Thread: More questions, need answers please.

I the early eighties I was flying out of a station about eighty miles SE of Darwin on the Adelaide River. While I worked I got keen on Bow Hunting the local fauna. Mobs of pigs were over the flood plain in their hundreds in the high buffalo grass and so they became our main target.

There was a Abo guy who hunted the station as well who worked for the Aussie equivalent of DOC and who had taken many of the top trophy's with his bow in the country. He invited me along for a pig hunt one day and the local woman school teacher who was tracking out one of the the other Pilots decided she wanted to come along with us.

We should have been warned. First thing she said "I wont tolerate cruelty" We assured her that we placed our arrows with surgical precision and the pig was not even aware he was dead until he was dead, as you do. Anyway we proceeded out onto the plains on the four wheeler the grass being about level with the back of a medium sized pig. By standing up on the bike and surveying the area we were able to pick out the backs of the really big boars "nothing less would do for us fellas".

We left the school marm standing on the bike a short distance away watching and sneaked through the long grass onto a big patch of rooting where we had seen the back bone of an enormous hog. Parting the grass first, as it was my shot I found myself looking at the arse end of a large boar about 20 yds away. He was standing with his head down listening and showing a bit of rib on the left hand side. 'Behind the rib' I thought, I had killed many a pig with just that shot out of the .222.

I drew quickly and released, but to my horror my arrow went up the boars date causing the pig to spin as he thought he and been pricked by another boar. He was weak in the back end now but he made it into the grass and he was after us now. There was a lot of woofing and scoffing going on that alerted the school teacher to the fact we were not carrying out a surgical killing at all. Whether we were nervous of her or 'not' we then lost the plot and started driving arrows into what ever part of the pig that we could see until he looked like a rather colourful porcupine mincing around.

Once in a while you run into an animal that seems to have that grim tendency to hold onto life beyond all belief 'this was one of them' The Abo who carried an axe on his belt assured me he was also Australia's axe throwing champion and so he got in real close and had a throw, taking of a portion of scalp and some ear of him.

While the Abo had the pigs attention I sneaked in and grabbed the pigs tail and drove my knife in behind the shoulder for the heart but 'ha the pig had no heart either. The poor bloody pig finally succumbed to a frenzied attack of stabbing by myself. We removed our arrows very sheepishly from the pig and made our way to the bike to face a rather unpleasant display of foulness from the schoolmarm. Who, even though badly upset, still had an amazing turn of phrase as some Australian woman have, I have noticed

Across the flood plains we road in frigid silence until a little pig ran across in front of the bike. I don't know what was on my mind but I dismounted, chased and caught it and went to present it to the woman. Perhaps I hoped to make amends in someway for what had happened before to the little pigs father. As the woman reached for the cute little pig it slashed her finger open right through the fingernail with its teeth, too the bone. She let out a scream and the blood fairly gushed out her finger. I was just thinking bloody hell a little pig bite cant be that bad when it slashed my finger open the same way. They have razor sharp eye teeth that they use with good effect I still believe that is the most painful bite I have ever received.

Our party arrived back at the station with the little pig, two of our number nursing fingers wrapped in bits of bloody rag. There was a rabbit cage on the station lawn without residents so I placed the little pig in it and we all stood back and admired our handiwork.
The first signs of a thaw in our relationship were slowly becoming evident as the teacher gazed in a motherly fashion at her new baby pig when around the corner charged the two Station staffy's. They never even slowed down, hitting the cage with the aggression of an All Black scrum, they bowled the cage arse over tit and tore that little pig into lots of little pieces.

I never got on with that Woman after that and even though she married the other kiwi pilot there remained a barrier between us as high as a mountain.