Old hunts, old dogs

This a story I wrote for boardogs.com in about 2000. That's me and Sailor (a Doug Mummery dog) in the pix...It all happened about 1980 so I'm about 20 and wearing a Tulare (California) Union High School t shirt from my one day in school in the US, but that's another story.

The Blackberry Boar.

ONE of the advantages of hunting pigs in the New England area of New South Wales is the blackberries. The bushes themselves are a pain in the neck but in late summer these tangles of vine and thorn produce kilos of sweet fruit for those prepared to make the effort. They can also produce a few kilos of pork as well...
Quincy Adams and I decided to take advantage of the longer afternoons to head for a spot about 30 minutes from town in the hope of spooking a pig or two. It was typical western New England country. Hills, a mix of timber and cleared country, big granite outcrops...and blackberry bushes. As a weed the blackberry is a problem but from a porcine point of view the plant represents a safe haven, a cool protected spot to push into and set up camp. To us the bushes represented the potential for pigs.
We'd stopped the truck at the head of a gully that stretched away to the south and carried blackberries of varying sizes along its entire length. The property manager had seen a decent sized boar working in the area but it had always managed to slip away into this gully before he could get a bead on it. Bad news for him but good news for us.
We set off down the slope with Sailor (a foxhound x mastiff/bully bred by the late Doug Mummery) and Bob a hard little bully type (out of Sandy by Souphound). Sailor could find them, no problem, and Bob had a ton of guts so we felt fairly confident that if there was a hog in the area, we'd all meet up for a chat.
From bush to bush and out into the long Darby's oats Sailor quartered back and forth. Nose to the ground, nose in the air it made no difference. Nothing stirred. Mobs of roos watched us pass before hopping away into the timber. Bloody roos. Why couldn't they be pigs. Dry runs are a part of pig chasing but they are never much fun.
We reached a branch of the gully and turned in. It was a spot I hadn't been before and I thought I'd walked almost all the 50,000 acres to which I had access. More promising bushes and more disappointment. We had to face it. It had been a pleasant stroll but not much of a pig hunt. Oh well, at least the dogs had had a bit of exercise and we'd been able to spend the afternoon in the bush. And, of course, there were the blackberries.
The bushes groaned under the weight of ripe, sweet fruit so Quincy and I decided to cut our losses and have a feed. Dodging the thorns as best we could we were quickly purple from the juice and filling up on vitamin C.
Bob was lying down under a tree and Sailor was at my feet as Quincy and I tried to outdo one another in the glutton stakes. Sailor was relaxed. Like a big Labrador he lolled around soaking up the late afternoon sun.
And then things changed. They changed really fast.
Sailor was an excellent finder but even the good dogs have strange moments and this was one of them. It was as though something dawned on him and he rolled upright and looked into the blackberry bush over which I was trying to reach. Weird, I thought. He hasn't reacted all afternoon and now he's staring into an empty bush. Is it empty? I got onto the balls of me feet and shifted my weight away from the bush and then the place erupted. A big black and white boar charged straight out of the bush hitting Sailor in the mid-section, in turn, driving him into my legs. I moved backwards so fast I must have looked like a spider on speed.
The big bastard drove harder into Sailor who slipped off the pig's face and grabbed an ear as Quincy screamed for Bob. Of course, Bob was already on the way and hit the hog hard on the nose. Quincy and I flew in almost knocking one another over to get to the thing's back legs. And with that we had a knife in him and he'd had it.
He was a beauty. The fact that Sailor is dead now, killed on the Cape York Peninsula via snake bite and I have hair in the photo dates this little adventure fairly badly but it remains one of my most interesting memories of chasing hogs and one of only two times that I have been properly charged in 24 years in the game.It was a sobering experience but did nothing to curb my love of getting after the pigs with a handy dog or two. And, boy, do I still love eating those blackberries.

Some history...

I started catching pigs with my own dogs on my own country when I was 17. At the time I was about 99 per cent enthusiasm and 1 per cent knowledge but I managed to catch a few pigs and slowly improve the quality of the thinking involved in the process. At that time my main hunting focus was on 50,000 acres of hill country west of Bundarra in New South Wales. At the time, the late seventies, the district slipped into a major drought. As conditions deteriorated from west to east in NSW, the wild pigs moved in the same direction. Massive numbers of pigs came east through the country split by the Gulf Creek Rd closer to Barraba and up into the higher ridges just above the Gwydir River in the granite country. That's where my country was.
The first morning Rob (Boora) Kent, his cousin Chris Kent and I looked out over a particular cleared paddock in the midst of the big granite boulder ridges we counted 153 pigs in different mobs. We could not believe it. Down the slope we went, picking our way through the timber and rock to line up the best possible pigs we could see. (Best for us is always, big boars). We had the dogs held so we could get as close as possible to the pigs before the action started. This gave us a chance to catch them before they hit the blackberry bushes...more on blackberries later... We crept closer and closer, straight into another 36 pigs on the slope. All our plans immediately went to shit as dogs, pigs and young blokes went everywhere. We ended up with 32 for the run and some cracking good boars among them.
From then on Boora and I in particular crawled all over that 50,000 acres catching pigs every spare moment we had.
It's a fair while since those early days now and some of the faces have changed but the hunt for the big boars that walk the hills around my home town still fills every spare moment I have.