Dawson Bliss - "Letter to a Friend"
January 2006 - near Kaikoura

Thanks for a little help from a friend I did get a good head, a friend with a good set of binos. How it happened was quite ironic. The stag I filmed the first time I went over there, that was the night that you got your trophy, was what I thought was a ten pointer. Two days later I filmed it again and decided he was a eleven pointer and then the following day I got onto what sounded like a good stag roaring high up on the face in cover and I waited all day for him to come out. His actions made me curious and I was sure he was a good one.

The next day I was back over there, remembering that all this time in the back of my mind was the thought of what you had seen over there with a lot of ivory on top. Anyway I left camp before daylight and when I was across the creek and light was showing I also saw what the weather was doing, not good, squally showers were on their way and behind that was a bank of black cold wet low cloud cover. What I decided was to climb high on the opposite side of the valley and hopefully catch the big one out in the open and from there plan the stalk.

Well he was roaring and as the day dawned he wasn't showing and the rain came in and as my patience had waned, I decided I would hunt him on his own turf. There was another stag roaring close to him and I guessed which one the big one was. Half way up the face towards them they started roaring again and it appeared he was the most southern one. The wind was coming from the north and I angled up the face to keep downwind from him. When I was within a hundred meters of where I thought the big fella was, the other stag roared upwind not more than 75 meters away. Then lo and behold what sounded like the big fella roared from 100 meters around the face and not more than 30 meters up. Almost downwind, by now it was raining, not the warm autumn rain that we could have expected from the way the weather had been and the quarter it was coming from, but a miserable cold driving rain.

A decision had to be made. I figured that he was heading up the face in a southerly direction and a direct approach might just cut him off at the point where he would be back in heavy cover. The rain drove around the face with a cold as hell wind and I thought it was all turning to crap. The face I was on was almost perpendicular and I was thinking of how fast Ivan could have got up there as I did my best. Each meter I thought he would come into view, I'd managed to keep the scope shielded from the driving rain in anticipation. It was that kind of morning where you thought the effort that was needed would surely be rewarded. Each time I rounded a tree or crested a rise I was sure I would be on to him, trying to balance the gasping and straight shooting ability was a problem and as I crested the last spot from where I would be able to get a shot I was met with what us hunters dread. A clearing full of nothing, well not quiet, the arse end of something big and a hind disappearing after that under cover.

Rather pissed off I headed around the face to where the other stag was roaring and got onto him, a huge eight pointer sitting next to a tree on a grassy knob. I thought well this might be the best filming opportunity I get and with it pouring with rain took the camera out and mounted it on the tripod. He was only 25 meters away so with my jacket over the camera and me getting soaked to the skin I got some good shots. On the footage you hear the pounding of the rain on the jacket. The things you have to do to get the footage that others can't. My attempts to get him to roar were to no avail and in the end he got up and headed north around the face.

I packed up and headed in the same direction, wet and cold with my thoughts concerned on how much longer I had to weather the storm and head back to camp. Not a minute later, crossing around a jumble of boulders and green grass below a the steeper part of the bush face I looked ahead through the squall and what was sitting there not two hundred meters away - looking directly at me. The big fella. He was big, with long antlers and lots of points but I couldn't tell how many. I was sure I was spotted. I ducked down behind a rock got the pack off, put that on the rock for a rest and as I have a policy of shoot now measure later in a situation like that and I was ready. Well I thought I was. Through the scope I couldn't even tell he had antlers let alone that he was a stag. The toilet paper I had in my top pocket for scope clearing wrung solid water when used. Next it was the singlet, same result. Even my underpants were the same. Love the rain...
 

I then began to realise that maybe he had not spotted me, as he hadn't got up or given any indication that I had been sprung. It’s hard to think clearly in a situation like that but I guessed the next best option was to attempt a stalk. It was the right option because the next time I popped up behind a closer rock he was still there but only a hundred meters away. The brown blur in the scope this time was decipherable and I was in no doubt that he was a trophy and I settled the cross hairs on what should have been the middle of his shoulder and squeezed off a shot.

