Shades of Grey
By Christopher Cameron
Much has been said, and written, over time about Old Folk ... mostly along the lines of: "Canʼt teach an Old Dog new tricks" ... Occasionally that may be true, but a much more apt line would be: "Never underestimate Old Dogs"!
The first sign of a dog "in"...A string of dead and dying sheep with bits torn off them...
As one born in 1946 I am probably getting close to the Old Dog tag, so had better be careful!! Most of my first 50 years was spent on a 12,000 acre property on the Western Darling Downs, between Chinchilla and Condamine in Queensland, Australia. We ran some cattle, mostly sheep and in later years when drought would allow we bred cross-bred lambs. With large areas of Forestry around us, and the Barrier Fence relatively close by, keeping an eye out for dog activity was second nature.
3rd of 5. As it says, this was the third of a family of 5. Caught this bloke leaving the scene of the crime at dawn … 130gn 270 Ballistic Tip as a going away present …
My family have had a generations long interest in natural history, so from a very early age I was encouraged to observe things around me very carefully ... something that easily became a life-long passion. Much of our property was light soil, difficult to make a good living from, but a wonderful canvas for learning to track different animals, though I am a novice compared with some of the old Indigenous Trackers.
The last one! Got her on the third attempt, as she killed her last lamb in full sight of me … confidence got her in the end, as did the 270 up the butt… An old dog.
It is still great fun though to figure out what has been going on during the night, and especially satisfying to be able to track a dog back from where he had been killing to where he was sleeping it off, and give him a little present.
The preferred view of dingoes in sheep country… Burdekin cane growing area around 2009.
My father gave me my first rifle when I was 4, a Daisy air rifle and he taught me how to use, care for, and respect firearms with that. A year later I graduated to the ubiquitous Lithgow single shot 22, along with most of young rural Australians, and the lessons continued with that. Now, a lot of years later, I can look back very happily at more than 60 years of active hunting, totally accident free thanks to the thoroughness of those early lessons mixed with a good dose of self-discipline!
My earliest memories of dedicated "dogging" are from around the mid ʼ50ʼs when I was big enough to be taken along to dog drives around the district. These were pretty regular occurrences, usually organised with very short notice, with tremendous help from the local telephone exchange girls who would quickly ring as many people as possible after getting a single call from the property owner, with time and place to muster. Bush fires were handled similarly ... computers cannot do this!
The drives were called when someone found signs of a dog "inside" their boundary netting fence, normally dead sheep, and there were no obvious tracks leading back out again, meaning the dog was most likely still camped up somewhere in the paddock. Two groups of people were needed, one lot with shotguns who were spread quietly in a line on the down-wind side of where the dog was estimated to be, and then a line of beaters on horses or on foot who would start from the upwind side and make as much noise as possible, stockwhips, cow bells, tin buckets and a stick, or just yelling.... who would start off in a line and attempt to drive the dog(s) into gun range.
Occasionally we were not successful, but on the vast majority of drives there was the desired result, occasionally more than was bargained for! I can remember several where 2 dogs came out, and one where the beaters came right through to find that 3 dogs were down... One of the beaters looked at them and said he had seen a dog that was none of these, so a quick decision
was made to re-drive the block on the off-chance ... we got 2 more!!
The damage that these animals did cannot be underestimated. Almost like some humans,
they seem to kill for fun rather than simply for food.
The worst one we had that I can remember killed 56 sheep one the first night, 53 on the second, we trapped him on the third. This at a time when these wethers were worth roughly a weekʼs wage each and we had bought them barely a week before, a huge blow. We used everything at our disposal then to fight with, Lane brand dog traps were the standby tool. We added strychnine bound loosely in rag to one jaw so the dog would very quickly get a dose trying to free itself, so we normally found very dead dogs in the trap early next morning.
If we found that they were coming and going through the same hole in the netting it was a spot for the deadliest tool, a set shotgun with a trip wire across the hole, a "spring gun". Very effective unless a wallaby made a silly mistake and crossed first. These could not be set in paddocks with stock, or across roads, though there were occasions where, in near desperation, they were.
