Finally got a decent boar to give my back a good work out. I was hunting with my three dogs, only Fog was running without a muzzle. It was Fog that found and bailed this boar three hundred meters away down in the gully. Both Lightning and Snow where quick to head to the bail and join in until I arrived. Most of the way down to the action was open mature pines which was easy going but as usual the boar was in the thick native right in the gully.
As I came in on him he tried to make a break for it. I had my camera in one hand trying to film when I saw him making a run for it so I quickly lifted my rifle with one hand and took a shot at him. He managed to run another ten meters through the scrub where Snow carried on bailing. By the time I approached him he had just kicked his last. I think shooting clays with a shotgun must be helping my shooting as it was a quick shot on the run and I knew all of the dogs were clear. The shot had hit him on the left of his spine and gone up through into his stomach killing him almost instantly. He had run that last ten meters on adrenaline. Once I had him gutted I had to drag him out of the prick of a spot that he was in and the first thing through my mind was he does not fell to heavy.
I have always found this to be a good ploy to tell myself a pig is not that big as it makes it easier to carry out. If you tell yourself that the pig is heavy and it is going to be a hard carry out this just makes it harder. The first place that I got the boar on my back was in the creek. I had gutted him and tied his legs up on a two foot bank which was going to make it easier to get him up on my back and see how it was going to cope. This was going to be my first real test on my back since my accident four months ago. I still have trouble believing that breaking nineteen bones in my body including my neck and back and here I was about to carry a 139 pound boar up out of this gully.
With the boar on my back I did not notice any of my broken bones the only problem that I did have was a lack of fitness. Some of my carries on the steeper ground I only made forty meters before needing a rest. The last eighty meter carry I wanted to stop and put the boar down but I could see the bike so I kept on forcing myself to make it. I had a great feeling of elation as I lowered the boar down onto the carrier on the bike. Not at one point did I consider ringing up one of my sons to come out and give me a hand. Next morning when I woke up I thought that I might have a few aches and pains but I’m all good.
That’s when your new horse would come in handy!