August 2013
Cape York
It was one of those days that everything just went right, one of those days that makes you feel good about all the time and money you put into chasing pigs. It was just a normal Saturday and time to give the dogs another run and some hooky top end boars. Myself, Matt and Housey planned to meet at the boat ramp at sun up, before we knew it we were all there and loading our three quads into our barge just a large 6m punt boat custom built from scaffolding planks. Housey only bought one dog Piggy, an arab x about 12 months old that had only been on a few pigs. Matty bought his experienced bailer Beau and hard as nails swinger Ralph. I brought along my two main dogs Indy and Horse both fairly experienced dogs.
We planned to head up river for about an hour and find a spot to launch and head into no mans country. Country that was literally in the middle of no where, no vehicle access and nobody for miles, it was hard enough to get there by boat. After reaching the area we wanted to launch it was difficult to find a spot to get the quads off and we had the shovels out creating a landing pad onto the bank after an hour or so we had all three bikes off dogs on and ready to go.
Being fairly familiar with the area i knew we had a large swamp only about 400m from where we launched before we headed into creek country. We poked over to the swamp and Matty called out that he could see a good boar right out in the water on the other side, we flew around to cut him off before he saw us, on the way over the dogs got a good sent and all took off after something else, we managed to hold onto 2 dogs Piggy and Indy and pushed on to cut this boar off. We reached the side of the swamp closest to where the boar was, the big fella was still out about 80m in front of us wallowing in the water. We were all amazed at the size of this cracking boar and were calling madly for the other dogs to return, We decided to scare the boar out of the water before giving the dogs a crack at him and after watching him for several minutes the boar decided to make a break for it, the bow wave that this boar put off as he gathered speed coming out of the water was amazing and reflected the size of this big fella, as he hit the bank we were up his arse on the quads and i let indy fly she chased him for about 100m before spinning him and the big boar took too the dog smashing her into the ground, at that minute Housesys dog Piggy turned up and hit him front on grabbing once and not letting go a good battle between the two dogs and the big boar before i quickly ended it. We weighed him up and he went 105kg a huge pig for the area and anyone that has hunted the cape would understand a cracking boar for Cape York. By this time the other dogs had returned and we started pushing on. We started pushing up a creek and hit a few mobs on the way with all dogs doing there bit to pull a few up.
It wasn’t until the day started to heat up that we really started smashing it. We were on a small creek which only held water every couple of hundred metres we had two bikes working one side and one on the other. The first good boar along the creek was pulled up by Beau the bailer the boar backed up under the bank of the creek, the sound of her yap alerting the other dogs and the full team was there battling it out before we knew it, a quick couple of photos and we were off, as we went to take off from this boar matty spotted another solid boar only 50 – 80 metres from where we were, just poking along the creek towards us, he was quickly dispatched also. After this there was no time to rest you would barely get the dogs back on the bike and settled before another good boar would break from the cover, the dogs started putting them down one after another.
At one stage we pulled up for lunch we sat there and let the dogs have a rest in a bit of water no bigger than a car, we laughed and carried on, not trying to be quiet, as we took off we spotted two good pigs that were no more than 100m from us asleep under a tree the whole time, they both quickly received the treatment from the pack of hounds. We continued poking along the creek and we were all amazed at the number of loan boars and that each one seemed to have better hooks than the last. The dogs continued to fire, most of the boars were sight hunted but the two girls Indy and Beau both pulled off some good finds with boars that must have heard us coming and had already snuck off the creek. As the day drifted on we racked up more and more ending up with 34 for the day with 24 of these being good quality boars with 16 of these boars sporting hooks that would make any pig hunter drool. We eventually made it back to the barge we were exhausted but hadn’t done a thing compared to the hounds. The dogs did really well and we escaped the day with only a few minor injuries. Back on the barge and back at the ramp just as it was turning dark. A cracking day with the hounds, some good mates and some trophy boars. Definitely a day to remember.
