Aussie Post

Aussie Post

11 pigs before lunch.

November 2014 Cape York, the country had been drying up nicely and I decided to go and hit one of our more productive creeks ‘aussie post’ appropriately named as it always seems to deliver the goods.

Today I was hunting with my good mate Brett and his partner Gina, I had my two dogs, Bo the bailer a cattle dog cross, and Dave the big 40kg bull arab for holding. Brett had his rifle with a red dot scope that we were disappointed to find had gone flat over night. So it was up to the two hounds to pull us up some pigs.We plated the hounds, loaded the two quad bikes onto the barge and set off up river to hit the creek. After we unloaded the barge and got our gear sorted, it wasn’t long before we were poking along nicely waiting for Bo to pick up a fresh scent. I had Dave clipped onto the dog rack on the back of the quad and was using Bo the bailer to find, the reason for this was because I wanted to conserve Dave’s energy as much as possible, as previously we had caught good numbers of this creek and being early November temperatures could soar into the mid 30’s. Using the bailer to chase down the pig and getting as close as possible on the Quad, then dropping the big bugger means that he has less time swinging, uses less energy, has less chance of injury or overheating. Meaning we can hunt longer into the day and our dog will recover quicker in the following days.

Before Bo could get a chance to sniff us out a porker a decent sized boar came trotting of the flats and heading for the tree line right out in front of us. Not even 500m from where we had launched the Barge, it doesn’t get much better than this! Before I had a chance to call Bo on she was off in a flash and had the boar bailed up in no time, I pulled up close and released Dave as this happened the Boar broke from the bail and pushed out another 100m but Bo was hot up his backside and stopped him, by the time I got there Dave was all over the boar. Dave usually is pretty hard on the first boar he hits in the morning, especially if he hasn’t been hunted for a few weeks. And this was no exception, Dave was smashing him.After dispatching of no1 for the day we started to head up the creek and out in the distance, no more then 200m from the first boar there was another one, sitting right out in the open on some hard dried up mud that had been turned up earlier in the year by pigs. I was going to hold onto Bo and try get closer to the boar as I didn’t want her running all that way over broken ground as she could have done damage to her pads or even worse injured a leg. But yet again Bo was too quick for me she had spotted the Boar and was off across the broken mud before I could stop her.

As the morning progressed we smashed a few more pigs on the way up the creek but the none were really sticking out as solid boar, most were around the 60-70kg mark, still good cranky cape boars but nothing exceptional. That was until the 7th pig for the run decided to break from the creek, as soon as I spotted him I knew he was a cracker. He managed to get a good lead on Bo but in relatively open flat country once she has the scent its not often she doesn’t pull them up. And after a short chase she had this cracker bailed up. I got up close on the quad and let big Dave give it to him. And as soon as I could I jump in and grabbed a back leg. We got some good pictures of him and moved further up the creek into no mans land.

By this stage it was about 10.30 in the morning things were starting to warm up, the boars were becoming more frequent and the warmer weather was forcing them onto the creek for their water. It wasn’t long before the we were back in action, was got another 3 boars in quick succession taking the total up to 10, we were not even half way up the creek yet. I was thinking we were looking at a 20+ day easy. That was until we hit the next boar, yet again he wasn’t a thumper but about 70kg of pure Cape York brawler. He dished it out to Dave and gave the big fella a hit on the ear. We manage to dispatch him and and Dave was loosing some blood from his ear, so we decided that in the best interest of the dogs health it was the smart thing to pull out and head back to the barge. Not an easy call to make when you are only half way through a hunt its 11.30 in the morning and you have 11 on the deck. But I would risk my dogs health for just a few more stinkers. And we were bak home for lunch so we couldn’t complain to much.

All the action is filmed on our 3rd DVD ‘Top End Hogs” a mixture of footage from up the Cape and from the Gulf where Bryce has been smashing some solid Gulf boars. Enjoy.