There is the odd front wheel of a motor bike that has come to grief, and a few white hairs on the head of a forgetful rider..... Most of the dogs in those years were undeniably dingoes, mostly red or yellow, though we did get the odd black and tan. Towards the end of our time there, mid 90ʼs, the picture was changing, with "pig dogs" starting to appear. These were worse, they were bigger, stronger, just as blood hungry, and with little fear of humans, though fortunately we never had a physical attack from them.
I shot two that were very Alsatian in appearance. My little Lithgow lasted a few years before I gathered enough roo skins to get a neat Sportco 10a repeater, which I still have! I used to sit with my father in the "gun line" on drives and we managed to share the kill a couple of times, though my 22 probably did not add much to the load of #2ʼs out of Dadʼs Greener, which I also still have, now in the family for 6 generations ... still doing its job.
By Christopher Cameron
Much has been said, and written, over time about Old Folk ... mostly along the lines of: "Canʼt teach an Old Dog new tricks" ... Occasionally that may be true, but a much more apt line would be: "Never underestimate Old Dogs"!
The first sign of a dog "in"...A string of dead and dying sheep with bits torn off them...
As one born in 1946 I am probably getting close to the Old Dog tag, so had better be careful!! Most of my first 50 years was spent on a 12,000 acre property on the Western Darling Downs, between Chinchilla and Condamine in Queensland, Australia. We ran some cattle, mostly sheep and in later years when drought would allow we bred cross-bred lambs. With large areas of Forestry around us, and the Barrier Fence relatively close by, keeping an eye out for dog activity was second nature.
3rd of 5. As it says, this was the third of a family of 5. Caught this bloke leaving the scene of the crime at dawn … 130gn 270 Ballistic Tip as a going away present …
My family have had a generations long interest in natural history, so from a very early age I was encouraged to observe things around me very carefully ... something that easily became a life-long passion. Much of our property was light soil, difficult to make a good living from, but a wonderful canvas for learning to track different animals, though I am a novice compared with some of the old Indigenous Trackers.
The last one! Got her on the third attempt, as she killed her last lamb in full sight of me … confidence got her in the end, as did the 270 up the butt… An old dog.
It is still great fun though to figure out what has been going on during the night, and especially satisfying to be able to track a dog back from where he had been killing to where he was sleeping it off, and give him a little present.
The preferred view of dingoes in sheep country… Burdekin cane growing area around 2009.
My father gave me my first rifle when I was 4, a Daisy air rifle and he taught me how to use, care for, and respect firearms with that. A year later I graduated to the ubiquitous Lithgow single shot 22, along with most of young rural Australians, and the lessons continued with that. Now, a lot of years later, I can look back very happily at more than 60 years of active hunting, totally accident free thanks to the thoroughness of those early lessons mixed with a good dose of self-discipline!
My earliest memories of dedicated "dogging" are from around the mid ʼ50ʼs when I was big enough to be taken along to dog drives around the district. These were pretty regular occurrences, usually organised with very short notice, with tremendous help from the local telephone exchange girls who would quickly ring as many people as possible after getting a single call from the property owner, with time and place to muster. Bush fires were handled similarly ... computers cannot do this!
The drives were called when someone found signs of a dog "inside" their boundary netting fence, normally dead sheep, and there were no obvious tracks leading back out again, meaning the dog was most likely still camped up somewhere in the paddock. Two groups of people were needed, one lot with shotguns who were spread quietly in a line on the down-wind side of where the dog was estimated to be, and then a line of beaters on horses or on foot who would start from the upwind side and make as much noise as possible, stockwhips, cow bells, tin buckets and a stick, or just yelling.... who would start off in a line and attempt to drive the dog(s) into gun range.
Occasionally we were not successful, but on the vast majority of drives there was the desired result, occasionally more than was bargained for! I can remember several where 2 dogs came out, and one where the beaters came right through to find that 3 dogs were down... One of the beaters looked at them and said he had seen a dog that was none of these, so a quick decision
was made to re-drive the block on the off-chance ... we got 2 more!!
The damage that these animals did cannot be underestimated. Almost like some humans,
they seem to kill for fun rather than simply for food.
