Hi my name is Sam I’m working on a farm called. None of your business.
Winter is upon us now and the pigs are coming down lower and are starting to really enjoy ripping up some of my paddocks. A wee bit here and there, that’s life. But when I see a couple of paddocks that you only get a gap between patches of rooting of about two metres and it’s like that over the whole paddock, that’s too much! Now it’s time to start cleaning up some pigs and hopefully the lucky ones that don’t get found by the dogs or get spotted in the crosshairs, get punched with a hot piece of lead. They might get the message and head back to the hills and leave my good paddocks alone. Looking at the rooting it’s all just shallow little dinner plate size patches. Only little prints in the mud, nothing to get excited about. It will be a bit of fun for the dogs and that’s about it.
I had a busy Saturday, so on Sunday it’s time to go give the pigs their marching orders. I grab a couple of my dogs, Moss and Blitz, put some collars on, grab my gun, & knife and away we go. As I’m driving out just looking, I notice the little buggers had been making a start on another paddock. I stop and open the gate, let the dogs out and close the gate behind me. Get back on the bike, look up and the dogs are bee lining it across the paddock heading for a scrubby face that runs round below these paddocks. It took the dogs all of about 30 seconds once they got though the fence into the scrubby face to let out a bark, then sink their teeth into a pig. I make my way over, taking my time to see if anything runs out. I see a couple little pigs in the next paddock over making their way back to the hill. I get to the dogs after a bit of bush bashing and they have a nice wee 70lb boar knuckled. I dispatch him Quickly, Its starting to rain and am hoping the other pigs got the message and move on. So I grab the dogs and make the big Carry of about 50 metres to the fence line, job done.
Monday I got all the stock shifts done and some fencing. I head down to shift some break fences for the calves on the paddocks below the scrubby face where I caught the pig on Sunday. While I’m doing that I thought I heard a pig squealing up in the scrub. I stopped to listen for a minute, and sure enough I heard it again. This was my last job to do and I’ve still got an hour of light left in the day. I race up and grab Moss and Blitz, collars on and off we go. I shoot straight to the spot where I caught the pig yesterday, let the dogs go, and like Sunday it took about 30 seconds for them to find a pig. I get there, sort it out and find it’s just a wee 40ish lb sow. Before I could get back to the fence line the dogs grab another pig, I sort that one out too! I got back to the truck and then notice Blitz is the only dog with me, so I check the tracking gear and Moss is about 700 metres away. I have a think about it, not much light left, and no head torch. I give Moss a whistle and in no time he is back, I put them in the truck and I’m off. I don’t even get to the end of the paddock and there is a pig running across in front of me. So out with the rifle and, BANG! That’s another one cleaned up. This one was a sow about 90lb. Surely now they have got the message.
Tuesday I head out the back to get some mustering done. Bloody pigs have given me the one finger salute and really gone to town on the paddocks. I get up the hill to muster and take advantage of reception to give a mate Isaac a call and see if he would like to come have a run round with his dogs when he finishes work. I wasn’t sure if I would get a chance to myself as I still had a bit of work to get through. He was keen and he was going to bring his son Billy for a walk. Lucky for me everything went smooth at work and I got through all my jobs just in time to meet Isaac and Billy at 4.30. Again I grab Moss and Blitz, and Isaac brought 3 dogs Kip, Baldy and Nig, so we head off out. We get to the paddock, open the gate before letting the dogs out and they are at full speed across the paddock. Out in front of us is a few wee pigs. The dogs grab one, and Billy heads in quick to stick it. It’s another sow about 40lb. I say to Isaac, “let the dogs go kill a few more of these, I’m sick of them”. The dogs get through the fence and off down the scrubby face. We gut the pig and while doing that the tracking gear beeps, its looking good, they must have another 1 of those shitters. Beep blitz and Kip treed, Beep Baldy treed. Isaac had left Nig in the dog box as he is a bit harder than the other dogs. I was just saying to Isaac that they will only be onto small pigs as surely any good pig wouldn’t hang around after having dogs in there two days in a row before hand. I said we may as well drive back around to the paddocks below the scrubby face. The dogs were closest to the fence down the bottom and I didn’t feel like bashing through any more gorse than needed. As we were driving back around, the tracking gear started beeping again. Dogs are bailing; it’s time to speed up a bit. We get down to the bottom paddocks and sure enough there they are. As we got up to the fence we could hear some of the dogs were holding so Isaac cut Nig loose. We jumped over the fence and had a bit of gorse to push through and all I hear from Isaac is, “well I’m off to the vet”. Baldy walked past with a fair bit of blood coming from his neck. As we get closer the pig spotted us, he had three dogs holding him now and he was walking backwards uphill dragging the dogs, not taking an eye off us. Isaac shot around behind the pig and grabbed it. I got in there helped hold it so Isaac could stick it. Billy couldn’t wait to get in and see what we had. The pig was now dead and it was time to check the dogs out. I was lucky, just a poke in the back leg of moss, Isaac’s dogs were a bit worse off. We quickly gutted the pig, dragged it down to the paddock, on the truck and we were out of there. Put the boar on the scales and it went 150lb. No time for a beer as Isaac had to get the dogs to the vet, the dogs received some stiches and a good clean up. They will need a few weeks off, but they live to do it all over again next time. You just never know what is sitting in the scrub.
To top it all off the bloody pigs are still ripping the paddock up.
Sam Curtis