Pig dogs and Business

 

The make up of our pack of dogs will dictate the amount of success we have when we are hunting. For instance we would not want our pack to consist of all bailing dogs or all holding dogs as without a dog that is willing to go out and find a pig for us, the rest of the dogs can not hold or bail a pig that is not there. So the most important dog in the pack ( main dog) should be the finder, whether it is a finder holder or a finder bailer without this dog you will not catch any pork. The way to train a dog to want to go out and find pigs is by taking the dog out pig hunting with other dogs that are catching so that your new dog can see what you want it to do. Most dogs when they get out there and start seeing a lot of pigs will naturally want to start looking for themselves. Where the big advantages and disadvantages can be is in the make up of your pack of dogs. To get the best out of any young dog it wants to be confident but not aggressive, as aggression in any pack will just cause problems. A dog that is always trying to fight with other dogs is not concentrating on the job of pig hunting.

If we look at our pig hunting like we would look at a business, in business we have a person who is responsible for the day to day running of that business, when it comes to our hunting that is you the hunter. You are responsible for how your dogs work and if they are not doing what you want then it is up to you to learn what it is that you have to do to change the way your dogs hunt.

The next person down the line is the salesman as no business can be successful without first gaining the work for the workers. This salesman in your pack is going to be your finder, the one that goes out there and finds the pig for you. The bigger percentage in most businesses are the workers as without them we could not create that product for sale. With our dogs these are the bailers and holders. The last ones in this equation that needs to be mentioned are the unemployed. Physically there is nothing wrong with these people but physiologically they just don’t want to work. I believe that these people have just been raised in the wrong environment and it is all in their mind why they wont work. With our pig dogs if they do not turn out how we want them to we can easily get rid of them, however this brings me back to their environment. For myself personally if I had a dog that did not want to hunt pigs I would first be looking at the way that I was training that dog, however in my 21 years of hunting I cannot recall having a dog that would not show an interest in pigs. Two dogs that come to mind that did not work out for me not because they did not want to work but the way in which they worked. One was a strong eyed heading dog that would just eye up the pigs and not bark and the other dog was a huntaway that would bark as soon as he smelt a pig. Both of these dogs downfall came back to their breeding. It was a lesson learnt for me.

New employees?

When a new employee starts a new job it is the employers job to show that new worker what their job is and how they can go about achieving good results. From the workers point of view if they like the employer and feel that they are being treated well then they should be a good worker, on the other hand if they have not been shown how to do their job right and are making a lot of mistakes and always under pressure to get their work finished then that worker can become a bad worker very quickly. We all know in our own environment if we have a good employer we enjoy our job but if we have a bad employer we don’t put 100% into our work. Create the right environment for your dogs, don’t always pick on what they are doing wrong but focus more on what they are doing right. I can recall one chap that I used to work with. The boss would be telling us both what we would be doing for the day and this chap would be going yep, yep, yep and agreeing with the boss and as soon as we walked away he would turn to me and say so what are we supposed to be doing today. In other words it was going in one ear and out the other and he was not processing the information that he should have been. With our dogs we see this mainly with our young dogs just not wanting to listen and this is the biggest problem with training the communication level Is just not there. To get this level of communication is not done by force but by giving the dog/ worker some of your time. Show that you are willing to listen and learn from them as well as you expecting them to listen and learn from you. To learn from the dog is done by watching how it reacts to certain situations, see its body language that will tell you whether the dog is confident, happy, sad, shy, timid, or aggressive. Some workers are shy to ask questions because they think that it makes them look dumb, this could not be further from the truth if someone does not know something then ask as that is the only way you are going to learn. The person that does not ask may shy away and not only not learn but also not have that communication level that is needed to advance forward.

Lets look at different businesses and packs.