The worst one we had that I can remember killed 56 sheep one the first night, 53 on the second, we trapped him on the third. This at a time when these wethers were worth roughly a weekʼs wage each and we had bought them barely a week before, a huge blow. We used everything at our disposal then to fight with, Lane brand dog traps were the standby tool. We added strychnine bound loosely in rag to one jaw so the dog would very quickly get a dose trying to free itself, so we normally found very dead dogs in the trap early next morning.
If we found that they were coming and going through the same hole in the netting it was a spot for the deadliest tool, a set shotgun with a trip wire across the hole, a "spring gun". Very effective unless a wallaby made a silly mistake and crossed first. These could not be set in paddocks with stock, or across roads, though there were occasions where, in near desperation, they were.
There is the odd front wheel of a motor bike that has come to grief, and a few white hairs on the head of a forgetful rider..... Most of the dogs in those years were undeniably dingoes, mostly red or yellow, though we did get the odd black and tan. Towards the end of our time there, mid 90ʼs, the picture was changing, with "pig dogs" starting to appear. These were worse, they were bigger, stronger, just as blood hungry, and with little fear of humans, though fortunately we never had a physical attack from them.
I shot two that were very Alsatian in appearance. My little Lithgow lasted a few years before I gathered enough roo skins to get a neat Sportco 10a repeater, which I still have! I used to sit with my father in the "gun line" on drives and we managed to share the kill a couple of times, though my 22 probably did not add much to the load of #2ʼs out of Dadʼs Greener, which I also still have, now in the family for 6 generations ... still doing its job.
Shades Of Grey
My father had been a pilot in 3 Squadron in the Middle East during the War and he had a bunch of mates that shared the experiences of that time. One, Herb Rabig, from a property well west of Windorah was a fairly regular visitor, and he became one of my early Mentors. Herb lived in an area where dogs were far more numerous, sheep had long since been driven out of that country, and at times even cattle were threatened.
The problem with trying to shoot numbers… they are usually only a few steps from thick cover, a bolt action rifle can only get one or two from the mob. They are so well fed on cane that they simply ignore baits and traps.
He told me of the period when Myxo was introduced and almost wiped the rabbits out of the desert country a little further out ... an enormous population of dogs had become dependent on rabbit for food and suddenly they vanished. The dogs moved to find something else and Herb said for a couple of years they hardly branded a calf, such was the predation. He said that on an average dayʼs driving around checking stock waters, not really looking for dogs, but shooting any he saw, he would average 30. Not having kept count exactly, he thought he had accounted for around 10,000 over the years!
The biggest one. As it says, the biggest one out of the above mob … probably would have been better to get a big sow, the breeder. 300 Weatherby this time, with it and the 257 I could frequently get 2 if they stood close together!
For a young and impressionable lad, keen on his hunting, this was as good as an African adventure! Herb always brought something new to try out when he came through and gradually taught me an immense amount about the skills needed to be both a good hunter, a good shot, and a careful reloader. Finally getting out to his home property in 1966 and spending a bit of time hunting dogs in the sandhills was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Typical Burdekin pig. Big, fat, no tusks…. I got one reasonable set from 360 odd
pigs shot in this area.
Sadly, like many of my early Mentors, Herb has been gone for some years now..... All of this early life reinforced in me the idea that, in settled & stocked country, the only good dingo was a scalped one. There is little worse that I have had to deal with than heading up the paddock early in the morning to check stock, to be greeted with flocks of Crows and a string of dead or worse, mortally wounded sheep that I have to destroy.
An alert but unafraid pup at "den" entrance.
Worse was having the childrenʼs pet lamb flock attacked and almost wiped out one night, seeing the dog killing as we went to the school bus, and not having a rifle in the car.... Their hearts were not in it that day and the news was hard to break when they got home.. It would not have been a good day for a Greenie to come visiting!
The country that we lived in varied greatly, from wide open spaces to very dense heavy timber, so there was no really ideal rifle / scope / load combination to cover the lot. It was in a different time then, when we were free to buy whatever tool we needed to do the job. By far the best scrub gun I ever had was an SKK carbine with a 30 shot magazine and a spare in the pocket! Getting the dog was a lot more important than monitoring ammo usage and the target was often fleeting at best ... Once the pigs moved into our area in the early 80ʼs the little carbine ran hot, my son Andy and I once scored 18 out of a mob with about a magazine each!
