Dog training is on hold over the summer months due to the heat and other work commitments.
I will be driving a spud truck for my son until the end of spud season.
Approximately end of April.
Once I know when the spud season is finishing I will put available dates up for dog training or guided hunts.
Because of my addiction I will still be getting my dogs out at least once a week.
Last hunt I had was with my son Bryce and his son Lochie.
Bryce did not want to make the same mistake this time by telling Lochie he was going hunting with Grandad untill the last minute. Last time Lochie did not sleep for two days because he was soo looking forward to going hunting again.
When they turned up, we decided to go out for a rabbit shoot before tea. Bryce managed to shoot 4 hares and a rabbit which Tig and Lochie done the hard work of retrieving.
Next morning we had Lochie up at 4.30am getting ready for another big day of pig hunting.
We took all 4 of my dogs and it was Tig that put in a good find on our 1st boar. He tracked 400 meters around the river so we followed along on the motorbikes. When we caught up with him he came up to the 4wd track and the other dogs looked excited and jumped up the bank but only looked around close and we did not realize that Tig had gone back down to the river until we heard a bark and the boar have a go at him. The other three dogs took off at the first bark and quickly joined in on the action. Bryce took off through the scrub while I kept close to Lochie to keep an eye on him. We arrived just after Bryce. He had this boar by the back legs as Tig grabbed it while the other three dogs bailed as they were wearing muzzles. Bryce quickly dispatched and gutted this 124 lb boar then tied his legs up before carrying him 100 meters up to the track.
First boar done and dusted before 6am.
Second bit of action started with the dogs looking interested so we got off the bikes to discover fresh pig rooting. Straight away I had an idea where these pigs maybe so we headed into a scruby gully. We stood there for a while watching the tracker as Bro, Gus and Tig tracked up the right side of the scrub. At about 200 meters Bro returned but the other two kept going. Gus got out to over 300 meters when the GPS came up with 20 barks per minute. Where we were we could not hear any barking but started heading that way. Tig caught up and joined the bail. As we got around and up the hill Bro and Rastus heard the bail and took off. As I looked at the GPS I noticed that Gus had come off this boar and tracked all the way back around to us, but still beat us back to the other three dogs bailing away. Bryce once again beat Lochie and I to this pig. When Bryce arrived Tig grabbed this 72 lb boar so he could easily dispatch him.
This time it was my turn for a carry which was only about 400 meters down to the track.
At this point we could have turned around and headed home but Bryce reminded me of a dream he had about catching a good pig in some bracken further along so we carried on. Parking the bikes by a fence line with the intentions of a reasonable walk of a couple of km around the hills. One km in the dogs caught a third boar in some braken. As we were running to this bail young Lochie tripped and came down hard and started screaming as any young seven year old boy could. We did not have time to muck around comforting him so we quickly picked him up and encouraged him to keep running to the bail. One hundred meters along at the bail Lochie had forgotten about his trip up and was excited as we watched Bryce go in and stick this 90 lb boar. This was Bryce’s turn to carry again and he made light work of the one km back to the bike.
Back home we weighed our pigs being 124 lb, 72 lb and 90 lb. Then got a couple of photos to remember this day for a long time. One I’m sure Lochie won’t forget. I’m sure he would have been asleep in the passenger seat not far down the road.
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