Each year our judging team have one big get together, this year it was up at my new house in the Te Moana gorge. We had managed to get most of our judge’s along as well as Linda Cameron who is the owner of Ridgeline and Jacqueline who is responsible for the day to day running of Ridgeline. It was a very relaxed atmosphere with a few drinks and a BBQ.
It was a good chance to have a meeting to see that we all know what out jobs are and any thing that we wanted to change could be talked about. Sain has written up a program that we can use at our comps. This program works out biggest animals and average weights and different animals so this should be a good tool for the years to come. Up until this year we have charged $2 per entry to cover our fuel costs on the day. We have had to raise this to $2.50 this year. Ridgeline are very generous with their sponsorship at any comp and supply us with any thing that we may need from the tags that we put on each animal that comes in to the gazebo.
Pig hunting comps can buy Ridgeline clothing for 40% of the recommended retail price RRP and use these I as their prizes. We have a good line up of judges in our team with many years of hunting experience between them. I have made a point of getting judges from different parts of the South Island so that we don’t have to travel to far for each comp. We Have Peter Layall and Straty from Tapawera near the top of the South, Andy and Jo Moriarty and Matt Simmons from Waiau, myself Bill Westwood and my son Bryce from Geraldine, Craig Gibb and Sian Waters from Oamaru and Richard Hand, Tony Hogg and Phill Simonson from Dunedin.
This gives us 12 judges spread out across the South. Another thing that Ridgeline are running is New Zealanders biggest boar, to be eligible to enter clubs can register with Ridgeline or at any comp that ridgeline are judging are eligible. The other way to enter is for any hunter that is lucky enough to catch one of these big fella’s they can weigh them in with any one of our judges through out New Zealand.
Once our meeting was over we had a turn at shooting some clays which was a lot of fun. We had a big night as I remember crawling into bed at 3.30 am.
At 6.30 I was back up cleaning up when Bryce came driving back up the drive as he was keen to get out for a quick hunt with anyone that wanted to go with him for a walk. He could only talk Phil into tagging along. While we were sitting around having breakfast we could watch their progress on the tracking gear. It did not take to long for the Fog, Phil’s dog Billy and Dusky to track away and bail up in a far away gully. Bryce’s superior fitness left Phil away behind. Phil said he was 700 meters behind Bryce when he heard the gun go off.
Richard and Matt drove around the road so Bryce only had to roll his boar 80 meters down the hill to the road. Bryce did have one accident when he was trying to get the boar through a fence it flicked around and sliced his finger open with the pigs tusks, bad enough for a visit to the doctors. Also his bitch Dusky received a bad rip in the back leg. Because he was close to the road they brought this boar back with his guts in so that we could weigh it with the stomach in as well as out. With the stomach in it weighed 223 pounds but once it was gutted it weighed 188 pounds Bryce’s and Phill’s biggest pig so far this year. This was a great way to top off a great get together with the Ridgeline team. We also did manage to get a couple of young dogs into the pig block for some extra work.