In the open country shots could be as far as 400 yards, if I was feeling good and the day was calm. Grouping ability of the rifle and load was largely irrelevant, it was the first shot from a cold barrel that counted. A missed dog was a very difficult one to get a second chance at, so the decision to take a long shot had to be carefully weighed. My most successful rifle was a Weatherby Vanguard in 270 Win. with a Leupold 6X. Running close second were a number, a Ruger 22.250, a 25-06, and a 308 Norma, both built up rifles.
We never had rangefinders, so flat shooting rifles compensated slightly for guestimated ranges. The last 2 ran equal for the longest successful shots I made, 430 yards each, both accurately measured as they were down fence lines and I could simply count posts and multiply. Pretty pleased with both!
The "wildest" one I got was actually with my Browning pump shotgun, but it involved chasing the dog over a 50 acre paddock freshly worked with a deep-ripping subsoiler. My son and I were sharing a ride on one ag-bike, doing a late afternoon check around ewes and lambs as we knew we had dogs about. Almost on dusk we saw a single dog start to cross this field and we were a bit stuck, as we both had guns... a long shot was out of the question. We waited till he was more than half way across before I started the bike, leaving Andy to try to cut him off if I fell off....
Fortunately the dog did not take it too seriously till I was pretty close, so we reached the far side close together where I had the speed edge... Trying to load the gun left handed while in pursuit was "interesting", as was tossing it up to catch by pistol grip and getting the first shot away one handed ... It took probably only 2 - 3 minutes to chase the dog a few hundred yards, through one gate, then through another fence where I had to drop the bike and run, seeing only the back end of the dog and having BB shot it was difficult to ground him, but after a couple he made the mistake of turning side on and it was all over with one more....
He and his mates been killing 8 - 10 head a night, beautiful cross-bred lambs on point of sale, and some ewes, so I did not care how I got him, so long as I did..... I did! Surviving the one handed ride across that paddock was a miracle in itself ... He was part of a family of 5 dogs that came in almost at the end of our time there. The first four were pretty quick, a spring gun on the hole in the netting got dad, a trap had the next one and a very early morning ride up to the sheep revealed another just leaving the scene of the crime .... sent a 270 Ballistic Tip to discourage him from coming again.. The fourth was the ploughed paddock job, leaving just mum, an old red bitch who was taunting us a bit. She was living on a thick Iron Bark ridge within sight of our house and following the same path most nights to go up and kill.
Not the least interested in traps, and in an area where I could not set a gun, it was getting a bit personal... I once walked the ridge to see if she might offer a glimpse, but a bunch of roos took off and alerted her, she bolted in their midst, no chance of a shot. A few days later I caught sight of her again, just on daybreak, eating a lamb breakfast. Too far for a sure shot I tried to get in a bit but she was alert and lived again....
About ten days passed, along with a good few more ewes and lambs, we were getting a bit desperate ... went up before dawn and waited one morning till light, to see the sheep all bunched up out in the middle of their oats paddock ... she was around somewhere...
No sign so I started the bike and quietly rode half way around the paddock without a sign when all of a sudden the sheep were galloping!! She was seemingly so confident of being able to beat me that she was attacking in daylight! This had to be right, so I decided it would cost one more lamb, I was not going to risk a running shot. Getting within a couple of hundred yards off to the side of the frantic sheep I watched as she chased, finally choosing a beautiful fat lamb, she grabbed its rump, flung sideways, cartwheeling the galloping animal and as it stopped she had its throat ripped out.
As she chose her mark I skidded to a broadside stop and had the bike seat for a rest, to be absolutely sure... there was a bit of blood left in the adrenaline stream at that stage!! It was roughly 200 yards and she was facing away, but the Weatherby did a perfect job, throwing her straight over her last victim.... Not so very long after that we were forced off and a few years later I found myself in the Tropical North, a very different environment.