As we all know under conditions like that, with a stag of that size and using a rifle that I had not fired a shot from before, you need to get it right. There would be no chance of a second shot and of that I was only too aware.

Before the echo of the shot, (243 which is my caliber of choice as it so happens), reached the other side of the gut he slumped where he sat and apart from a short kick he never moved.

14 points, well 13 and a half really but who's counting and as you see by the photo something to keep for the trophy room. A new record? Well put it this way, for my side of the creek anyway. We will leave the record for the other side with you Scotty but what a trip, for us both.

Anyway that was all great but it gets better. When I got home the first thing I do is put the footage I shot on to my monitor and wow! It was all good but it got better. The 10 pointer I filmed the first night and then the 11 pointer turned out better than I could have hoped for. Clear and portraying the whole drama of the occasion. What a sight. Filming a stag with 14 hinds in his harem and then with all the other stags in the area trying to get a piece of the action, wow - magic. Never have I seen such wonderful hunting before and I am looking forward to putting it all together for the Deer Hunters movie. Before this trip I had enough footage for the movie but now with the extra I have for I believe I can produce an exceptional movie.

There was a surprise in-store though. Its not often when filming that it all comes out as good as you thought it should. Usually Murphy's law applies and with the thousand things that can go wrong - one usually will. This time nothing went wrong. In reality it was better than perfect given the situation at the time.

The 10 and 11 pointer grew on the monitor and believe it or not they grew to 14 points. Not had I only shot a great trophy I had been filming him for two days prior to that and I hadn't even known it.

A great trip, great country, the best roar I have ever heard and company that I’m sure we will never forget. You see why we live here? However all good things must come to an end, but not yet anyway, there's more.

After being home for two days I was contacted by a guy who had been pestering me for months to take him on a Sika hunt and he finally got the better of me, I hadn't met him before but I had itchy feet and as it turned out he was a good bastard and as keen as myself. I won't bore you with the details of the hunt as its a long story starting from daylight when I convinced him not to shoot the first Jap stag we saw even though it was better than anything he had shot in 30 years of hunting them. I knew that the valley we were entering had a lot going for it. The continual roaring from Sika stags left that in no doubt. They were coming down into the valley from every quarter - just like a scene from the 'Sika Hunter" and we were there.

So what happened is that the following Monday there was a hunting competition at the NZDA. Some 300 or so entrants and yours truly was awarded first prize for the 14 pointer and the Sika stag I secured on the last trip was second with a Douglas score of 192. (I even got two others scoring over 170). So that is a chapter in the life of a trophy hunter that I'm sure you could repeat many times and thanks for the inspiration to write this to you my friend.

Kind Regards
Dawson Bliss

Dawson Bliss - "How to Become a Movie Producer... The Hard Way"

I guess optimism is something you need plenty of, too much in my case but when I started work on what was to become known as WildNewZealand Films I possessed bucket loads. In fact there was only one outcome that was to evolve from carrying video cameras on hunting trips from the air in choppers and on the ground throughout New Zealand. I aimed to become a moviemaker and that’s all there was to it. I had spent the best years of my life making a living in the NZ Mountains. Over the years I had shot some footage that would not be possible to attain in the future and then 5 years ago the venture into the world of Post-production began….. Had I known how difficult that was going to be maybe the outcome would have been different? As Benjamin Disraeli once said "Nurture your mind with great thoughts: to believe in the heroic makes heroes".

So there I was five years ago a little bored with the business that I had developed over 15 years, the Farmhouse Group that had evolved after the Venison and Live Deer recovery industry had all but seen its day. I then set out to spend as much time in the bush logging native timber that then had to be turned into the finished product to make enough money. As the business grew, up to 12 employees at one point, I ventured out into the house building side of the business so we could not only manufacture the joinery and all the finishing timbers etc but put our unique style of house on the market. That was around the time that Don Brash made speeches around the country to say that house prices would soon fall… They kept going up for years and I did well but got out while there was still some upside.

It was about then that making movies was where I wanted to be at and made the right choice and brought a fully specked Mac Pro. I figured that it would not be too difficult to learn the art of Post-production and would have a movie out in a few months. Wow... how wrong I was. Not being a computer buff, but with a little knowledge, the hard frustrating times began and a year later I was half way through what I thought would be my first movie... That was until it vanished into Cyber space never to be seen again.

