I’m from down south working on Glenaray Station. I was at work a couple months ago and had seen a bit of rooting in the paddock. I decided I’d try have a crack at him that arvo after knocking off for the day. Once I had the dogs and gear all ready to go I let them loose and after a while the dogs tracked off to just over a kilometre pulling him up in the open, but he just kept walking on the dogs for about an hour then they gave up and came back.
I went back a few more times after that day but just couldn’t get onto him… Then this one afternoon I headed up and saw what I thought was a weaner cow walking across this scrubby face, but I had a better look through the binos and realised it was the big boar I have been after, so I ran about a kilometre over there to where I last sore him. I got my two dogs on his trail and they tracked off down through a scrubby, ferny face and pulled him up. The dogs started bailing at just over 250 meters away from me. They probably had him bailed all of about 20 minutes before I managed to bush bash my way through to him.
Once I got in close, it took me a bit to see him in the thick fern. By this time it was pretty dark and I could seen him through a wee gap in the fern. I managed to put a pill in him but it took another two shots with the 3030 to put him down. It wasn’t until I got in there with him I realised how big he was. I couldn’t believe it!
I gutted him and started the slog back to my truck to call one of the workers on the station to bring a 4 wheeler to come give me a hand. I could barely drag the boar by myself so luckily the worker turned up and managed to get the bike majority of the way down to him, then it took us about half an hour to drag him all of about 50 meters. There was no way we could lift the beast on the front of the bike so we had to drag him up a bank and nose the bike in and chuck him on. We luckily found some old wire on the fence to tie him on the bike as the worker forgot strops. After that it took us about 2 hours on the bike to get back to the shed. Once we got up and out of there and back to the killing house to weigh him, we chucked him on the scales and I couldn’t believe it… 329 bloody pounds of an absolute solid beast of a pig!
Don’t think I’ll ever be getting a bigger wild hog than him, so the next day I called up NZ Taxidermy up in Wanaka to get this big fella on the wall at home.
Nicholas Lampitt