Here in sugar cane and vegetable growing country there were no sheep or cattle around, but pigs were everywhere and a terrible pest. I soon realised there were quite a number of dingos too, and the first thought was to reach for my rifle again. Fortunately though (??) a bit of careful observation had me leaving the gun safe locked, as far as the dogs were concerned. In part of the big property I worked on initially there was a long length of 500mm polythene underground water main that was waiting for installation. A dingo family decided it was a great hollow log and had a litter of pups in it.
As they grew there was increasing sign left around of what they were feeding the pups, and it was almost totally piglet! I had watched a couple of times when dogs were obviously following pigs, and every time we came on pig tracks in the mud from irrigation tail water, there were invariably dog tracks over them. While some of the blokes on the farm were of the "shoot everything" mould I started to defend the dogs role as pig controllers. I was given the task of doing it from the human side, shooting 363 in my 4 years there ... often wishing for my little SKK when I came on a good mob with only a 3 shot magazine.... Thanks John Howard, for nothing...
The problem with trying to shoot numbers… they are usually only a few steps from thick cover, a bolt action rifle can only get one or two from the mob. They are so well fed on cane that they simply ignore baits and traps.
He told me of the period when Myxo was introduced and almost wiped the rabbits out of the desert country a little further out ... an enormous population of dogs had become dependent on rabbit for food and suddenly they vanished. The dogs moved to find something else and Herb said for a couple of years they hardly branded a calf, such was the predation. He said that on an average dayʼs driving around checking stock waters, not really looking for dogs, but shooting any he saw, he would average 30. Not having kept count exactly, he thought he had accounted for around 10,000 over the years!
The biggest one. As it says, the biggest one out of the above mob … probably would have been better to get a big sow, the breeder. 300 Weatherby this time, with it and the 257 I could frequently get 2 if they stood close together!
For a young and impressionable lad, keen on his hunting, this was as good as an African adventure! Herb always brought something new to try out when he came through and gradually taught me an immense amount about the skills needed to be both a good hunter, a good shot, and a careful reloader. Finally getting out to his home property in 1966 and spending a bit of time hunting dogs in the sandhills was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Typical Burdekin pig. Big, fat, no tusks…. I got one reasonable set from 360 odd
pigs shot in this area.
Sadly, like many of my early Mentors, Herb has been gone for some years now..... All of this early life reinforced in me the idea that, in settled & stocked country, the only good dingo was a scalped one. There is little worse that I have had to deal with than heading up the paddock early in the morning to check stock, to be greeted with flocks of Crows and a string of dead or worse, mortally wounded sheep that I have to destroy.
An alert but unafraid pup at "den" entrance.
Worse was having the childrenʼs pet lamb flock attacked and almost wiped out one night, seeing the dog killing as we went to the school bus, and not having a rifle in the car.... Their hearts were not in it that day and the news was hard to break when they got home.. It would not have been a good day for a Greenie to come visiting!
The country that we lived in varied greatly, from wide open spaces to very dense heavy timber, so there was no really ideal rifle / scope / load combination to cover the lot. It was in a different time then, when we were free to buy whatever tool we needed to do the job. By far the best scrub gun I ever had was an SKK carbine with a 30 shot magazine and a spare in the pocket! Getting the dog was a lot more important than monitoring ammo usage and the target was often fleeting at best ... Once the pigs moved into our area in the early 80ʼs the little carbine ran hot, my son Andy and I once scored 18 out of a mob with about a magazine each!
In the open country shots could be as far as 400 yards, if I was feeling good and the day was calm. Grouping ability of the rifle and load was largely irrelevant, it was the first shot from a cold barrel that counted. A missed dog was a very difficult one to get a second chance at, so the decision to take a long shot had to be carefully weighed. My most successful rifle was a Weatherby Vanguard in 270 Win. with a Leupold 6X. Running close second were a number, a Ruger 22.250, a 25-06, and a 308 Norma, both built up rifles.
We never had rangefinders, so flat shooting rifles compensated slightly for guestimated ranges. The last 2 ran equal for the longest successful shots I made, 430 yards each, both accurately measured as they were down fence lines and I could simply count posts and multiply. Pretty pleased with both!