I managed to hold onto hope, hope in vain it seemed at times but there was little else to hold onto at that stage. I guess my optimism had caused it because all I was armed with was a great computer and Final Cut Pro and all the manuals that on reflection I think I could have done better without. Rarely refer to them these days, when we need to know something; at the level we are now, Creative Cow is the best source of information.
So two years go by and success at last and the first training DVD comes out of the studio. Titled "How To Butcher" it was a great effort and one that I am totally proud of. At the end of the day all that matters are sales figures and what the critics say. The first reviewer wrote that the DVD should be used as a training aid in any course on butchery. In my books the ultimate accolade. Sales were great and the quality of what I filmed, directed, produced and marketed is still, even when I look back 3 years later, superb.

I read a press report a couple of weeks ago where a film that the Film Commission funded and cost in the vicinity of $6 million to get to market sold 1200 copies. Hell I could do that on a budget of next to nothing so I must be on the right track. I have never sought funding, can’t be bothered by all the bullshit they want from us. I just want to make movies the way I want, the way the market wants and that’s what we do… successful I might add with no handouts.

Maybe at the end of the day the Film Commission should be coming to the likes of us and asking what help we want... Not for us to go to them begging, filling out endless forms of what is likely to be what they want to hear and wasting countless hours when we could have been producing…

10 movies later the last one out of the studio "Take A Kid Hunting Part 2" is selling well. That one fell into place after the long time dream of taking kids hunting and making a movie of it. Part One was selling well so I had the pleasure of continuing with the theme, perhaps one of the most satisfying adventures I have been on and none could say the cause wasn’t the noblest. Now we have the latest Mac Pro and iMac in the studio, I couldn’t praise the Mac’s enough, to me there is no other way. A studio that has the equipment to do as I have always done produce all that is needed to put a quality DVD movie on the market that sells well.

A couple of years ago my nephew Dylan had an accident down at Franz Josef and ended up in hospital where I caught up with him and left him some of the movies I had made to watch. From that he gained the inspiration to do what I should have done and gone to a training establishment and learn the art of post-production… Then he rings me one day and says "Uncle would you have any work in the studio that I could do"… Any work… Hell I had enough to keep us both going forever. The rest is history but rarely would you come across two people who work so well together and that makes my life the way it is. I live the greatest life of adventure that I could ever dream off.

I guess I have the talent of getting the footage that others can’t. I was a professional hunter for 20 years and I have the theory that a hunter can become a cameraman but a cameraman can’t become a hunter. It intrigues me watching all the stuff we see on the Discovery Channel and how so much of the footage is filmed from guys sitting in their vehicles. New Zealand’s wild animals aren’t like that, the crack of a stick or a mans scent in the breeze and our wild animals are long gone.

The latest one we are working on, and I guess this one started 35 years ago will be titled “The Moa Hunters" would have to be the most incredible project I have ever been involved with. Evolving from a glimpse of what was an unidentified huge bird when I was 18 years old trapping fur in the Ureweras. It’s at a stage where we are getting closer to the finished product. A product where I have blown the budget a dozen times on chopper time, time in the bush and time in the studio but this is the big one…exciting stuff but all will have to wait and see the end result.

I would hazard a guess and say that our little 2-man production studio produces more movies than any other because of the way we are, determined, resourceful and motivated.
Would write more but about to leave for the wild West Coast off Taranaki on a filming mission diving for the huge crayfish that haunt what is described as some of the roughest coastline on earth… and then up to the north of Taranaki hunting wild boar and hopefully getting some footage. It’s a tough life but one I would not swap for any other that I know.

Dawson Bliss - "The Importance of Breeding"

I guess we all have our theories about how we go about training a pig dog with the hope of it turning out to be a great finder, something we all need in our pack more than anything else. After all if you can’t find them you don’t need a holder to stop them.

This story really has its roots in a DVD movie I have been working on for the past couple of years, it was to be titled ‘How to Train a Pig Dog’, but as work progressed on it it looks like the title will change to "How To Catch Pigs". The reason is the basis of this story.

