This was never going to be an easy job. The younger pigs had been out of the pig block for over two weeks without coming back in for a feed so I had to try and get them back. A wee bit of back ground on these pigs, they were born in the block in October 2014, there were 7 piglets of which one had since died from what I don’t know. This left four boars and two sows along with these guys was Snuffles whom I was giving by another hunter who had caught him as a piglet in the adjoining forestry. Snuffles is smaller than the other pigs at about 40 pounds so he tends to hang around with the two sows who have their own litters, each sow has 3 piglets and the other 4 boars are about eighty pounds now. I have been watching these pigs for the past few months leaving the pig block to have a bit of fun in the block above. Each time I go up the hill with my pig dogs they would stand beside me looking and would normally spot the pigs before me. The dogs knew that they were only allowed to go after the pigs if I asked them to otherwise they would just stand with me watching them. I see this as a very big part of the training as sheep dogs don’t go and chase sheep unless commanded to. About two weeks ago the four boars decided to come down to the dog kennels for a look, problem for them was that the dogs were out at the time. As I came out of the house I had 5 dogs bailing 4 boars, when I got close one of the boars charged out at the dogs giving the other boars time to make a break. This one boar got bailed up against the fence so I had to go in and grab him around his waist to lift him over the fence back in to the pig block. Up until this point I thought these boars would have weighed around the 70 pound mark so I was surprised when I went to lift him to discover that he would have been well over 100 pounds. Since this day the boars had not come back down into the block so I knew it was time to get them back before they decide to go looking further. The two sows and Snuffles had been in twice in the last two weeks but were also staying out more. I knew where the pigs were getting out under the wire so once I had got them back in I would need to block up this weak points in the fence. The main place that they were getting through I was going to put a pig skin in the hole under the fence to deter them trying to get back out. My son Bryce had been up the night before for a night hunt and we had caught a 97 pound boar so this skin would do. To muster these pigs in I would need to use the right dogs because if I put too much pressure on the pigs they will just split up and break away leaving me with only one pig and I am not about to try and get the pigs in one at a time. The dogs that I took with me were Jeff the multi-purpose dog that can do almost any job and the two younger dogs Thunder and Snow. As I walked around into the gully with the pigs I spotted them about 250 meters away in the scrub. As soon as they realised that I was there they started moving off, all but one of the sows who tried to face up to Jeff to give her young time to get away. Snow and Thunder were a bit slow on it and the sow managed to get back to the others as they regrouped on the opposite face 500 meters away. By the time I caught up to the pigs they had gone into the pine trees and again it was one of the sows on the lookout.
I was filming as Thunder had to run past two sheep to confront this sow. As she came at him both Jeff and Snow turned up so the sow turned and ran back to the other pigs, that’s when the real noise started up. For the next 15 minutes it was real touch and go as I had to try and out think them by only putting enough pressure to get them to move back towards the hole in the fence but not too much that they would break. I managed to find myself a nice stick to keep the pigs back from me. The biggest thing at this point is to try and get the pigs to move but not to want to attack me and they were having a good go at my stick a couple of times they tried to break out but between me and the dogs we did get them back through the fence.
I had carried the pig skin in a bag on my back so I hang this from the wires to fill the hole in and then I used a rock to hit the standards in a bit lower bringing the hot wire down so that they can’t get back out without getting a good shock. I managed to find two more crossing under the fence that I fixed along with one place where the hot wire was shorting out. Now the fence is giving out 4.8kv hopefully this will keep them in. They did come down to have a feed that night with the other boars.