One of the members from our local pig hunting club in Winchester, Glen Ralston had a black boar that he thought would go well in my pig block. Glen brought him down on a trailer behind his ute. He said he did get a few sideways glances from passing motorists. The boar is a good solid size with 2½ inch tusks. Glen drove his ute right up into the pig block so we only had to open the tail gate on the trailer and he could step out. The other three bigger boars had come down to see what was going on so the action was about to heat up as soon as the new boar stepped out. Glen had to grab him be the tail to pull him back and as soon as he was out he went around to the front of the ute.
This is where he came head to head with Digger. For people to fully understand what is about to happen, is that pigs have a hierarchy and the only boar that was going to have the job of sorting out the new boy was the top boar in the block which is Diggers. I was a bit surprised at how quick Digger put his dominance over the black boar.
It would have only been 20 seconds for the black boar to back off and squeal his submission. Now a couple of days on I can see that he is second in the pecking order as he chases Black and white around but Boris and the Black boar are very similar so they are regularly arguing with each other for second spot.
We can see in this piece of footage how the Black boar wants to fight with Black and White but acts differently when Digger steps in. We see this same behavior in people they try and be a bully until they are put in their place.
His first encounter with a dog was when Harrison came down from Rakia with 2 dogs. One was the sister of my dog Snow her name was Sam and the other dog Rocks was more of a holder but she was about to bail today. The beauty of using dog muzzles on dogs there are a lot less injuries on both animals. I had Fog in as the mentor dog on this run and we first bailed up Digger so the dogs had a run on him for about 30 minutes before I called them off. Next we got onto the Black boar and he bailed for a brief time before the dogs put too much pressure on him, when they stopped him again just below me they stood well back and gave him some room to think. The dogs bailed for about 50 minutes before we called them off.
On his third encounter with dogs I had 3 of my dogs Fog, Lightning and Snow. The dogs had already been bailing Digger for 20 minutes when we hit the Black boar and he broke down into the creek and part way up the other side where he decided to bail up in the scrub. Snow was quick to get bored with not too much happening so he came back down to me on the other face. This was a very important part of the training for Snow because if I was to try and send him back in he might back off and shy away so I made a big fuss of him and told him how good he was then said, going Snow where’s the pig. He went straight back up the hill and bailed with the other two for the next 10 minutes before I called them off.
Keep an eye out for my next article Digger tries to have a go at me while I am filming.