Wayne is from Waiau and has been hunting for quite a few years now. His young dog Chloe has started to show a bit of interest in the pigs now so Wayne wanted to give her a session in the block to help her to develop a bit quicker. On her first run in the block the black boar made a break up through the scrub with Breeze and Chloe hot on his hocks. As the dogs put up a bail in the tight stuff the boar must have charged Chloe and gave her a shake up as she returned to us.
As we stood around watching Breeze bailing Chloe was not keen to join in so I suggested that I would go and bring Fog in on the bail as the extra dog would work things up more which should get Chloe to join in again. As I came back into the block with Fog he went and bailed up a couple of the other boars which got Breeze and Chloe to come down and join in. This worked well as the tempo picked up Chloe started to join in but was barking from a safe distance from behind the bushes. Because the
sow and young one where not there I took the muzzles off both Fog and Chloe, Breeze was not wearing one as she is pretty reliable and not likely to grab the wee pig. Once we felt that Chloe had enough of bailing we took the dogs out for a break. This gave me a chance to get the fire going in the hut as there was snow on the hills around and it was not the warmest. On our next run we hit the main boar and Chloe was starting to enjoy the fun of bailing a pig. While this boar
did try making a couple of breaks he did not get to far each time as the dogs had the better of him. We called the dogs off him to head out of the block but did not get out before we hit the black boar again and gave him another run around. Back down at the hut the dogs had a possum each for tea and we retired to the hut that was nice and warm, it was hard to believe that two days earlier it was over 20 degrees. We where greeted with a good frost in the morning. For our first run in the block we took the same three dogs as the day before. There where no pigs around at the bottom of the hill so we headed up the left hand side ridge to the top then crossed back over the gully and came back down the right hand side. Apart from seeing the four big rams and one young one we did not find any of the pigs. Back at the hut I swapped Breeze for Cloud as I knew that he would go and find the pigs for us. By the time we got back up into the block the pigs had come down looking for
food so that made things a lot easier. After a couple of minutes of bailing I decided to swap Cloud back for Breeze as she is a far better dog for helping to train other dogs as she will stay there barking until I call her off. Once I was back I got the dogs to stand back and give the pigs a chance to break, the first to go was the black boar so I sent the dogs up the hill after him. He made it to the top of the ridge before he was bailed again as Wayne and I waited down the bottom to see how long Chloe would stay with the other dogs for. It was not long before Chloe arrived back to see that we where OK. We stayed down the bottom for a bit longer hopping that Chloe would go back to the bail, while she did go back up she did not bail but returned back to us so we headed up there. The black boar was backed in under so thick matagouri so we could not get any good photos but Chloe did have a good bail going for the next twenty minutes until I got Wayne to go around the back of the boar and give him a poke with a stick.
This had the desired affect of getting him to break down through the pine trees into the creek. This gave Chloe a great chance to see how to stop a pig on the run. Once the dogs had been on this black boar for over an hour I decided to give them all a rest, there was only one problem we had 200 meters to go before we could get out of the block. We where just about down to the gate when Fog opened up on most of the boars that where lying up in the pine trees enjoying the sun, until the dogs arrived. We gave the dogs another 15 minutes on these pigs before we called them out. On the last run we ran into the sow and her young one and it was good to see that none of the dogs showed any interest in the wee pig but stuck with the big sow. One thing that I did notice was that Fog was not very interested in bailing her and I was wondering if it had anything to do with the day before when Fog went 360 meters down a big gully to bail a 90 pound sow . When I arrived I told him off and let her run away. To me this is how to train a dog to target boars which is what I would prefer my dogs to do. I did not give Chloe and Breeze to long on the sow as I spotted the boars and sent the dogs off after them. The dogs targeted the main boar again so I left the dogs on him for the next 45 minutes and it was a very good run for Chloe to finish on as this boar broke many times and through some pretty thick cover. When I compare what Chloe was doing the night before by bailing from behind a bush, to now she was right in the pigs face bailing the only thing she still needs to work on is to stay with the pigs as she was still coming off to come back to Wayne. As long as she gets enough time on pigs as she grows up she should stay with the pigs longer.