I first found out about John Sanders a numbers of years ago when I had entered the Waimate pest quest. On this day I was lucky enough to receive a prize of a DVD made by a local hunter, John Sanders. The DVD was about hunting the many different species of animals. From red deer to thar, chamio,wallaby’s down to possums, rabbits and hares. I finally got to meet up with John and find out a wee bit about him. John had nothing to do with producing that yummy tasting chicken. The only comparison was the name. Because of that name he was always going to get the nick name the colonel. John is one of the lucky few that has gone though this game we call life and came out the other end at the age of 67 with his marbles in the right place and his fitness up there with most guys half his age.. Now that John is retired he has time to do the things that he wants to do, not the things that some employer wants you to do. John has hunted on many different parts of our planet and has a trophy room that many hunters would give their right arm for. When I was talking with John one day he mentioned that he would like to have some footage on one of his DVDs of dogs on a pig. So between the two of us we managed to sort out a day for John to come in and film some pig dog training for his next DVD .
Because I have produced 4 DVDs myself and spent three years at Toastmasters practising how to act in front of an audience I new that I could give John some good quality footage to put into his next DVD. John turned up at 9.30 am in the morning ready to get into it. This is where things are different from a pig hunter coming in to train a dog as John was here without a dog and only going to film my dogs working the pigs in the block. So every thing was up to me to make things happen. The first thing that I wanted John to film was the interaction that I have with my dogs as I believe that dog is only as good as the person responsible for that dog. We have all heard of the saying, of the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, this is to fix a problem once it his happened what I want to do is fix a problem before it gets to the bottom of that cliff so we went through the sit and stay commands to see that my dogs where going to listen to me. The next stage was to take the dogs up to the pig block while I was feeding the pigs and having the dogs sitting back watching This is to show that the dogs are not working in aggression but are working on command. When I thought the pigs had had enough to eat it was time to let the dogs in that where sitting on the other side of the fence waiting patiently. I first let in Breeze and Fog and while they bailed ok the boars did not try and break up into the scrub so I went and got Lightning as well. By the time that I got back with Lightning the pigs had broken and Breeze and Fog where bailing two of the grey boars well up in the scrub. When I called the dogs off Lightning tracked off again looking for the other pigs. When we got back to the hut we could hear Lightning away up at the top of the block bailing. John was not keen to walk so far up to the bail so we put the other dogs away and just took Jeff the possum dog for a run up to the top of the hill beside the four wheeler. Jeff must have caught a hare on the way up the hill because he came back with a whole lot of blood around his mouth. Normally when he catches possum he kills them by biting them over the back of the shoulders then brings them back to me. However when he came back with the blood on him I thought that he may have headed to Lightning’s bark and run into the wee pig in the block and killed her. I have seen the wee pig since and she is ok. At the top of the hill John got to take in the awesome views right through to the port hills above Christchurch while we sat down and had a beer and a chat. We also got to see a lot of the sheep. When we arrived back down at the hut Lightning was now bailing just inside the gate with the main boar so I went up and called him out. It would have been a good one hours workout for him.
John has produced 6 DVDs to date and only markets them locally but if anyone is interested in purchasing one of his DVDs then give him a call, his phone number is 03 4349481