I set out on the production of the movie with the idea that as I hunt I will film segments that are important to me in getting the dogs up to speed. As time progressed it became obvious to me that there was very little you can do to teach a dog to hunt other than getting them into the right country and hunting it to the best of your ability to give the dogs the best shot at getting onto pigs. At the end of the day to teach a dog to catch pigs is relatively simple you have to get to where the pigs are, not where they have been or should have been or were the might have been.

So as the movie progressed I became firmly of the opinion that I could do little to teach the dogs but I could do a hell of a lot to work the country to give the dogs the best chance of getting onto pigs. There is one dead cert with training a pig dog, you must get the dog onto as many pigs as possible, the more pigs a dog catches or sees caught the greater chance there is that it will reach its full potential Now that’s the next important bit, the dogs full potential. Some dogs will never make a top finder; I guess there’s a percentage factor that can be quantified on the probabilities of a dog turning out to be the leader of the pack.

At a guess these figures will probably go somewhere near the mark. Pup from pound, 10% (likelihood of reaching the top finder level), Pup from mate who’s bitch jumped the fence, 20%, from mates pig dog that’s only alright 30%, Pup brought from pig hunter who doesn’t know the sires breeding, 40%, from good mate or recognised breeder who’s line breed for years, 60%. Or the best of all bred from your own line of pig dogs that in my case I have had for 30 years, 70%.

Now these figures are only a calculated guess but they are calculated based on my experience and with a close eye on my mates who I hunt with. Ok so they are open for debate but I believe they are about right so why bother giving certain dogs the training they need, and I guess that’s a least a year of a lot of hunting, when those odds will probably prevail. The critical factor in selecting a pup that is worth training is knowing both its parents. A good pig dog doesn’t necessarily have to be put over a proven pig dog bitch, (or vice versa) although it adds more to the probability of success but it needs to be put over a dog that has brains, natural fitness, a hunting instinct and a desire to work.

My pick of the bunch, and it has been all my hunting life, is for something with around at least 50% sheep/cattle dog breeding in it. I have stuck with that formula and it works for two reasons, firstly the likelihood of success but also, which is critical to me is the vet bills. I have bugger all and although at times I would like a more powerful hard out dog, I have refrained because the amount of hunting I do couldn’t be done if there were vet bills like some of the guys have that catch more boars than me.

Some of the boars we have got over the last few months.

Not that I should be complaining about my packs ability to catch boars we have had our fair share over the summer, two over 190 and plenty over 150. The pack I am running now is the best I have ever had and apart from my finder Tess (as seen in the DVD “The Pig Hunters"), I have bred them all and there is no more satisfying hunt as those where you get good boars with young dogs that are shaping up to be champions.

A couple of weeks back a mate of mine, Cameron, rang up late one night wanting to go for a hunt. My initial reaction was bugger that I am in bed and its bloody near midnight but I thought never let a chance go by and the last thing I want to do is discourage a good keen young bloke from hunting. Let alone the fact that I had been carted out of home in an ambulance a week before after I fell over a 150 foot bank when Cameron and I had shot 3 deer out spotlighting. We had split up to carry the deer out and I couldn’t follow the gorge out that I had been following so climbed up the steep sides with a 130 pound hind on my back. One ledge from the top I turned to backtrack after I reached an impasse. The weight of the deer lurched to one side and I was gone feet first until I hit a ledge that catapulted me into mid air in the darkness. The next time I hit the ground I was right side up with the deer on my back, the next time was upside down with the deer on top and the third time was smashed into the creek 150 foot below of where I started. I made it back to the Ute and home at 6 in the morning.

When I couldn’t lift my head to put my glasses on in the morning Kerry insisted on calling and ambulance and I was in hospital for a day but nothing was broken.