The "wildest" one I got was actually with my Browning pump shotgun, but it involved chasing the dog over a 50 acre paddock freshly worked with a deep-ripping subsoiler. My son and I were sharing a ride on one ag-bike, doing a late afternoon check around ewes and lambs as we knew we had dogs about. Almost on dusk we saw a single dog start to cross this field and we were a bit stuck, as we both had guns... a long shot was out of the question. We waited till he was more than half way across before I started the bike, leaving Andy to try to cut him off if I fell off....
Fortunately the dog did not take it too seriously till I was pretty close, so we reached the far side close together where I had the speed edge... Trying to load the gun left handed while in pursuit was "interesting", as was tossing it up to catch by pistol grip and getting the first shot away one handed ... It took probably only 2 - 3 minutes to chase the dog a few hundred yards, through one gate, then through another fence where I had to drop the bike and run, seeing only the back end of the dog and having BB shot it was difficult to ground him, but after a couple he made the mistake of turning side on and it was all over with one more....
He and his mates been killing 8 - 10 head a night, beautiful cross-bred lambs on point of sale, and some ewes, so I did not care how I got him, so long as I did..... I did! Surviving the one handed ride across that paddock was a miracle in itself ... He was part of a family of 5 dogs that came in almost at the end of our time there. The first four were pretty quick, a spring gun on the hole in the netting got dad, a trap had the next one and a very early morning ride up to the sheep revealed another just leaving the scene of the crime .... sent a 270 Ballistic Tip to discourage him from coming again.. The fourth was the ploughed paddock job, leaving just mum, an old red bitch who was taunting us a bit. She was living on a thick Iron Bark ridge within sight of our house and following the same path most nights to go up and kill.
Not the least interested in traps, and in an area where I could not set a gun, it was getting a bit personal... I once walked the ridge to see if she might offer a glimpse, but a bunch of roos took off and alerted her, she bolted in their midst, no chance of a shot. A few days later I caught sight of her again, just on daybreak, eating a lamb breakfast. Too far for a sure shot I tried to get in a bit but she was alert and lived again....
About ten days passed, along with a good few more ewes and lambs, we were getting a bit desperate ... went up before dawn and waited one morning till light, to see the sheep all bunched up out in the middle of their oats paddock ... she was around somewhere...
No sign so I started the bike and quietly rode half way around the paddock without a sign when all of a sudden the sheep were galloping!! She was seemingly so confident of being able to beat me that she was attacking in daylight! This had to be right, so I decided it would cost one more lamb, I was not going to risk a running shot. Getting within a couple of hundred yards off to the side of the frantic sheep I watched as she chased, finally choosing a beautiful fat lamb, she grabbed its rump, flung sideways, cartwheeling the galloping animal and as it stopped she had its throat ripped out.
As she chose her mark I skidded to a broadside stop and had the bike seat for a rest, to be absolutely sure... there was a bit of blood left in the adrenaline stream at that stage!! It was roughly 200 yards and she was facing away, but the Weatherby did a perfect job, throwing her straight over her last victim.... Not so very long after that we were forced off and a few years later I found myself in the Tropical North, a very different environment.
Here in sugar cane and vegetable growing country there were no sheep or cattle around, but pigs were everywhere and a terrible pest. I soon realised there were quite a number of dingos too, and the first thought was to reach for my rifle again. Fortunately though (??) a bit of careful observation had me leaving the gun safe locked, as far as the dogs were concerned. In part of the big property I worked on initially there was a long length of 500mm polythene underground water main that was waiting for installation. A dingo family decided it was a great hollow log and had a litter of pups in it.
As they grew there was increasing sign left around of what they were feeding the pups, and it was almost totally piglet! I had watched a couple of times when dogs were obviously following pigs, and every time we came on pig tracks in the mud from irrigation tail water, there were invariably dog tracks over them. While some of the blokes on the farm were of the "shoot everything" mould I started to defend the dogs role as pig controllers. I was given the task of doing it from the human side, shooting 363 in my 4 years there ... often wishing for my little SKK when I came on a good mob with only a 3 shot magazine.... Thanks John Howard, for nothing...
