Rambling Recollections.

New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, Volume VIII, Issue 1, 1 April 1903, Page 12

Rambling Recollections.

By ROLLINGSTONE

PIG-HUNTING,

fOME look on pig-hunting as sport pure and simple. With us two other considerations vied with that of sport, viz., the destruction of an obnoxious animal with a rapacious appetite for spring lamb and a mischievous propensity for rooting up our grass paddocks, and the very necessary replenishment of our larder. Our first attempt in this latter respect was a rank failure — so >-ank indeed that it drove us out of the dining-room. That was when we were new-chums, and had gathered from our reading that wild boar flesh was a dish fit for Kings. Pictures of enormous wild boar heads, with huge curving tusks, being served at royal feasts with fitting pomp and ceremony had impressed the idea firmly in our minds that the larger and more masculine the

animal, the greater would be the delicacy of his flesh. Great and unbounded was our delight when, with the help of a neighbouring old hand and his two dauntless pig-dogs, we managed to secure, after a desperate conflict, an animal whose herculean frame and widely curved tusks satisfied even us. 1 siay "we," but it was the old hand's bullet, fired while a dog hung on each ear, which bored a neat hole through the tough hide and immensely thick bone between the animal's eyes, and dropped him on his tracksi. Ours might just as well have been marbles thrown at him by children from the way they glanced off any other parts of him which we chanced to hit.

We gathered fern together and singed him carefully after an exchange of compliments with the old hand. We feared that he would consider the carcase his. We admitted in our own minds that by right of

conquest it certainly was. We thought him a very fine fellow when he magnanimously waived all claim to it, saying, that as the boar was killed on our land we had baronial rights to the carcase. He evidently regarded this as a joke for he laughed immoderately at it, more in fact than we, who failed to see much wit in it, considered either necessary or seemly. Determined not to be out-done in generosity, we implored him not to stand on ceremony, but to share and share alike with us, at all events to take a joint. But to our astonishment he still refused, kindly but firmly. We did not know why -then — but we do now. "What a grand country this New Zealand must be, we thought, when an ordinary settler refuses as a gift meat which would be welcomed on a King's table in the land from which we came. We were not expert butchers, but managed to hack off some ungainly joints, and trudged off homo through the broken bush gullies with our coveted loiads.

Reminiscences of his joke still seemed to hover in the old hand's mind. He did not again lauo'h aloud, but you could see plainly that he wanted to. As he watched us staggering off with our loads, the desire seemed to increase. He said he must be off in another direction to look for a lost -io n. We stopped him to enquire how long wild pork required hanging. He said a very few days would do this weather. We were delighted, for we were absolutely hungry for it. There and then we determined to have a leg roasted for Sunday, and gave our friend a pressing 1 invitation to dinner. He declined with what I thought was a sot of regret, but the others de-

cleared it was that sorry old joko of his that was hurting Jiim again, and that he was trying to stifle it. When he had recovered his composure he told us that he was extremely sorry, but he had promised to dine with his mother-in-law, a dear old lady, that day, but he'd come up in the evening.

We got our pork home after many rests by the way. The track we had to travel was merely a blazed one through the bush, and the chunk I had to carry might have had a dozen legs instead of only one by the persistent way it got tangled up in the supplejack and brought me up, sometimes standing, but more often wishing 1 was. Sunday came in due course, and the pork was cooked. We sat round the table in eager anticipation of the delectable dainty. When Mary brought it in, her head was so carefully averted that she all but upset the lordly dish over me. A terrible odour pervaded the room when she entered, and she clapt the pork down on the table with the air of one who was holily thankful that was all she had to do with it. One of us remarked that the smell was unpleasant. " Nothing to what it is in the kitchen/ Mary replied, promptly but sorrowfully. The eager expectation faded out of our faces. Still we did not wholly despair. Many delicacies smelt much worse than they tasted, why not this one ? Besides it would not do to appear surprised at anything. That was not " colonial." We summoned up courage and tried to look as if we had quite expected to be smothered with the stink. I struck the carving knife into the joint and the stench increased. Slices were handed round. We each manfully determined not to be outdone and tasted — only to discover that this was not a case in pomt — it tasted infinitely worse even than it smelt. A hapDy thought struck us simultaneously, we rose from our seats and went out to feed our dogs.

Keflections have since been oast on our style of butchering. We

have been informed, that if correctly killed and cut up, even these old boars are good eating, but, rightly or wrongly, we could never be per-

suaded to believe it. That one Sunday dinner prejudiced us for all time.