Anyway Cameron dropped me off at 3 in the morning with my team of Tess, two 18-month-old pups (Boss and Rags) by her and their aunty (Bee) while he went further up the road to have a look for a deer. I’d suggested it that way because with my injuries I was having trouble walking so I though well if I get knackered I’ll hole up and sleep it off. Nothings never easy as they say and at 4 am the whole team hit a pig a mile or so up the hill I was on and disappeared over the top. A painful hurry up the hill yielded not even a puffing dog returning but I smelt boar and that feeling you get in those situations, I call it delicious fear swept over me and I knew my beautiful dogs would need all the help they could get and I headed further in the direction I last heard them. It was an hour and a half before I got another earful and that was still a mile away. I had to cross a deep bush gully to get on a ridge from where I hoped to pinpoint them and all thru that I was out of earshot. Up on the far ridge I could hear nothing so I waited and after 10 minutes I heard what had to be them another mile or more down in a deep gully that ran out to the road.

The blinding agony of the last weeks injuries were somewhat dulled by the battle that was going on below. The dogs had already been on this pig for 3 hours by this time and it was getting light, I carried no gun and it sounded like this was no fight to head into with a knife so I radioed Cameron and left him in no doubt as to the seriousness of the situation. I kept heading down and with the light of the new day reaching into the gully I could make out a battle royal going on in the fern at the bottom. The wonders of modern communication was about to come to its fore. Cameron was not far away out on the road and was soon headed in the right direction. I arrived above the scene to the gut wrenching sounds of dogs at the end of their tether and a boar that would give no quarter.

From what I could make out I had four black dogs in a furious fight with a boar I could only partly make out. I had started out with two white and two black dogs so I assumed someone else’s dogs had joined the battle. (What transpired was my 2 white dogs had been coloured black by the mud in the creek) With only a knife at hand I had no choice to give the dogs help and charged off, to the best of my ability to the dogs below. Half way down thru the scrub and fern the punch up went quiet and a second or two later I heard what I thought was one of the dogs coming up the face 10 meters around from me.

I got the surprise of my life when it came into focus and it was the boar the dogs had been on with no dogs to be seen. He weren’t no ordinary boar but about 200 pound of ferocious meat who had had more than enough annoyance for one day.
What he did next was something that I had never seen a boar do but I guess under the circumstances it was understandable. I’ve often been asked if I have ever been attacked by a pig and generally speaking in the true sense of the word I had not. But this boar had different ideas and as he was making his getaway uphill he eyed me up and in a flash he charged.

All I could think of at this stage, and it may sound silly, but my thought was no, no don’t do this, I am on compo and shouldn’t even be here so bugger off. He closed the ten meters or so to me in the time it took me to duck behind a rotting stump with the idea of using it like a matadors shield. As he reached the face of the stump I was firmly planted behind he came around the right side I ducked around the other side with the hope of grabbing his tail and hopping like hell the dogs would arrive on the scene and save my bacon. This boar was wild, pissed off and determined. That’s about when the plan fell apart in the time it takes a bullet to penetrate flesh. Big problem… no dogs and no tail. That’s right no f…in tail, the dogs had chewed it off. Not to be outwitted the boar spun around on his hind legs and came at me standing behind him like an Indian at a gunfight armed with a knife, so what next. Grab his ears, that sounds like the best idea, well for a split second it seemed like the right thing to do… but the one thing I hadn’t thought off. No f…in ears, the dogs had chewed them off as well.

Retreat was the only option left as all thoughts of my injuries dissipated and I leapt off down the hill at a 100 miles an hour. My team were making their way up the hill all right but at a pace that a turtle would have beaten. Luckily for me the rear guard arrived at the right moment. Cameron, who had been making haste to the scene of the punch up, arrived in the nick of time and his Blue Merle, Bundaberg, decided he was about to become a real pig dog at just the right moment and latched onto the boar from behind which turned him real quick and the battle that erupted saw my dogs get a new lease on life.

190 pound of the meanest boar I have come across for a long time

190 pound that boar went and once again I was as proud as punch of the dogs, particularly the two pups out of Tess, Boss and Rags, 18 months old and true battlers with speed intelligence and a tenacity hard to believe. The four dogs had stuck with that boar for at least 3 hours thru hell and high water. Tess and Bee needed to be seen by my veterinarian friend but the pups recovered well enough from a few holes poked in them. Had the boar had bigger tusks this story may have ended differently.

