Kiwi On The Loose

As recounted by Murvan Hughes. The year is 1956. The neighbour John Walker had reported to Dad a pig gutting sheep and killing lambs. They had tried all sorts of methods to get this pig, but they couldn’t get him, he was too cunning. Paddy Riley a friend on a neighbouring farm, much older than Dad but full of wisdom, gave a Dad a few detonators to use on catching the pig. It was lambing time and Dad found on visiting the stock that the pig had eaten the guts out of a couple of dead lambs and left the skins. He got to thinking about putting a couple of detonators in the guts of the dead lambs intestines. The lambs were left in the paddocks adjacent to the forestry where the pig was getting under the fences. The next morning after setting the trap, the skin was still there, the flesh gone and the detonators had been spat out and Mr Pig had got away. To this day Dad doesn’t know how he sensed they were there.

The next thing was to try and put the sharp blade of a pair of hand shears sticking up about 3 inches out of the ground in the holes under the fences he had been digging through. Several mornings later there was a big boar lying dead a couple of yards into the paddock from the hole with his stomach ripped open. Dad thought that he had got him, however dead lambs were still being eaten out in the paddocks. so the gutted boar wasn’t the marauding pig. Dad borrowed his brother in laws pig dogs, (Doug Hohneck) and started to hunt the pig with the dogs. There was pup that Dad wanted to break in as a pig dog so the pup ran with the other dogs. So off they went with the pup and Uncle Doug’s main dog after the pig.

On a ridge named Sinai the main dog started barking. By the time dad arrived he couldn’t see the pig apart from his eye visible through the fern. Since the dogs had stopped him and Dad only had his.22 he shot him in the eye, hoping to incapacitate him and the dogs finish him off and dad get another shot later. The pig took off down hill and got away from the dogs, and they couldn’t catch him again that day.

Several weeks later, the dogs bailed the boar up again on top of the ridge. Dad didn’t know where they were so he waited. The lead dog came back gasping, and wheezing with his tongue hanging out obviously very hurt. Dad went to check on the stock and left him in the paddock. The dog was in a very bad way, the pig must have crushed him up against a tree. He was taken to the vet but died later on.

Changing his strategy Dad mounted a 303 and a 110 gauge shot gun in a fence, over one of the lowest holes the pig was coming through. The guns were mounted and rigged so that when the pig lifted the wires to get under the fence the trigger was pulled. To get rid of his scent dad placed aniseed in the bottom of the holes.

Ten days later when Dad inspected the trap, which he did daily, the pig was found on the bush side of the fence. He had tried to get under and just poked his head through and the guns went off and got him clean between the ears. It was the talk of the valley, and to this day Dad laughs and says he must have got a surprise and wouldn’t have known what hit him.

He was a very big boar and probably over 200 lbs. They were surprised to find one front leg was shorter than the other which explained why he traveled the steep side of the bush, and that one of his eyes had no eyeball but the eyelids were joined. This was proof that here indeed was the problem pig.

I have this very moment just returned from a ‘mens’ camp. The concept may kinda stick in the throat of most men perhaps like the gagging on swede or silverbeat from your childhoods. Or mashed swede with carrot. Horribly good for you…….but it just got stuck in your throat.

Well the mens camp wasn’t just the touchy feelly share your heart stuff only, though that did happen I am sure while 8-10 boats fished the seas for 5 hours for Saturday morning. And it would of happened during the wonderful meals, and the communiion on the beach at dawn this morning. I came back early by necessity but as I sit here and think it was altogether awesome, a bunch of men getting together, young and old and from diverse walks of life, faith stages, perspectives and histories.

Being a man isn’t always easy in a world thats been caught in a pendulum swing and feminised to a large extent. And just being a man isn’t easy as you try to juggle whats expected of you, with what you know you can do and know you can’t do, as well as what you know you can’t do now but used to be able to.

From a kiwi perspective, I guess being a man is no different to anywhere in the world. I just know at the beginning of the camp I looked around and thought, hmmmmm…. what a strange bunch. By the time I left even if early…I looked around and saw others who were in the same boat as me. I saw brothers.