Shades Of Grey
Late one afternoon, after work, I was directed down near the Barratta Creek end of the property where the "paddock boys" had been seeing a mob... Went quietly down, looked down the headland between two blocks ... bingo, 4 big sows and a stack of youngsters were out in the muddy drain about 400 yards down!! Was loading my rifle, currently a 257 Weatherby, when I noticed that about half way down to the pigs, trotting along, was a big red dog. In that area of The Burdekin, there were very few cross breds. Intrigued, I picked up camera instead and watched... The dog was watching the pigs, but not sneaking, simply trotting towards them, they were still oblivious. Suddenly he came on the remains of one of my previous kills, just skin and a few bones, but worth a quick chew... Not a lot there, so he set off again, still head up watching, and still trotting.
Going to dinner. Having caught his piglet, still alive and squealing, the dog has galloped back almost 400m, disappeared into the next cane block after another 100m, never slackened pace…
At a bit less than a hundred yards one of the sows spotted him and she quickly gathered the mob and they too trotted off, around the corner of the block sadly, out of sight. Still the dog continued at a steady trot, disappearing around the corner a few seconds behind the pigs.... Unfortunately I never saw exactly what happened next. I waited a couple of minutes, nothing, so put down camera, grabbed rifle and headed down to look. I normally wore my "Yowie Suit" when pigging in that area, it allowed me to get up very close if I went carefully with the wind in my favour and I had it on this day.
I had walked maybe 40 yards down when all of a sudden the dog came screaming back around the corner and galloped up towards me carrying something! Back as fast as possible for camera, just made it and waited, still, in the edge of the cane. He never saw me till he was right beside, but then only swerved slightly, kept going and disappeared into the next block. He was carrying a still-very-much-alive-and-squealing piglet, had carried it for at least 400 yards at flat gallop, plus however far since catching it, didnʼt look like slowing up!! The little pig had a dinner date he was not going to be able to refuse..... So much for "The House of Straw"!
Feral dogs in this general area are of increasing concern and are not tolerated at all…
No sign of pursuit from the sows, but they may have been some distance along when the dog pounced ... All quiet, I had some great pictures, so again, let the adrenaline settle, grab rifle and start back down on the off chance. Had no sooner started when the remainder of the pig mob calmly wandered back out to their mud wallow and started in again ... a remarkably short grieving period I thought ....! Wind was still in my favour, tall cane beside, so a quiet stalk to within 40 yards, 1 loaded and 3 in magazine and I had all 4 sows before they figured out where I was... easy meat when the dog returned, if he was fast enough!
257 Weatherby is maybe a bit much, but is very flatshooting and does not "take prisoners". As deadly a dogging rifle as my older 270 was.
There is only one thing that stinks worse than dead pig, dead fox, and there were none of them up there. To keep the paddock boys happy and eliminate bad smells where they were working I used to lie the pigs on their backs and open up down both sides, lying legs out flat. There was a well conditioned "disposal crew" on hand waiting, up to 50 Forktailed Kites, Whistling Eagles, Wedge-tailed Eagles, White-breasted Sea-Eagles, and Crows which reduced the pigs to skin and bones often in the space of a day, seldom more than two ... a good cooperative effort! The dogs had to be quick, or catch their own!!
Now I live and work down a bit at Bowen, as compost maker on a big vegetable farm. A lot smaller than the big cane farms, but a similar situation ... pigs along the water courses that raid out to bugger up irrigation lines and destroy vegetables... Recently a family of dogs arrived, lovely golden ones again... Pigs are history and rabbits now few and very fit. Every morning I see animal tracks all over my compost windrows where they have been playing, and occasionally I have been lucky enough to see them in the early morning ...Emus, Wallabies, even flocks of Whistling Ducks sliding down like kids with cardboard on a sandhill!
Recently the occasional glimpse changed, when one young male dog reckoned he would have a closer look at the doings... He quite calmly walked out, climbed a windrow, dug a bit of a nest to get closer to the 60+ degree C heat and lay down to watch. The Turner is pulled by a 160hp tractor, but goes very slowly, but he let it come right past him, later I worked past him with a 955 Cat Loader, going within 3 - 4 paces of him, quite unperturbed. He has since become quite a regular visitor, sometimes with siblings, though they have never been as trusting.
