I was pretty lucky to get to live on a decent size farm just out of Central Otago for the last 4 years and have hunting on my back doorstep
I was pretty lucky to get to live on a decent size farm just out of Central Otago for the last 4 years and have hunting on my back doorstep, literally pigs would root up the paddock next to the house on the odd occasion. There are a few good 2 tonners caught around the area every year but most of the time boars don’t have big tusk due to them grinding them down on all of the rocks, this is a bonus as you don’t get many vet bills especially when you run holders.
While my partner at the time moved down with two dogs Rock and Patch and I had one dog Borris, he unfortunately lost Patch his main dog only one year after moving to Otago due to heat stroke. This was defiantly an eye opener moving to a much warmer area and even hunting only on cold nights it caught up to the old boy and he passed away after catching us a good boar one night. Patch found /caught hundreds of pigs over his 8 years pig hunting and never bailed one.
The night he held a 250lb and got his biggest tong up he still never learnt a lesson to bail, A one in a million dog! It was heart breaking losing a dog that got treated like a human and meant from finding pigs most of the time out hunting to then having two depressed dogs Rock and Borris who lost their leader and their hunt drive.
We were lucky to have borrowed a few good dogs from some bloody good fallas while I got two pups Baz and Frank going who are now days humming along nicely and Tom managed to get given an older dog Blue. Blue can be relaxed about hunting if he’s feeling lazy as he is getting on in age but some days he will track out for kms and you’ll spend hours trying to pick him up on the gps as he catches up to a good boar waiting for the other dogs to show. He has alot of knowledge and is a great teacher to young dogs building their confidence which was key in this situation.
Where I lived the country wasn’t to steep, a lot of galleys and a lot of rocks so you never really seen to many pigs out rooting up in day light but if you did they were normally digging up a Spaniard for the grubs underneath. Snow tussocks are everywhere on the tops of the hills and the pigs sure do love camping up in those, does make it hard trying to stick a pig when your pushing through tussock taller than yourself and you can’t see where the pig is, hoping like hell the dogs don’t let it go. This did happen more than once and is the only time I have been close to being taken out by a boar. Due to the nature of the damage pigs do in this spacific area everything gets killed the dogs get onto, mainly because of the amount of money spent by land owners re sowing grass and paying pest control to come shoot mobs even sometimes by helicopter so you’re doing them a favour and giving a couple roast or bacon to the farmer is always appreciated and so you’re in the good books to come back hunting.
Weather plays a big part a lot of the time reaching over 30 degrees in the summer and then -14 hoar frost in winter or just being too darn bloody windy! The cold is good as pigs come down lower when it snows and you can track mobs around pretty easy. Most of the pigs I have got in Otago would be ginger or brown, not often would you see a pitch-black pig, but they were about and were normally the bigger ones I found. There are plenty of good hunting competitions in the area which is a perk as who doesn’t like winning something for doing a hobby you love doing anyways! Anyways this just sums up where all these photos are taken and if you get a chance, I would defiantly recommend heading to Otago to do some hunting.
Georgie Hendrie