So as I say breeding your own pups from a long line of pig dogs makes the chances of success astronomically better. Tess is due to drop a litter in another week and because of the way her last two litters have turned out I won’t be knocking any of them on the head, but I will put them up for sale with a guarantee to put my faith on the line. What more can I say about line breeding than that. In a hypothetical situation if I was offered $4000 for Boss I wouldn’t sell but who knows what will happen with the litter after Boss and Rags that are just starting to accompany their dad on our many pig hunting trips. Life as a filmmaker is tough... working hard on the next movie from the WildNewZealand. stable. "The Chopper Hunters" A story of the airborne hunters who are the best in the world….Scenery like the which of has never been filmed before in NZ…. Men that tell the stories in a way that will have us all enthralled …The controversy that has evolved with the industry dealt with no holds barred... Out soon in a Sports.

Dawson Bliss - "Making of the Pig Hunters movie"

There’s a saying in the film industry that you don’t use kids or animals, (let alone wild animals), if you want things to go smoothly. I remember talking to a guy involved in movie making when he asked if I had written the script for the movie. That was what you do before you start shooting your footage. Well I couldn’t figure out how I was going to do that, if I did I would then have to get the wild pigs and pig dogs to do what I wanted when I was out on the hill. As we all know we are bloody lucky if we can catch one in the right place to film let alone make a whole movie out of it.

So, I set out to rewrite the manual on how to make a movie and what had transpired on the hill in the first hour of daylight had given me the biggest uplift I had had since I came up with this almost impossible plan. All the drama I had been through getting this far was all behind me, for the past hour the camera had hardly stopped firing footage through its digital insides and most of it would be as good as I had ever seen.

With dogs back under control and the big black boar headed (probably about 150lb) up the face towards me, with three sows and another young boar in tow, I was in the pound seat. They would pass not more than 100 meters below me before they reached the top of the ridge and get into the bush. PJ and Tess were under control, the wind was right, the pigs had no inkling we were there and the camera was fired up ready to go.

Ample opportunity presented itself to get good footage as the angled up the face and when they were a hundred yards from the ridge I gave that wickedly powerful click of the fingers and the team were off. PJ with a dose of whippet in him hurled down the face at a hundred miles an hour cutting onto the path of the smaller boar 10 meters behind as he reached the cover of the bush. Not 10 seconds later the shit fight started and the two dogs stopped the boar before he had got another 50 meters. They soon went in for the hold and I was on the way down the steep fast far to fast to ensure the safety of gear I had onboard.

The punch up in the bush wasn’t going all the dog’s way and the idea of filming was soon discarded when I saw what was happening. Because of the animal numbers, the bush was relatively open but they had hit him on the ridge top just before it dropped off almost shear down a rubbly shingle scree.

The momentum of the boar had carried him onto the scree and with two relatively light dogs hanging off each ear it wasn’t enough to stop him on the downward slide. Although he was the smaller of the two I would say he was about 120 pound. I soon had hold of his thick back hocks, and you know what you do next when you are on your own, no, nor did I, but I soon knew what I wanted to happen. It was almost impossible to have stuck him so I decided I would let him go but first I had to get the dogs off. They hadn’t heard of an idea like that before and it was a battle but after being dragged a hundred yards down the slope we were all a bit worse for wear and the commands came from a voice that had an air of authority about it that even the dogs understood.

The boar was about as feisty as you would ever see, when I got the dogs off and I let him go, the bastard spun around to have a go at me and the dogs hit him before he could lunge uphill. We then went through the whole circus again until the tangle fell apart when he dropped over a short bluff and the threats to the dogs left then in no doubt that I meant it. The footage would have been comical to watch but the camera was at the top of the scree and all I have is memories but you love your dogs even more after such a battle.

Back on the ridge, refreshed with a cool drink and a rest I came up with a plan. The day was only an hour and a half old and to the west was a long kanuka valley that I had been tempted to investigate. It was all of 2500 feet below where we were so I thought about and came up with the idea to go exploring. Seeing it was the kind of country that could be disturbed without affecting the clear country I was filming in, I decided to let the dogs have their head, hell they deserved it, and go forth and investigate.