As we all see it, he / they are doing no harm, but considerable good here, so let them be. For me, I never would have thought that I would ever look at a dingo in the wild and reach for camera rather than rifle. "Old Dogs" can indeed learn new tricks ... In this area there are an increasing number of "feral dogs", cross-breds of all manner, they are not looked on with favour....
Going to dinner. Having caught his piglet, still alive and squealing, the dog has galloped back almost 400m, disappeared into the next cane block after another 100m, never slackened pace…
At a bit less than a hundred yards one of the sows spotted him and she quickly gathered the mob and they too trotted off, around the corner of the block sadly, out of sight. Still the dog continued at a steady trot, disappearing around the corner a few seconds behind the pigs.... Unfortunately I never saw exactly what happened next. I waited a couple of minutes, nothing, so put down camera, grabbed rifle and headed down to look. I normally wore my "Yowie Suit" when pigging in that area, it allowed me to get up very close if I went carefully with the wind in my favour and I had it on this day.
I had walked maybe 40 yards down when all of a sudden the dog came screaming back around the corner and galloped up towards me carrying something! Back as fast as possible for camera, just made it and waited, still, in the edge of the cane. He never saw me till he was right beside, but then only swerved slightly, kept going and disappeared into the next block. He was carrying a still-very-much-alive-and-squealing piglet, had carried it for at least 400 yards at flat gallop, plus however far since catching it, didnʼt look like slowing up!! The little pig had a dinner date he was not going to be able to refuse..... So much for "The House of Straw"!
Feral dogs in this general area are of increasing concern and are not tolerated at all…
No sign of pursuit from the sows, but they may have been some distance along when the dog pounced ... All quiet, I had some great pictures, so again, let the adrenaline settle, grab rifle and start back down on the off chance. Had no sooner started when the remainder of the pig mob calmly wandered back out to their mud wallow and started in again ... a remarkably short grieving period I thought ....! Wind was still in my favour, tall cane beside, so a quiet stalk to within 40 yards, 1 loaded and 3 in magazine and I had all 4 sows before they figured out where I was... easy meat when the dog returned, if he was fast enough!
257 Weatherby is maybe a bit much, but is very flatshooting and does not "take prisoners". As deadly a dogging rifle as my older 270 was.
There is only one thing that stinks worse than dead pig, dead fox, and there were none of them up there. To keep the paddock boys happy and eliminate bad smells where they were working I used to lie the pigs on their backs and open up down both sides, lying legs out flat. There was a well conditioned "disposal crew" on hand waiting, up to 50 Forktailed Kites, Whistling Eagles, Wedge-tailed Eagles, White-breasted Sea-Eagles, and Crows which reduced the pigs to skin and bones often in the space of a day, seldom more than two ... a good cooperative effort! The dogs had to be quick, or catch their own!!
Now I live and work down a bit at Bowen, as compost maker on a big vegetable farm. A lot smaller than the big cane farms, but a similar situation ... pigs along the water courses that raid out to bugger up irrigation lines and destroy vegetables... Recently a family of dogs arrived, lovely golden ones again... Pigs are history and rabbits now few and very fit. Every morning I see animal tracks all over my compost windrows where they have been playing, and occasionally I have been lucky enough to see them in the early morning ...Emus, Wallabies, even flocks of Whistling Ducks sliding down like kids with cardboard on a sandhill!
Recently the occasional glimpse changed, when one young male dog reckoned he would have a closer look at the doings... He quite calmly walked out, climbed a windrow, dug a bit of a nest to get closer to the 60+ degree C heat and lay down to watch. The Turner is pulled by a 160hp tractor, but goes very slowly, but he let it come right past him, later I worked past him with a 955 Cat Loader, going within 3 - 4 paces of him, quite unperturbed. He has since become quite a regular visitor, sometimes with siblings, though they have never been as trusting.
As we all see it, he / they are doing no harm, but considerable good here, so let them be. For me, I never would have thought that I would ever look at a dingo in the wild and reach for camera rather than rifle. "Old Dogs" can indeed learn new tricks ... In this area there are an increasing number of "feral dogs", cross-breds of all manner, they are not looked on with favour....
