All pig hunters love to hunt different country and I am no different, so an invite to hunt a station down south with a couple of hunters that are in the Ridgeline team with me was to tempting an offer to refuse. The first weekend that I went down I had my two sons Sloan and Bryce along for the walk. Sloan had not been out for a hunt for a while so was not as fit as his brother Bryce who works in the forestry.
On the first day we had a huge walk that took us out over 16 km with very little success. Two of the highlights of this day were to see a nest with 7 wee piglets in it that we managed to avoid the sow on as well as I nice stage that Sloan could have shot as he was standing beside me when I was taking photos, we could have got a motor bike to with in thirty meters of this stag but the land owner did not want us shooting them so we left it alone. Land owners are the only reason that these stags get to live.
On or second day we went to a block called no man’s land and it does not have that name for no reason. As we were walking down a track we saw Lighting showing a bit of interest off to our left and when he barked we saw a good pig breaking out below us through the gorse. We had to go around to the next gully to where Lightning and Fog were bailing in one of those really rough gullies.
While we were making our way down to the bail the pig broke over into the next gully which made things real hard for us. At one point I can remember climbing up a very step rock face and I took two photos one above me of Bryce passing Tony’s young dog Bagger up through the rocks and the next photo looking straight down bellow me towards Sloan as he was climbing up bellow me. Once we got past this stage Bryce and Tony left Sloan and I behind as their fitness is on a different level than Sloan and mine. At one point as we were working our way down through some absolute crape we looked across to see Bryce and Tony trying to get down a rock face.
At this point I thought that Sloan and I could beat them to the bail but we got stuck in some real shit. We were seventy meters back form the action when we heard the shot go off. Tony had filmed Bryce sneaking into Fog and Lightning bailing in towards a cave in the rocks the pig was facing out towards Bryce as he shot it in the head. He was all excited until he turned it over to bleed it only to discover that it was a very big sow.
It had taken use nearly two hours to get to this pig so we had a big hike ahead of us to get out so we had to make a decision to leave the sow behind. We first thought that it would have been easier to follow the river out but we quickly became bluffed and had to turn back and walk past where we had left the pig and head straight up the hill towards the step country and gorse. Two hours later we made it back to the top.
On our next trip down Fog put up a nice bail in some gorse on the next ridge over from us and we watched as the other dogs arrived and grabbed an eighty pound sow.
As soon as the squealing started pigs were running everywhere as Fog must have bailed the mob. While I was carrying this pig out Tony came around to meet me on the bike while Richard put his dogs onto some of the other pigs. By the time we caught up with Richard he was right down in the small river that was running through this block with another eighty pounder.
Later in the day it started getting cold and wet as we were riding around on the four wheelers looking for more pigs. The dogs put in a good find off the bikes and tracked away four hundred meters up a gully that we were passing the end of. I can still remember one of Tony’s dogs Badger who is not your normal pig dog, you see Badger is a very small dog about the size of a possum. I was watching as he was working his hardest to get up a face that the other dogs had just run up. For the size of this wee guy he is very keen and loves getting out looking, I have seen him go more than a km on an animal.
Tony had gone up the ridge while I had gone up the gully towards where the dogs had another eighty pounder while Richard rode his four wheeler around the top. As I was making my way up I spotted a black and white boar breaking out towards Tony and I. Next thing I saw was Tony cracking his single shot rifle, putting a bullet in and shooting at something. It turned out to be the eighty pound boar that I had seen.
Richard managed to get the other eighty pounder that the dogs had. Four pigs for the day was a bit less than average for this place but we were happy. By the time we made it back to the shearers quarters it was pouring down with rain so it was good to have a shower and a well earned beer. Next morning I headed down to judge the Owaka critter hunt for the day. I finally made it home at 1am the next morning ready for a sleep.