1 do not wish it to be inferred from my opening paragraph that we entirely dissociated the idea of sport from pig-hunting. That would be a wrong impression altogether. We certainly preferred it, after we had had more experience, to the usual round of bush work. We who happened to be told off to fill the larder never took occasion to quarrel with the others because they would not let us stay at home and work. We did not at all agree with those who cannot see how one can possibly attach the term sport to the chase of such an ignoble animal as the pig, and consider that his very name is antagonistic to the idea. They forget there are varieties of pig, and probably cling to associations formed by the common or garden species, so named, we presume, from their fondness for horticultural pursuits, whenever insecure fences permit them to indulge this fancy. I grant freely that a night spent in chasing these persistent brutes up and down successive rows of rank vegetables, with one's pyjamas drenched with the dew that drips from them, till the whole thing resolves itself into an intricate maze, and the only way one can tell pork from cabbage is when a bolt from the green suddenly darts between one's legs, and down one goes with an exclamation which promptly settles the point, is calculated to give one a strong prejudice against what a French friend of ours used to ca^l " de chase of de pig." But wild pig-hunting is as different from this sort of fun as the taste of a nice juicy young ! sow is to the joint of the grim old veteran, on which we made our earliest experiment and rankest failure.

It was some years afterwards that I had the quickest and luckiest

chance of filling our pickle pork tub. I was then bachelorizing with Bob. It was his duty to ride round the sheep that week in the mornings, while I cooked the breakfast. The day before, he had reported seeing pig tracks, and traces) of the slaughter of lambs. This morning he took the cattle-dogs. They were no good for holding pigs, but would hunt them, and do their best to bail them up. Our favourite old pig-dog had fallen a victim to his intrepidity in an encounter with a boar some time previously. I stood at the door watching Bob riding up the brow of the grassy hill in front of the house. As he topped it, the dogs, which had hitherto trotted quietly and unconcernedly at his horse's heels, suddenly threw up their heads, evidently sniffing a strong scent that they knew. By the way, I'm not surprised at dogs being able to hunt pigs by the scent, I have a good nose for them myself. Away they went towards a small round hillock, covered with bush, standing at the base of a volcanic mountain similarly clothed.

I rushed into the house, seized an old muzzle-loader which happened to be ready loaded, and, taking a short cut, reached the spot before Bob had time to open several gates and get his horse through. On the top of the hillock was an old Maori fortification, evidently a sort of advance, fort, giving the holders the advantage of an admirable retreat, if necessary, along the short spur to the more impregnable mountain which frowned above it. The paiisading had long since rotted away, and the ditch which surrounded the miniature plateau, where the pa once stood, was almost obliterated by a precocious young forest of fern- trees and other shrubs.

Prom the sound of the dogs barking, I rightly judged that the pigs had made for this spot. Standing in the ditch, and gently pushing aside the drooping fern leaves, I could just see through the tangled mass of scrub the top of the mound, on which stood at bay a grand old

boar with bristles on end, gleaming, bloodshot eyes, and foaming jaws, armed with glittering tusks which rattled ominously. Behind him, as he turned round and round to present a constant front to the circling dogs— who, though valiantly barking, appeared equally anxious to seei if he looked less formidable behind — I spied a pair of exceedingly plump and comely young sows. This gay old December had two youthful Mays, then, and was most anxious not to lose either of them. They, for their part, displayed little fear, appearing to have every confidence in his power to protect them. They merely waltzed nimbly round after his every turn, keeping their position in his rear.

I shall never forget that scene. The spot was historic. Many a fierce battle between contending tribes of Maori had been fought there for the possession of the fertile plains on which our sheep now fed. The once grim, old fortification was now a wondrous bower of beauty. It seemed almost sacrilege to shoot pigs there, and mean to make an unequal contest of it by the use of firearms, against those confiding young Mays. But the thought of many innocent young lambs gobbled up by them before the helpless mothers' eyes — my young tender lambs which had contributed to the sleekness I admired, and that empty pickle-pork bub, flashed across my mind. All compunction was gone in an instant. A chance presented itself in the eddying whirl, of a shot at one of the young sows without the danger of hitting a dog. I caught her just behind the shoulder, and she fell. The boar and the other sow, frightened at the report, darted off down the hill, the dogs after them. Whether the old warrior was really concerned about his lost darling, or whether the dogs were successful in heading him, I know not, but I had scarcely lowered my gun before they again appeared, in a revolving ring, on the top of their fort, another shot, and the old fellow was twice

a widower, and had to bolt alone. I reloaded as quickly as possible, judging he might return to look into the matter. Scarcely had 1 rammed the bullet home in the oJd muzzle-loader, before he was back, raging round the corpses in a state of distracted fury, ever and anon charging right and left at the dogs as opportunity offered. A wellaimed shot dropt him by the side of his slaughtered loves. But in death they were divided. Bob, who never left his horsq if there was a chance of riding anywhere, however much longer it might take, appeared on the Siceine as the fun was over, and the work began. He helped me carry the succulent young sows out of the bush, slung on a sapling, to be turned into provender later on.

Many a dusky Maori maiden, taken captive in that ancient pa, in the years long gone by, had doubtless shared the same misfortune of war, and been as heartily relished by the hungry warriors, as this pork was by Bob and I.

The grizzly veteran was left mouldering on the old fort which he had done his best to defend, and fell only before overwhelming odds. Like the fallen foes of old, his head was preserved, but without indignity. Quite the reverse in fact, for Bob skinned and stuffed it, setting it up as an ornament in Ins bedroom, alongside an excellently preserved Maori skull he had found near the same spot.

