For The Record: Week 1

Timber, traps and tucker
(July 1 - 7 2013)

By Ned Makim

The first week of the For The Record project was hardly a record breaker in hunting terms.
It started with a call from mate Luke who has been catching and trapping a lot of pigs on a grain property north of my home town of Inverell.
He had another trap full and there were some good eating pigs in them. He had a few on the hook ready to be dressed for the table if I was interested.
I certainly was...
I slipped out to his place and in relatively short order we had the pigs skinned and the fillets, boned shoulders and back leg roasts bagged up ready to go.
Free range, grain fed pork for four households all for the cost of a bit of time and a short drive out of town.

Next was collecting some more ironbark for son James. The wood was perfect and the saw sharp so we knocked over the job reasonable quickly. It helps if there are two blokes loading...
While we were in the area we checked on a pig trap and a couple of game cameras. The trap is more of an indicator than a serious attempt at catching. The landholder wants his pigs controlled so the cameras and trap provide information on activity that can help focus my efforts with the dogs.

We checked for nest holes that might hold birds or bats...

The cameras didn't tells us a lot. Although we learned how often the sheep walk around the paddock...and that there is at least one fox that follows them. If he escapes a baiting program, I'll whack a couple of leg hold traps in the ground to get rid of him and a few of his mates.

One of the cameras watching a natural bottleneck with a track,
a fence and the head of a gully coming together to force animals
into concentrated spot. The pig trap is just to the right of the
ironbark tree in the background.

The pig trap gate with game camera in the background.

 I had a second trap on the property but it needed some maintenance and was destined for duty on yet another property so I zipped back out to pick it up. This time, however, I took the dogs. After hauling the trailer up into the hills to collect trap 2 and bring it back down near the house, I took the dogs for a quick look around the oats. I spotted a couple of pigs at the time they spotted me and they were off. I was still a paddock away from them but you get to know your blocks so I went for where I assumed they'd reappear yet another paddock over. The ball bounced my way and Suzie and Dave grabbed one each. More dog food and a happy farmer.

The next day it was on the road again for dogs and I as I carted the repaired spare trap south of Inverell to site it behind another oats crop that was being hit by pigs. The cocky had given me a set of keys so I could come an go as I chose so the trap was set-up and another camera was positioned to capture all the action. I had  chat to the landholder and said I'd seen wild dog tracks on a previous visit. He said he'd seen a dog about a month ago and believed it was coming from some nearby public land. One to watch...
I took the dogs for a drive and picked up another two little pigs.

WEEK 1:

Pest animals removed    4
Free range meat           64kgs
Free range dog food      81kgs
Firewood                           1.5 tonnes
Kilometres travelled        558kms