On the Friday night I had done the usual ritual of charging up the collars and drinking more beers than I needed to while watching a miserable loss to the all blacks from Australia. In the morning I dragged myself out of bed, let Sarsha out for a shit and loaded up the truck to head over to Pauls.
The weekend was coming around and I had been given an invite by the bro to head out on the hill with him. On the Friday night I had done the usual ritual of charging up the collars and drinking more beers than I needed to while watching a miserable loss to the all blacks from Australia. In the morning I dragged myself out of bed, let Sarsha out for a shit and loaded up the truck to head over to Pauls. I arrived at Pauls around lunch time and I chucked all my shit in his truck and we were on our way. A quick stop at the bottle store for some brown bombers to keep us well hydrated was essential.
As we approached the entrance to the spot we pulled up and collared the dogs and let em out to do a bit of mahi. We drove along the track for about half an hour having a look around and checking out the sign as this was a new spot to the both of us. With a bit of fresh sign around and a couple of good dogs working we were sure to bump into something as the place was known to hold some good pigs. A few Ks into the track we pulled over to check out some fresh sign that we spotted on the side of the track, we spent about 10 minutes poking our noses around checking out where the pigs had been poking around and it was getting pretty fresh. By this stage Pauls two dogs Barry, Blake and my bitch Sarshas noses were looking busy and in no time they were off on a scent. Ole mates main boy Barry had been out of commission for a few weeks due to an injury and Blake had been working out front so this was Barry’s first hunt back for a while and was keen to get back into it.
Sarsha had been coming along quite nicely, I had been working on her for about a year at this stage and she was loving the hunting, unfortunately in about 15 minutes time she would have come across her best but last boar. As the 3 dogs started moving we stood quietly as we watched them track out nice and steady. After a couple of minutes of waiting I headed back to the truck to grab my hand held to make sure Sarsha was moving in the right direction. But before I could get back to the truck we could hear the dogs bailing, they were treed up nicely 350 metres away, We jumped in the truck and shot around to the tussle, fortunately we were able to drive to within 100 meters of the bail up but the gorse we had to get through to get to them was thick as shit. We had let Chief out of the dog box who is Pauls up and coming pup so that he could get in for a tussle. We barrelled our way through the shit where we were able to flip and stick a good healthy boar.
After we stuck him we checked the dogs and found that Sarsha had been tagged, we acted quickly to put some celox in the wound and wrapped her up. I shot ahead to get Sarsha back to the truck and retire her for the day, once she was sorted I went back in to help Paul bash his way out and get the pig out. Once we got the pig to the truck we pulled his guts out chucked him on the truck and popped open a celebratory bag of lollies. We carried on driving further up the track spinning yarns and eating lollies while Pauls 3 dogs were working and Sarsha was in the box done for the day. After 20 minutes and a couple of lollies we had noticed that only Blake and Chief were ahead of us. We pulled up and checked the GPS and seen that Barry was treed up 300 meters behind us, so we quickly spun around and headed back towards him, again we pulled up about 150 meters from the bail and the other two dogs jumped in to give Barry a hand to bail up the pig. We jumped out of the truck and headed through the pines to where the dogs had pulled up another nice fat boar. When we got to the bail the dogs had him well stopped and he wasn’t going anywhere, the dogs had done well. A quick bullet to put the boar down and we had its guts out and on my back for the first carry in no time.
The truck was only 150 meters away but it was the longest 150 meter of steep thick pine and rubbish. I got through the steep part with the pig and tapped out. Paul took over and got em back to the track with minimal help from my fat ass. After a couple of photos and another lolly down we thought that we had better get Sarsha to a vet to sort out her injury.
When we pulled back up to Pauls we had a quick look at Sarshas wound and found that it was worse than I had originally thought it was. I quickly threw the pigs and my shit into my truck and headed straight to the vets. Unfortunately the boar had tagged her vein in her front left leg and was unable to be repaired. We discussed amputation but her front right paw had also been fractured and it wouldn’t have been descent to amputate. She was put down that night. I can’t imagine any pig hunter would want to lose their dogs but that’s hunting. She was a beautiful dog both at home and on the hill. Words couldn’t describe how much we meant to that dog and how much she meant to us and to this day is still sorely missed R.I.P my girl.
Hillbilly