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First ever successful hunt
The past couple of weekends have been huge for me. I've been shooting targets for a couple of years now but had not yet hunted game. Last year I went out for a duck shoot out on the Waikato river and attempted to track a pig with a friend of mine, both un-successful, but a good introduction.
This year the action unfolded quickly. Last weekend was my first weekend down on the river for the season, and shortly after landing on an island where we intended to shoot ducks from on our second evening, I spotted a pig just 30m from our dinghy. It started to run. With some quick thinking my mate jumped out and nailed the pig with a single no.3 round to the back of the head at just over 50m, and narrowly grazed a second pig with his other barrel that jumped out of the bushes. We couldn't find the second one after tramping the island for a couple of hours in the dark.
After last weekends efforts and my mates first pig of his own on the river after 30 odd years of visits, we were ready to get serious this weekend.
We got to the cabin in the dark on Friday night. We could hear the squeals and roars of the pigs on the other island as the king tide rolled in. We knew we would be in for a good hunt in the morning.
The next morning we headed out to our Maimai for our dawn shoot for ducks at around 6am. It was still, quiet and beautiful. Huge, bright moon on our left. Dim, colourful sunrise on our right. Totally unreal lighting. We saw a few different ducks, missed a couple of shots and spent a few hours talking about life and work in the wake of covid-19 based unemployment.
Once we'd had enough, we decided to check out a spot on the island from the previous weekend where we had suspected the pigs to be nesting. We found Nothing.
We went back to the dinghy, rode up along the island and landed by a clearing near an old hut. I grabbed my .303 and we jumped out and just listened to the wind for a moment. We then walked upwind in just about knee deep in watery grass through the clearing to the spot where we had dropped the pig from last week. We split up. I was headed in a straight line to the tip of the island, while my mate veered left. I was a little scared, but confident.
I moved up about 50m and was nearing the tip of the island when I heard a snort and a rustle from the toitoi on my right. I quickly turned. My stomach dropped, eyes widened and butt clenched. I crouched slightly to have a better look through the small gap between the bushes where I spotted a very clear silhouette of a pig only 5 meters from where I was standing. Without hesitation I raised my gun and pulled the trigger. BOOM. I hear a squeal and immediately cycle another round, in the fear that I would be rushed. The rustles got louder and suddenly I see the pig leap out of the toitoi to my right, jumping and thrashing to try clear out over the grass lumps. He was clearly wounded, so I lined up a second round, hitting his neck. He went straight down and quickly drowned in the knee deep water.
I called out to my mate saying "I got one". Which is when I turn behind me to see him about 30m away aiming towards the long grass to his side.
I hear two shots before he loaded and fired a third round. Within 30 seconds the shots were done and it was all over.
The wind calmed down and everything went eerily quiet, except for the ringing in my ears from my .303.
That's when I heard what sounded like something caught in the water, I look back into the gap where I took my first shot to see a leg and tail making their final movements. That's when I whispered to myself "Holy shit I got two".
I call out to my mate who's walking over to me: "I got two".
He responds with a stunned and confused look, and says "I also got two".
It turns out after my first shot, two pigs headed straight down the bush line towards my friend and he shot them coming straight at him.
Four pigs between us felt like a great haul.
We had a brief moment of celebration before retrieving the animals that we had caught and took them down to the clearing and loaded them on the bow of the boat.
It was a great feeling coming out of it ok and knowing we had taken a prize that my friend had been after for years. So we headed back to the cabin where we had a cuppa and a gutting lesson. I finally got to christen my jack knife that my wife got for me for xmas. While gutting we checked out the wounds and concluded that I had actually hit two pigs with my first shot, and that one of them was the pig that was grazed the week before, it was a relief that we had taken care of it.
We called the trip a day early and packed up. The next day back home, my step dad gave us a skinning and butchery lesson and we processed the 4 pigs.
Pork for dinner tonight! The past couple of weekends have been an incredible experience full of firsts for me, first kill, gutting, skinning, butchering etc. Great whole package, couldn't be more stoked. Maybe next time I'll actually get some ducks haha.
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