We see one man businesses where the one person does all of the work by themselves if we take this back to our pig hunters there are the odd hunter that goes out with just one good dog that is capable of going out and catching good pigs on their own without backup from other dogs. Dogs that are capable of this are very good dogs the only down side is that if you should lose this dog and you have no back up you can expect a long time out of business until you can get another worker trained up to this stage again. When hunting with two dogs you will want at least one of them to be capable of finding and stopping pigs. If you are using two dogs that want to find their own pigs then you are going to be kept fit if those two dogs hunt separately. As long as those two dogs stick together then that is the best option. The other option when hunting two dogs is to have a main dog and a second dog. This way the main dog can do the finding while the second dog can walk with the hunter, you are still covering two angles as long as the second dog is still capable of pulling up a pig on its own as hunters quite often spot a pig trying to sneak out the back door. When the main dog does find a pig it can call up for the second dog and it is a lot easier to sneak in on a pig that has got two dogs keeping it occupied.

If we take our workforce up to three dogs then to be an efficient business we would want to have the right workers. For me three dogs would be the maximum amount of dogs any hunter needs on the hill at any one time. The problem is the amount of work that you can give them.

If you have three dogs on a smaller pig they may kill it before you get there. Any person in business would be thinking twice about lost production with every pig killed that was of no use. Three dogs can work well on a pig between 100 – 150 pounds as the pig is big enough to put up a bit of a scrap and as long as your dogs are not to hard the pig should still be in good nick when you get to it. Once you get onto those boars over 150 pounds it would depend on how your dogs worked the pig. I have found that you are better off with only two good dogs as more dogs can get in the way of each other and these big boars usually know how to fight. Any hunter hunting with more than three dogs at a time can be a recipe for disaster. I had one hunter tell me that he would go out hunting with his two mates and they would have up to 15 dogs with them on some hunts, all the pigs they would catch would be within 100 meters of the track and they would have to get there as fast as they could before the dogs ripped them apart. Not only is this too many dogs out at one time but also it is not giving yourself your best options as you need to spend a lot of time with each individual dog if you want that dog to be a main dog. Another hunter that I know has 14 dogs and he catches more pigs than most however when he goes hunting he only uses two at a time. Once those two had caught a pig and he has got them back to the truck he would swap them for another two. This way he could be running fresh dogs all day.

Lets go back to business and look at an individual employee. Lets take for instance a fast food outlet, when a young person starts their new job they start at the bottom of the ladder so to speak. Serving the customers as they get more experience they may get offered a leading hands job and then work their way up to becoming a manager. To become a manager takes the right person with a lot of drive and the chance to prove themselves. With our new pig dog pup we start by building a bond before taking the dog out hunting where it starts to go to the bark then starts to join in before it finally steps up and starts finding its own pigs. To get the dog to the stage of being the manager takes the right dog with a lot of drive and the chance to prove themselves.

Over the years I have had many different dogs with different traits and how those dogs have turned out has had a lot to do with how I have reacted to certain situations. Take for instance a young dog chasing off after a hare would be like a young worker playing a practical joke over time the worker will learn what is acceptable behaviour as will your young dog. We see young workers all the time going rip, shit and bust to try and get a job finished as fast as they can which can cause them to make mistakes, on the other hand the older worker will seem to just plod along and get the job done and make it look easy. Don’t forget that older worker was once a young worker too.

