeff and my young pup Snow bailing five fifty pound pigs while Fog and Lightning were standing at my side watching. This is a stage that a lot of hunters don’t get their dogs to because they normally want their dogs to attack any pig they see.