In a life of variables, pig catching is a constant

 

MOST of my hunting is done with dogs.
I breed them, train them and use them to find and grab wild pigs for pest control and for the freezer.
I am also well aware that some people find the whole concept challenging. And with good reason.
As I often say to those enquiring...it's not a game of tennis.
You can mitigate the risks, particularly for the dogs; have them fit, have quality protective equipment, be quick to support them. But dogs that want to find and stop pigs (and that is a crucial point, the dog has to want to do it...) are going to put themselves at risk.
Catching wild pigs with dogs is potentially dangerous and puts dogs and the hunter at the snorting, pointy end of agricultural and environmental pest management (and food gathering for that matter...). A bad pig can certainly hurt you or a dog but that's not all that's out there. There are sprains and strains, puncture wounds from sticks and knives, cuts from barbed wire, injuries from vehicle mishaps and the odd fall off a cliff... and that's just what's happened to me.
Pig catching is what I like to call 'big R reality'. It's not a concept or a theory. It's not open to interpretation. It's not my reality versus someone else's.
Catching big boars, particularly in steep mountain country, involves putting your hands on a very alive and very dangerous animal that can and will hurt you properly if you give it the opportunity. (Getting hit in the knee by a boar is like being hit by a sledge hammer with a spike welded to it...)
It's that reality I like.
For me, it's clean and clear; get it right or deal with the consequences.
There is no question that crawling into a blackberry bush at 2am to grab a nasty boar held by one of your dogs is 'big R reality'.

But why do it that way? Why not just shoot, or poison or trap pigs if it's all about pest control and shoot and trap if it's about food gathering?

Well, of course it's not all pest control and sourcing organic meat. It is mostly about the dogs.

The relationship with the dogs, the breeding and the training is what drives it all for me. The use of dogs has a perfectly practical application and forms one of the pillars of population management but the reason I hunt with them rather than shoot from a chopper is because it satisfies something inside me.
You can become very close to an animal that will put itself directly in harm's way rather than let you be hurt. In my case, there is no doubt I am in charge of my dogs. They behave as I wish. I am a benevolent dictator but a dictator all the same. But that relationship is more like a brother or sisterhood at the moment a big boar is on the ground as the result of our combined effort. There is a depth to the experience, the shared danger and that can be felt but remains elusive to adequately describe.

In pest control terms, around here anyway, landholders and managers use poison, traps, helicopter gun platforms and pig doggers in whatever combination they can afford or see fit.
Dogging pigs is not the best or the only way to manage the invasive pest issue, and you can say that about any of the methods mentioned. What can be the best method to one landholder or manager might be the worst to another. Dogging pigs is just one of the ways it can be done and any real attempt to manage pigs in an agricultural or ecological sense needs to consider all options and how they might fit together and then be Co-operative, Co-ordinated and Broadscale.
That's what the experts in population management tell us and I think they are right.

But while all that co-operation and co-ordination is being negotiated and funding is sought for the broadscale application of whatever method is chosen, I haunt my landholders' properties with my dogs. It keeps up the pressure on the pigs and keeps us in pork.

If the pigs reach a population level that makes me or the landholder uncomfortable, I will activate traps as well as dog the pigs that refuse to be trapped.

However, whatever happens, I keep coming through the front gate with the dogs ready to work. Of course, the pigs work out your tactics and change their behaviour so you have to be ready to adapt.
I keep coming through the gate but what time of day I do it, what phase of the moon, even what I am driving and how I drive when I enter the property will vary.

I want to hunt, the dogs want to hunt and the landholder wants us to hunt...

It makes you a part of the management of land and a part of the landscape.

It is a constant and will be until I can't physically do it any more.