It is curious what different ways dogs have of tackling pigs. The professional pig-dog grips the ear. A neighbour once gave me a mongrel he called a cattle-dog, a thickset, heavy-jawed brute, the colour of a foxhound. He slaid Tiger was too rough for his milking cows, but just the thing for bush cattle. He'd nip their heels till the bush would get too hot to hold them. But the trouble, we found, was you could'nt get the brute off them after they got out on the open. He made that also too hot for them, and they would bolt into the bush again,

and run till they dropped dead as likely as not, if he did not tire first.

It struck us Tiger might make a pig dog. We tried him the first opportunity. The chase was a stern one. We ran for all we were worth down a steep gully, and found the boar in a pool of water sitting down, bathing his hind legs, having no other kind of us© for them, he was hamstrung. Tiger was sitting calmly on the bank, with a selfsatisfied air, conscious that he had done all he considered worth doing. We did not approve of his style. We considered it too excruciating. He had made a brutal botch of the operation, but it was his last. A dog like that was not fit to live, and he died on the spot without benefit of judge or jury. Another of our cattle dogs, Danny, on the other hand, was a gentleman, he had a much gentler manner both with cattle and wild pigs, for we used him for both. He was better bred by far, a typical drover's dog. As lone as a beart would travel the right road, he never molested it in any way. If he was set on a stubborn one, a gentle grip of the heel made him pad his hoofs mighty quick. He had a great nose for a pig. If the animal would not bail up, but preferred to make tracks, Danny slipt up alongside of him, seized a fore leg, pulled it from under him, and thus slung him over on his Ada. We generally seized that opportunity of sticking the brute, for Danny evidently expected it. If we failed to> be| up in time before the pig regained his feet, Danny looked reproachfully at us. Never were the words " You confounded duffers ! " better expressed by dumb show. I thought Danny would turn out a good one when he was but a pup. We had a fox terrier with us one day, and the two gave chase to a thumping great black wild cat. She took refuge in a big clump of Scotch thistles. Foxy grabbed her by the scruff of her neck, and the pup with a caution; admirable in one so young, hung, on to her hind

quarters. Fur, blood and thistles flew thickly. The fur and blood were Foxy's and the cat's, but the thistles were impartially distributed, they stuck closer than a brother to the three of them. Never once did Danny take one of his eyes off Foxy or the other of? the cat. If Foxy let go his hold, as he had to do once or twice, the pup took all sorts of care to let his end go too. It was a job, he rightly considered, his youth excused him from tackling singlehanded. Directly Foxy gripped again, the pup followed suit. It was all done in a minute or two, and the cat was a corpse. Brutal work, do you say, fair cat fancier ? Pardon me, not half so brutal, for example, as that same black Tom's detestable habit of eating our pet chickens alive. He might think himself extremely lucky to escape juster and more prolonged retribution himself.

The caution Danny showed on that occasion followed him through life, though his courage was undeniable. He rarely got into the way of a boar's tusks as rasher dogs do, whose pluck is not similarly seasoned with this commendable virtue.

One can get a good deal of variety in pig-hunting. 1 remember calling on a gentleman who< owned a sheep-run in Otago. I had never met him before in my life, but I wanted to do some business with him. But it did not appeal to him, he refused to entertain it, and, as a pleasant way of changing the subject, he invited me to join him in <i pig-hunt, mounting me for the occasion on a stout little black cob, and arming me with an old bayonet fixed on a short handle. He had some good hunting dogs, but there was not one among them that would hold a pig. The dogs soon picked up the scent on the sweeping tussock, and went off at speed. The country was terribly broken but we followed at a gallop, pulling up only when absolutely 'necessary. We had not gpne far when we sight-

ed a black boar making off along a spur, with, the dogs gradually gaining on him. Those who have not seen a wild boar when he is in a hurry, would be amazed at the speed he can command. This fellow was nothing approaching the size of a good old Nortli Island bush boar, but for speed he could beat anything I ever saw in hog's hide. My host asked if I could ride before he mounted me on the black. I replied that I could, and was p'lad I had not lied, for directly we sighted the boar, the beggar took the bit between his teeth, flew along spurs like the ridge-pole of a house, at the tail of the, dogs,, down an awful declivity like a steep pitched roof, with the evident determination to get the stranger on his back in at the death. The gallop was exhilarating to a degree. It was a treat to ride such a determined little demon. A true horseman delights in being in perfect accord with his mount.

The boar had bailed up at the bottom, under the overhanging bank of a dry water-course. A retreat he had often used successfully before. But he would never use it again. Jumping off the pony, I plunged the bayonet into him, and he turned up his toes.

The station-holder came up and grasped me by the hand. "My word, you can ride/ he exclaimed. " Thought you were one of those black-coated town swells I abominate. When 1 you pestered me about that life insurance business, I guessed Fd pop you oh that demon of a pony, and have some sport to pay you out. But you've bested us all, and killed that brute, we've chased many a time, but could never catch ! You're a white man. What are your terms ? I'll insure for a thousand !"

But I did'nt see anything in that ride to make a song- about. I freely forgave the old gentleman his designs on me. I considered the ride, and the business that concluded it, cheap at the price.