Uhunt Mag Information

• Posted By : BRISTLE UP
• Posted On : Jun 30, 2019
• Views : 1959
• Category : PIG DOGGING » ARTICLES, TIPS & HOW TO GUIDES
• Description : “Hundreds of acres of sugarcane backed by rainforest clad mountains and thick scrub”

Overview

• By Beau Lynd
  
  As most of you would know northern Australia from Cape York, The Gulf, and the Northern Territory, has some unreal hunting to be had. Eucalypt swamps, dry river beds, and open grasslands filled with some nasty boars that in a lot of cases would rather stand and fight than run.What some of you wouldn’t have seen or hunted are the hundreds of acres of sugarcane backed by rainforest clad mountains and thick scrub that covers much of the area along the coast between Townsville and Cooktown. Hunting this kind of country is an acquired taste and isn’t for everyone but the rewards can be good with plenty of big pigs getting around. Finding them isn’t the problem a lot of the time but catching them can be a task. Farmers around the area I hunt up here are often quite willing to let you hunt if you can prove to them you can get results and your dogs and hunting friends are well mannered and stock proof. To get these results quite often we will team up with other gun or dog hunters and once we know pigs are eating a particular paddock we will arrive there at the same time as the pigs are feeding and surround that paddock with men on pads all communicating with UHF. 
  
  
  
  The men usually carry a shotgun loaded with SSG loads or in the case of more open paddocks a rifle equipped with a Red Dot scope on the top, so they can use both eyes and make sure no dogs are close behind when shooting a pig. Once they are in position the remaining hunter will be contacted to bring in the Ute with the dogs to try to flush the pigs out towards the other hunters. This way of hunting is a lot of hard work and planning but brings much better results than simply allowing the dogs to hunt the paddock and coming up with one or two pigs, which then keeps the farmer happy and allows us to come back. Once the paddock has been harvested Ute finding the trash and returns can be productive, although a lot of the pigs aren’t new to being hunted and will quite often leave as soon as they hear a distant motor or lights. Making it hard work for the dogs and huge runs through the very thick country, it’s very rewarding when you get that pig you have been chasing. Another method that can be productive is to walk the creeks and ridgelines around the paddocks. I find walking the main rivers can bring results but more often than not walking the bottom of the mountains around a valley and river can be more productive as the pigs seem to like isolated soaks and springs instead of clear running water for wallowing and sleeping. 
  
  
  
  This country can be very hard going and reading the country can really help to avoid the thickest patches, that being said when walking rainforest, I always take a backpack with water for myself and if need be the dogs (which can be refilled at clear creeks), a first aid kit including a snake bandage for myself, as well as the necessities for the dogs. I also carry a machete on the thicker walks and a gun over my shoulder as my dogs will bail quite often with larger pigs. The dogs I run are smaller then what most people use and although, there not world beaters I like to think of them as being quite handy for the country I am in. My main dog is Ali, she is Bully, Whippet, Cattle x collie, she lugs smaller pigs up to around the 60kg point, unless they are giving her heaps in which case she will bail, she will also come off and bail if she is getting tired which is super handy because the thick country sometimes means it could take a long time to reach her in tropical conditions. My other dogs called Hope she is a Stumpy Cattle Cross, although we are not sure of her breeding as she was rescued by my oldies as a puppy when they found her starving. Once she got her first taste of hunting she was quickly given to me as she no longer wanted much to do with the boring house dog life. She is constantly improving and what she lacks in skill she definitely makes up for in enthusiasm. The Cattle Dog in her gives her a lot of bite which really helps her pull up some of the pigs especially boars. She bails all the time and will sit boars Ali is struggling to hold down which makes them a great team.
  
  
  
  On one of these Rainforest hunts I arrived at around 9.30 in the morning which I find it a great time for walking as long as the weather is not too hot, as the pigs have usually just bedded down and therefore are easier for the dogs to catch off guard as they are sleeping and seem to get quite cranky when woken meaning they will bail up in their beds or within a couple hundred meters of the bed most the time. I had been walking for around two hours and seen a couple of wallows and tracks as well as some huge fig trees with a base as big as a bedroom with old used beds in the tangle of roots at the bottom. I was coming up to the halfway point in my hunt where I planned to cross the creek in the middle of the valley I was walking. Heading up the other side the dogs were nowhere to be seen and a quick check of the tracker told me they were both working the same area 150m out in front of me. As I got closer I came across a bit of a soak (this is a where a spring comes up through the ground, keeping its wet all the time) with tusk marks in the trees around it. I headed towards the dogs which were now working they’re way back towards me as we closed the gap between us I began to see a couple of candlenut shells on the ground (a favorite food source of pigs around this area). I stopped walking and waited, I could hear the dogs only a few meters from me, just as I was thinking the pig was nowhere to be found, I heard aslight whimper from one of the dogs then a huge roar from what then showed itself as a good boar as I caught a quick glimpse of it racing away with the dogs hot on his heels.
  
  
  
  I watched the tracker as the boar hit the side of the valley and started climbing with the dogs getting a steady bail around the kilometers mark. Pigs around here are hard to bail on a hillside and know that they can usually beat a dog-headed downhill through the forest. Just as I reached the bottom of the mountain the dogs were bailing, I checked my tracker to see them both coming downhill flat out I stopped and listened hearing a new bail erupt only a hundred or so meters away. I bashed and slashed my way to within 30m then dropped my machete to sneak the rest of the way in with the 3030 so he wouldn’t spook and break. Spotting him in a bit of a ditch I had to wait for a clear shot which seemed to take forever as he spun trying to face the dogs at all times. Finally, the shot presented itself and I drove the pig straight through the pine in his neck dropping him instantly. Upon closer inspection, I realized just how big this pig was and would have to be close to the 130kg mark making it my largest pig to date. But with no way to weigh him, I got a couple of photos with the dogs behind him and proceeded to make my way the last km or two back to the car without any more pigs. Not many numbers but definitely a pig to remember.