Gus’s body has grown fast but at this stage his brain has a bit of catching up because he has yet to start gaining knowledge from experiences. He is still too young to take out hunting but I know that I can safely put him onto some of my training pigs where he should not get hurt.
The first bit of footage is of a boar and sow on the track and you can see how Gus doesn’t quite understand what he’s ment to do. At first he is barking at Bro and wanting to play. Over a short period of time his focus will change to the pigs.
A couple of days later Bro bailed these two Pigs up again, this time in the scrub and Gus is not to sure what to do. At first he stays back with me before slowly getting a bit more confidence and going up to Bro.
When Gus decides to go into the scrub for a look the sow chargers him which gives him a wee fright and he comes back to me. Luckily the sow did not bite him, so I give him a pat to reassure him that everything is OK.
From this I know that he is not yet ready to come out hunting with me.
Bro was the same age, 19 weeks when I started hunting him so it won’t be too long now before Gus proves to me that he is ready to tag along on a hunt.
The main reason that I think Gus is not ready to hunt yet is that I don’t want to get him hurt and he hasn’t started to focus on the Pigs.