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.