Collar The Dogs!

Last August I decided to accept an invite and travel to far North Queensland, keen to travel through this part of Oz but mainly to hunt the far north country and the huge number of pigs that inhabit this spectacular part of Australia. I wasn’t disappointed.

Johnny Wilson runs a business,all the usual merchandise etc, but mainly about guided hunting on a huge remote cattle station. He caters for shooters, bow hunters and dogs, bring your own or hunt with his very good well trained pack. While I didn’t do any fishing it’s all there. I was privileged to spend a week on the station at no cost apart from a bit of cash to the land owner for food that was all supplied and cooked by a very capable station cook. The hospitality I experienced both from the owners, the live in workforce and Johnny himself was much appreciated.

The hunting was all about trophy boars a little bit different than the hunting for food that us kiwis are about. It’s hard for us to get our heads around the huge numbers of pigs that live in this part of the country and the emphasis for the land owners is on eradication. The big boars are left alone for Johnny and his business run together with the land owner and everything else is culled with periodic helicopter shoots. While I stayed with Johnny in his quarters there is top notch accommodation and all meals supplied with the guided hunts.

My first conversations with Johnny came about when he got hold of a young dog out of the last litter I bred about 9 years ago he turned out to be a pretty handy finder bailer and was put to a collie bitch, this litter produced some very good finder bailers and over the years he has kept breeding, some out crosses but always keeping the collie predominant. I got to see some of these dogs in action and watched them consistently pick good boars from big mobs, stop them and bail them. They’re very hard end stoppers and the pigs we caught were all found from the buggy while out feeding in forage sorghum, river country and grass country so they’d had their back ends hammered before they pulled up. We were able to walk in to the bail, call dogs out for a shot all in full view of the pig, obviously the dogs were the bigger threat.

Most of the pigs I catch are found in their beds, full bladder and bowels and as long as there’s not to much pressure from the dogs they’re happy to stand in the bail, that is until I arrive. It appears that not having felt the dogs teeth the human is the bigger threat sometimes activating the “fight or flight mode” these young dogs of mine are also very hard on the back end and if they do break it’s usually only once.

The first 3 days were spent hunting my 3 and Fattys brother Batman and Johnnys house dog also handy on the pigs. First night out was an eye opener, the dogs flew from the buggy and ended up with a good bail,a good boar in forage sorghum over our heads, in the dark while the rest of the mob crashed through the stuff around our feet.

A highlight for me was a trip to a camp out the back of the station, a full days drive scrub bashing on overgrown tracks, navigating washouts from the previous wet season floods and getting bogged in the middle of nowhere. Amongst all of that we caught some very good boars, two massive sows, the only two of the trip and sighted plenty of wild horses and wild cattle. Camped the night and did it all again the next day including getting bogged in the same spot.

For the rest of the week we hunted Johnnys dogs and it was a pleasure to watch his teams of mainstays and youngsters in action. More good boars and only boars.

While these dogs are well and truly the products of Johnnys breeding and training I was wrapped to see the similarities to my old mainstays that produced Scooter his first of the line. One in particular I really liked was Smudge almost identical to old Manu a few generations on.

An awesome trip for an old fella, awesome country, good dogs and good boars.

Johnny has an Instagram page, Collar the Dogs  if anyone’s interested or I can put you in touch.