Introducing Bill
“I am married with two sons, we have a 135 acre block of land in the foothills of the southern alps near Geraldine in South Canterbury.
I was introduced to the sport of pig hunting in 1990 when invited out for a hunt with a farm manager. We caught three pigs and shot an eleven point stag, I was hooked.
Not long after getting into pig hunting I was fortunate to secure a job in a local freezing works (Fortex) as a boner sawman. Learning how to bone out meat worked in very well with my hunting and this is one of the many skills that I can now teach any hunter wanting to learn.
My first three years hunting were in the pine forests around Dunedin, back then I thought that the bigger and stronger the dog the more chance there would be of catching pigs. I stuck with these type of dogs for three years until moving to central Otago. This is when I really started learning so much more about the sport that I had such a passion for. The difference being that when hunting in the pines I could not watch my dogs working yet out in the open tussock I could see my dogs tracking away and getting onto the pigs and just what they where doing to stop the pigs. This is when I started realizing that the most important thing when hunting with dogs is not the size of the dog but what is going on inside that dogs head. By working with and learning from my dogs I could have much greater success.
Working as a rural truck driver in central Otago gave me introduction to many landowners, most of whom after getting to know me, allowed me access to hunt on their land. In the year 2000 my family and I moved to South Canterbury to take up a position with Fontera driving milk tankers. Again my career worked in with my hunting, this time by introducing access to over 50 blocks of land.
Since 2002 I have been a regular writer for pig hunting magazines , including the New Zealand Pig Hunter, New Zealand Outdoor, and currently Hooked on Boars. The stories that I prefer to write are educational, focusing on different aspects of hunting, my aim being to share personal learning experiences with the reader.
Developing my dog training and pig hunting facilities, and my business Mainland Boar Hunting, keeps me very busy, yet the passion I have for what I do ensures energy and enthusiasm for the task at hand. It is great that after 30 years of hunting there is still so much opportunity to learn and to improve my knowledge and enjoyment of the sport. Particularly satisfying is the opportunity to share this knowledge and passion personally with those who visit me, and to all in the pig hunting community through this website.”
Happy Hunting
Bill Westwood
