Mojo
I was starting to wonder if I’d seen my last Boar! At the beginning of the winter my main dog Lu had snapped a crucial ligament, then things went from bad to worse while I was away swanning around Vietnam, my dog sitters managed to lose the holder Puk and 18 month old pup Kai (Lu’s daughter) plus I was going to have to miss entering my favorite pig hunts this winter, including the Havlock hunt.
By the way yes they do eat dogs up there, Vietnam that is! I saw a few hanging up for sale on the road side, but what really got me was the lack of cats, so with me being a big cat lover! I did a little research and yes they eat them as well, I really cracked up when I heard what they called them “Little Tiger” anyone!
Anyway I arrive home with only Lu in the kennel, she wasn’t expected to be over her operation for three months and the other two didn’t turn up till 45 days after they took off, I hadn’t expected to see the holder Puk again because before she ran off, she'd just got back from the vets after a boar collapsed her lung in the story 'Never To Old", hell dogs are tough! I was happy to have these two found after that long, never give up!
So I was down to one three legged dog I couldn’t hunt and the two starved runaways, Puk the holder had hardly any front teeth left now after 45 days on the run, hunting pigs most of the time know-doubt, so I decided to semi-retire her. I brought a new pup and another handy close dog to get things going again and spent a lot of hours/days/weeks walking the hills with no real success, till now.
It wasn’t much of a morning, and by the feel of things I'd been trying to find happiness in another bottle of wine the night before. after the alarm went of at five o'clock I sat on the edge of the bed scratching my head thinking how does that old saying go? "I got more out of a bottle of wine than it ever got out of me".
The rain started driving against the window, I slipped back into the warm bed, the rain stopped, bugger this I thought "I'm going hunting rain or not".
I soon let the dogs off and collared them up, Lu my main dog was back on deck finally after her ligament operation and I’d pulled the Holder Puk out of retirement for the day (ha!ha! that didn't last long), also Kai the 18 month old and Miss the new bitch were with us, it looked like the rain would hold off for a while, and after a boat ride we started walking up an easy Manuka and fivefinger ridge the deer had kindly cleared for us, plenty of deer sign too and a bit of old pig rooting, we soon started sidling, and before long the dogs were away and treed, I turned up and dispatched a small eater which I hung in a Manuka for pick-up later.
I wanted to have a bit more of a look around because there was sign of some larger pigs in the area, it was wet under foot as I slipped and slid around the face of the hill towards a likely boar spot I wanted to check out while in the area, Lu and Kai were about 150m away now, normally if Lu is more than 100meters away there's a pig about, she's a lazy bitch but one hell of a pig dog, she opened up with a deep bail, I could tell by her bark she'd found a good size boar, Kai opened up as well, I could hear Mis barking as well, so I let the holder go and set off after her, arriving to them now holding an angry boar. I think minutes before he had been sleeping in his bed when Lu woke him and with a full bladder it turned out, (probably why he hadn't made a run for it). No chance for a shot with the dogs all over him, so I jumped in or on, groping around under the pig for that opposite front leg to rip him off his feet, got it quickly turning him over on his side and stuck him, the boar seemed to take an age to bleed out but finally he slipped away and I stood up. “Yahoo” I yelled! Finally a decent boar after almost four months with nothing, I’d got ‘My Mojo back’.
The Mojo boar weighted 110lb on the hook, Lu & Puk, Lu foreground.
Two days later I was back out on the hill again with Lu, Miss and Kai, I left Puk to her retirement. It was first light as we climbed up a long easy ridge I new well, the northwesterly was picking up as we got higher up moving through the Manuka, Mahoe, Karmhi, Mingi mingi and dirty old man gorse, this area had been farmed in the forties and was regenerating well for a while, it's degenerating now in my opinion, due to the deer population, they had been steadily cleaning the place out to the point where nothing except the few things they don’t like to eat or can't reach survives.
Thirty minute's later I was into a patch of native, my favorite place, a nice area of old black beach the early farmers had left standing, plenty of supple jack for the pigs to chew on as well.
Looking down at the tracker Kai was around 200 m away and then started barking, by the time Lu and Mis caught up with Kai the pig had made it’s escape not before doing a big loop nearly over the top of me.
Never mind I thought as we set off to try another boar spot about a km away, the northwesterly was steadily picking up. Sidling all the time we were up quiet high now, Kai was away again doing another big circle, she came back and went away again taking Lu with her this time, which reminded me of my first pig dog Podge who used to come back for reinforcement's some times. Not long after they started bailing around the face in a shitty creek I new all to well, Miss shot off as soon as she heard the bailing and by the time I got there all was quiet, the pig had broke and they were now off the tracker around the ridge, so I scrambled through the creek without breaking my neck, up and around the slippery rocky face onto the ridge, soon I could hear the three dogs bailing hard out around in a ferny gully, I was slowly sneaking into the short punga’s and couldn’t see much except black, soon my eyes adjusted to a large boar fighting the dogs off, he was very fired up chasing them around as they dashed in for a nip, I took aim worrying I might hit the dogs and fired, the shot got his attention at-least and he turned and charged me! Taking careful aim this time I shot him between the eyes as he came on, he slumped down stone cold dead, Wahoo! Two boars in three days, yes I had my Mojo back alright.
This old boy would have gone about 130+ I'm guessing, he would have had an amazing set of tusks if it wasn't for the left one being broken off at some stage, still a great trophy all the same, I boned him out then packed him out for dog food and took the jaw of-course.