My name is john .I moved to usa 16 years ago.I married an american woman.I always saw usa as a country that was arrogant interfering and cocky and I also saw it as dirty and mostly concrete and steel. It was so big ,I did not like it when I got here .After I met people and started working I realised that most of the cocky nature was just pride in their country and I saw the same behaviour in kiwis .I think they are louder etc because of their freedom in some ways and big cities you have to talk a little louder to be heard.I used to hate the French due to the rainbow warrior bombing and the rugby coverage.Then I watched the tour d france bike race and saw the popy feilds and country out of the city and reilised that they are humble farmers and people just like us.USA I found to be a lot like home ,you have to go to a craft sale or a school function to see and meet the real yank not the one on tv.We all got to work go home deal with the kids home work ,the morgage, the boss etc just in a different place.It is hard to like the richest guy on the block or the sports guy who does the dance when he wins untill you meet him at the hospital whith a sick kid and you talk a little and see he is not so different.Come visit us in Wisconsin usa usa kiwi

Well as promised heres a little bit of pig hunting ‘kiwi’ styles. It so just occurred to me how if this boar had been hunted in England how different this picture could have been ‘old chap, eh wot and all that’. This is so New Zealand.

This is in fact my old dad in his younger years. Not only has it done me good to look @ this picture from a ‘let’s celebrate kiwiana who am I perspective’, but also from the fact that this is my dad . Inside myself I have this welling up of, WOW! and it makes me realise whose I am, and where I came from genetically and geographically. I walk away from this computer straighter, a fuller chest, emotionally richer, and a little less beaten by life. This image oozes testosterone and freaken Brad Pitt, Richard Gere, Arney or Harrison Ford and all the stars AIN’T got nothing on this nor all the AllBlack Gods. AND he’s my DAD!

This is the real deal.

SO I wonder… how many kiwi Dads are there out there who look at the bullshit (excuse the French but they deserve it) on television, the movies, the eye candy men, the heroes in womens minds and inside they think………………….?

Well I am sure they actually don’t think a lot because society and all its bullpucky (such a descriptive kiwi word) has demeaned and reduced their acts of manhood, courage, adventure and valor into nothingness. Unless you have abs like the 300, (assisted by makeup I might add) or have the ear of the media your exploits mean NOTHING. You are a legend in your own mind. You sit in your lazyboy and remember when……when ……….and you die slowly inside, walk more stooped, drink more, talk less……….there is no voice or even an ear for the stories compared to the strength on the medias NEW heroes. The billboard breed.

I am so guilty of not being interested BUT when I look at this picture I need to be. I so need to be.

The silence of living in obscurity in your own mind is deafening, when they could have made a movie on your life……….and you replay it in your head and come up with the sad untruth that you were nothing special.

If it wasn’t pig hunting it may have been any number of things…………I want to go home and hug my Dad, sit at his feet while I can.

He’s a heroe and I am his son.

As to the pig story. That better be another Kiwi VagaBond post.

Here’s the challenge!

Have you really seen your Dad lately?

Have you really seen your Mum?…..your grandparents if you are so lucky?

Have you really seen anyone lately?

There’s a heroe…..music please….(any of the heroe songs……………just please not ‘I did it myyyyyyyy way’………. it’s too close to the Hollywood bull___t, ole’ blue eyes was a ganster)

I am encouraged by some of the responses to the online exhibition idea.   Several have  indicated strong interest by email. I think some people are shy of blogging. It makes me realise how kiwi I am in a way. We have had to be out there to do well in this space down under, but we also have been happy to be removed. We are sometimes both of these states.

I am an out there a bit more than a be removed type. Don’t be shy, your thoughts and words are needed by the world. Just do it!

Hit respond.

Hi. If you received an email regarding this blog or the perhaps this exhibition I hope you will have a look around and see where I am coming from philosphically.
This is all about Aotearoa/New Zealand.
I’d love you to contribute in some way through your work or words. I hope we don’t see to much of the good ole kiwi knocking machine (not one of our better traits), but rather our ‘let’s do it attitude, why not, lets have an adventure kinda response! It’s what birthed us as a nation like at Gallipoli, or sending our products half way round the world to sell. This kind of attitude has left us with a legacy of impacting the larger world in such a way that is far beyond our size .
So lets do it!

I am going to set up a gallery on P base for this exhibition.
Why re-invent the wheelbarrow or the pavalova.
I am setting this up today. Images can be contributed from now on but the exhibition won’t be unveiled to the public until March 20th. SO lets just DO IT!

Well it was summer last week! AND darn I still can’t mow the lawn. I don’t know how KiwiVagabondish it is in general to be kinda glad you don’t have to, that you have a legit excuse. I have mown the lawns in the rain before. Kiwis are not wussy. (woosea)as in wood =oosy or pussycat! No we aren’t. But I wonder if that is a kiwi thing or if other members of the male cave bear clan are glad sometimes when it rains and they don’t have to mow the dam lawn.

I wonder.

Lawns are part of NZ life, we love ‘em and we hate ‘em. Personally I love the smell of mown lawn then its off to the beach.

The New Zealand masport mower is an iconic lawnmower.