Seventeen days after Gus’s 1st hunt we were out again. This time with Tig and Bro.
Each of my dogs have their strong points, Tig is exceptional on the possums and enjoys catching bigger pigs. Bro is now 3 years old, catching good Pigs and bails well. Rastus is over five years old is a bit lazy on the find but when he does go out he is very fast and can stop the pigs but he does have one downside and that is he prefers to catch pigs between 50lb – 100lb so if there’s a mob the big boar will probably get away while Rastus would be targeting an eating sized pig. So today without Rastus I was relying on Bro to catch a good pig.
Early on in the hunt I could see just how keen Gus was as he was sniffing out any scent that he could find.
After riding the bike for a few km I decided on a walk up hill. I was about 1km from the bike sitting down plucking a possum that Tig had caught when Bro opened up with a nice bail 150 meters away down in the gully.
I quickly finished the possum and started heading towards the bail when I heard Tig and then Gus join in on the bail.
As I closed in I could see a nice boar standing side on to me under a pine tree. I tried sneaking in a bit closer as I was filming but the boar did not like me and broke the bail.
He made about eighty meters down the hill before bailing again but at this bail Gus was not there he had turned around and tracked back up to the track where he left me. Once he got onto my scent he tracked back down to us. Before Gus arrived I was filming Bro bailing and was just about to shoot when the boar broke again.
This did not worry me at all as I knew that he was getting closer to the 4wd track. At the next bail Gus arrived to give support as Tig tried holding this boar in the creek. I was just contemplating jumping in and sticking the boar when it broke free and made another dash for freedom.
He did not get far and this time Bro and Tig had an ear each while Gus was barking encouragement so I quickly jumped in and stuck this 97lb boar.
It was an easy carry 500 meters through open pines back to the bike.
Back at home Gus got some extra training.
In the morning when I left I had let the sheep into the block below the house and now as I was riding up the drive, I had to put the sheep back out of this block. Also, it is now lambing time, so those playful little lambs can be very tempting for a young dog. As I was riding up Gus started to focus on a couple of lambs so I gave him a tone on the collar this did not change his focus and as the lambs and mum moved off Gus wanted to follow so I got to use the electric shock collar for the first time on him. At first, I gave him a 3 on low, but he did not react to this, so I turned it up to a 6 on low, and he changed his focus and returned to me. At the same time, one of the friendly sheep came up to me on the bike and Gus did have a bark at it which I just used my voice to alter his thinking.
Next I rode the bike up to the gate and got all of the sheep to walk back through leaving the driveway clear.