With pig hunting we need our dogs to target the right animal. For this training I have a foxy/collie/whippet called Jeff. This dog was acquired for my sons so they could go out and catch small game with a dog and now that my sons have left home I still have the dog. I did not realise at the time how important this dog was going to be for my training as to teach a dog what to hunt as well as what not to hunt you need to be seeing the animals. Just like a worker needs the products and to be showing the right and wrong way of doing a job. We all learn the most by making mistakes? My pig dogs are at the stage where they don’t bother going to Jeff when he is barking because they know what it is that he will be doing. I can walk up to Jeff with my pig dogs shoot the possum and Jeff will pick it up and carry it back to the hut or vehicle for me and the whole time the pig dogs will be showing no interest in the possum. If I am at the hut I can pluck the possum then give it to anyone of the dogs and that dog will start eating it. When I think that dog has had enough I will take it off that dog and give it to another dog and not one of my dogs will try and fight over it as they listen to me and do as they are told. When my dogs are on pigs I want to know that I have trained them right so they know what it is that I except from them and also while I am watching them if there is anything that I want to change I expect my dogs to listen to me as it is a lot easier to fix a problem that you can see forming before it becomes a real problem. It is not just the hunter that trains the dogs just like it is not always the boss who trains the workers. A few years back I had a very good dog, Leroy and watching him in his later years he would be doing a lot of the training on the young dogs. When it came to the finding young dogs would quite often overrun the scent but not Leroy. As he would keep tracking the young dogs would come back and follow him again. Even though he was a lot slower he would always stay on the scent and sometimes beat the younger dogs to the pig. Once at the bail if their was a young dog wanting to bail Leroy would slowly back off a bit and let the young dog have a go. If the young dog broke the pig Leroy would always pull it up again and repeat the process. Leroy was one of those dogs that could make other dogs look good because he could put the work in front of them. Anyone who has watched my first DVD would have seen a 115 pound ginger boar bailed up. On this pig are Leroy, Storm, Fly and Breeze when she was only 3 months old. It was only after watching this footage for a long time that I realised what Leroy had done. While he was bailing he looked across and saw Breeze, you can see the surprise on his face as he realised the danger that she was is. Without taking his focus off the pig he slowly moves sideways and pushes both Fly and Storm out of the way as they come back into the pig on the other side of him he moves right along side breeze and pushes her back placing himself in the line of the pig so if it did charge Leroy would take the boar on before it could get to Breeze.

Over this past winter I have been only hunting with two dogs as my older dog Breeze jumped off a waterfall after a pig that I had just shot and she ended up breaking her front leg. She is back out on the hill now but I did give her three months off the hill. So the two dogs that I had left where Cloud at 6 ½ years old and Lightning at 18 months. One of the problems that I had with these two dogs at the start of winter was from my own doing. Lightning was trained up in my block so he had become very independent so instead of him sticking with the older more experienced dog Cloud he would be away on his own pigs. Some days I would have a dog in opposite directions of one km each way of me bailing pigs so I would have to decide which dog I would go to first. Other times I may have cloud bailing somewhere and Lightning would go straight past him and bail up a different pig. My preference is to have both dogs together on the same pig as some of the bigger boars will try and walk out of a bail but with two dogs keeping the boars nuts covered they have trouble getting to far.

These two dogs did stop me at least one boar over one hundred pounds every week through the winter.

One particular nasty boar that I caught on our second encounter was a real scraper for the dogs. The first time they had him bailed he was breaking around me in the scrub. I managed to get into a shooting position from four meters above and behind him with the dogs out front. I put a bullet into the top of his shoulders with the SKS. As soon as he was hit he took off. In no time at all I spotted him down in the creek trying to attack the two dogs. He was awhite pig and I could see from 369 meters away the red blood between his shoulders. Over the next hour this pig just would not let me near enough for another shot, he would smell me and break or just not stay in one place long enough. In the end Cloud had his back leg messed up and could not walk on it and I could still see Lightning trying to bail. Whenever the pig tried to run he would bit it on the nuts which would cause the boar to charge him so in the end I called Lightning off and let the pig go. My thoughts where that if he could survive for an hour with a bullet in him and two dogs hassling him then he should survive. I don’t know how I would have carried him the four km over the hills back to my bike.

On our second encounter I got within twenty meters of him the first time before he broke and made five hundred meters. At this bail I was crawling in on my stomach with the wind in the right direction trying to be as quite as possible but he still knew I was there and broke again. At the third bail I could see him through a pine tree so I took my chance and shot him in the front shoulder. This just worked him up even more as he tried to kill the two dogs as soon as they where back far enough I put another shot into his front shoulder which knocked him sideways and he fell into a bit of a hole. As I walked up to him he was on his front feet trying to get out and at me, I could see that fire in his eyes as he wanted to kill me but the next shot between the eyes meant game over for him. Luckily for me I only had to carry him five hundred meters back to the bike and I was so pumped that I did not need to put him down once. He weighed in at 153 pounds.