On Monday the 24 of March the builder had booked in four truck loads of concrete for the piles of the house. This was going to make things busy for me as I had arranged with my son Bryce and a friend of his Tess Hill to travel to central Otago on Friday night for a hunt on Saturday morning then down to Owaka to judge their critter hunt comp on the Sunday before coming home to do the concrete.
On the Friday night as Bryce was driving through the pig root he spotted a pig in some pines. So we stopped just long enough for the dogs to catch a nice eating young eighty pound boar, in the gorse.
That night we stayed at the Pateroa hotel. I finally left the bar at 1.30am ready for our 6am start. While in the bar I got talking to one of the locals who turned out to be a very interesting chap. Him and his wife milk elk deer, for a start I thought he was having me on but he explained how he supplied the milk to Whitestone cheese in Oamaru.
He was a guy who really understood how the deer act and react.
Next morning we meet up with a good mate from Dunedin Keith Garaway on the farm that we would be hunting. We managed a nice boar early on in the day. Lightning and Fog tracked away about seven hundred meters before putting up the bail. He weighed 116 pounds and Bryce carried it all the way back to the truck in one carry. Later in the day we came across a big stag with three hinds.
We did not have a shot at him as we had come to go pig hunting but I did get a photo of him as he ran away.
Next day we headed down to Owaka for their hunting competition. This went really well which I will put up the results in another article. We could have stayed down there for the night but I wanted to get back for the concrete job. So we left after the prize giving and got back to Bryce’s just before midnight.
The weather on the Monday was just perfect, which is what we needed as the track can get very greasy when wet. Some of the pile holes had to go down a bit deeper to get onto the solid ground through the fill. We put in just over fifteen meters of concrete around the piles so there is no way that this house will ever move. The next day we woke up to the rain just pouring down so I was so pleased to have got all of the concreting down In the one day.
On the Wednesday Bill Henderson and his offsider Mark were back up to start putting the roof up on the shed.
Nice pig, Bryce your a tank