The message on Facebook went like this.
“Gidday. What are you up to? There is a pig killing sheep out the back. Killing the ewe while lambing. Keen for a walk?”
Now that’s an invite a girl finds difficult to resist, but resist I do. It’s noon on a hot day – ground scent will have dissipated; temperatures have soared into the midtwenties and the pig dogs have already had their daily meal. Going now would be a recipe for disaster.
“Keen-as but can’t come up sorry,” I reply.
“One of us will be there early Friday.”
In between times the farmer forwards photos of dead sheep with insides outed and outsides inverted. Neither he nor I have seen patterns of damage like this before. Only specific parts have been consumed too, the liver and kidneys and the unborn lamb have been targeted, while the stomach is neatly cast aside. The death toll suggests this is not a scavenger taking advantage of natural mortality but something killing its dinner as and when required.
Friday morning and the pressure to achieve a positive outcome is weighing heavy. I have chosen my ‘Girl Power’ dog team. Pearl is old and nearing the end of her working life. Mint is young and still learning her trade. Between us we are a balance of experience and enthusiasm.
It’s already warm and the katabatic has been counteracted by a nor’ west breeze – after an arm-wrestle for superiority they’ve both come to a stalemate and called it quits. It’s raining lightly, just enough to freshen the grass and dampen the rocks. Just enough to dilute scent. This quest is going to be difficult, if not impossible.
A long fast walk. Quiet. No stock or wildlife disturbed, just us three getting where we need to be. Where exactly I don’t know yet, the dogs’ body language will tell me when to change modes.
There – got it. The change from ‘hurry’ to ‘hunt’ is on. The signs so minimal they’d be easy to miss.
Pearl takes the lead, slow and steady, carefully tracking up a gutter between blackberry thickets and large rocks. Mint follows suit and together they progress ever upwards. It’s not easy, it takes a lot of detective work and intuition, but the old dog sticks to her task. They zig and they zag and gain altitude. Then, way up in a patch of dead matagouri I hear the find.
The descent is rapid. A young boar streaks past me, old dog and young dog each giving a yip and a squeak as they strive to close the distance. One or other does so, jaws on hock, brakes applied and then all three tumble headlong into a blackberry thicket down near the gutter. No pig squeal, no dog bark, just a battle to gain the upper hand till the human joins in and the knife is wielded.
The wee stream in the gutter runs red as heart blood flows. The dogs relinquish their grip and quench their thirst. It’s easy to see how their quarry has gone undetected by the farmer. He is the same size as a merino. He is the same colour as the ewes shorn a month ago. He is not a typical high-shouldered feral boar but leggy and lengthy. On a hillside scattered with cover and dotted with sheep he would not catch your eye or draw attention to himself even in broad daylight.
So now it’s time to turn to the ‘Guts-out & Nutsout page of the Pig Hunt Procedure Manual’ but there is a problem. A sticky problem.
Imagine a tot having had his first taste of kiwifruit – and then the resulting aftermath into a leaky nappy. Imagine the nappy has been left on for a long time. So long the tot has laid down, and stood up, and wriggled and kicked and now there is excrement, soft and stinky, from the small of their back down to their ankles. Most mothers and many fathers can relate!
This boar has poohed his nappy too. More than once. From the base of his tail to the tops of his hocks, all is smeared in soft and stinky tan-coloured excrement – his tail even has shitebaubles adhering to it. Yep, he has ‘Sheepy-Style’ right down to having dags to rattle.
Well, I’m not going to leave him here. He is young and fat and will feed a family. The solution, of course, is the wee stream. Here, I wash the boar’s rear end.
You want to feel really embarrassed? Hold a boar’s back feet up and wash his bum and ball bag!
I am carefully cutting the dags off the boar’s skinny tail with my knife when it dawns on me, I can simply cut the tail off. He’s not going to feel it. He doesn’t need it any longer.
Tail off, nuts out, anal canal cleared and bum cheeks sparkling white, young Boris is soon strapped up and on my back for the carry-out. I can’t know for certain, but I suspect the killer has been captured and the ewes are now safe to lay down and lamb in peace. The nanas, both human and canine, have done good.