Well not many will believe this, we had nailed 9 pigs by lunch time, some were dispatched because the dogs had chewed them up to bad and others were to skinny to let go and a few were left for another day. It was a morning that you felt like you were Daniel Boone or one of the heroes you read about as a kid and dreamed of becoming one day. It was just me, 2 dogs and a knife against the kingdom of the Wild Pig.

Training them young. Two weeks after the Stoned Boar encounter
Tess dropped a litter of pups. A few left to buy.

By the time I reached the valley floor I called the dogs to heal, on a beautiful sunny day we followed a stream that we didn’t even know the name of up through grass clearings with about as much rooting on as I had ever seen. Mid afternoon I came across an old decrepit hut with rooting right up to the doorstep, fresh too because the dogs were as keen as mustard but I threatened them with death if they should dare. I was getting buggered by this stage and I knew it was a five hour walk back to camp.

I was sitting on the hut verandah when high up above me, on a clearing in the kanuka, two deer appeared and the camera whizzed into action, another bonus I thought, yeah right. I got some film streaming through the camera and looked around to make sure the dogs weren’t considering going hunting.

What dogs, the next thing I know is the snarl of Tess as she hits her twelfth pig for the day. PJ opened up soon after and then I realized they hadn’t hit one but two. It took all the energy I didn’t want to waste to sort that out before we were heading down the stream on the long tramp back to camp.

One thing that gave me some reserve of energy was the fact that I had got footage this day like I could never have dreamed off. I was following an old track about 300 feet above the stream through some classy looking pig country thinking of Ed Hillary when he talked of knocking the bastard off, because that’s how I felt about the way the day had gone. Then across the other side of the stream where a steep range pinched off into ferny clearings before it dropped through a belt of scrubby bush into the stream. I spotted what all pig hunters dream off.

Ironically, I was thinking as I walked how the setting was perfect for a boar to be rooting around over there somewhere, that thought was somewhat promulgated by the fact that dotted around the face was patches of deep rooting, some not old but the stuff of big boars.

And then as if a dream had just come true was the of all boars, out of the cover of the bush, 2 hours before twilight and digging a whole deep enough to bury a man to the waist.

It might be hard to understand for most but with camera out of the pack and streaming in footage I am sure I had a tear in my eye, the day had gone form good to better to wickedly good and now this happened, I could not believe what was streaming through the viewfinder. It was just perfect, he was directly across the creek at me level, not 150 meters away, completely oblivious to my presence, the lighting was perfect, the wind was just right and I was on my own with just my two wonderful dogs in paradise. I nearly had to pinch myself to be sure I hadn’t died and gone to a pig hunter’s heaven.

Filming him rooting in amongst the fern I soon had a plan, I would keep the dogs in and stalk down the face onto a rocky outcrop from where I could film the dogs at work, whoa, hang on a minute what f***in dogs. I didn’t have no f***in dogs, they were gone, not only were they gone but they were gone the wrong f***in way. Jesus, something’s turn to shit real quick.

I had been aware that a breeze was waffling down from the face above the track; obviously my wonderful trustful dogs had noticed it and they never let a chance go by.

There was nothing for it than to go for plan B, head down to the rocky outcrop above the stream and salvage what I could from what was shaping up to be the ultimate footage. I expected the dogs to open up any second from above the track and threw caution to wind to get in position to film the boars flight once the shit hit the fan. As it happened the noise I made getting into position was muffled by the rapids below and I was nearly onto the outcrop when I heard PJ panting his way down the face to me, he got wind before he got to me and would have carried on had it not been for my silent threat but Tess who was only a half a minute behind had the bit between her teeth and was off.

She had the smell of boar on her nose and there is no way of stopping her when she is that close, PJ was given the OK and they were away.

With the camera jammed in the forks of a kanuka I was filming as they worked their way up the face through the bush, the boar twigged something was sup a few seconds before they arrived. He climbed up out of the whole he was digging for the high energy Rizone contained in the fern roots and stood his ground. Proud, staunch and fearless of no pig dog he stood as the master of his domain until my equally fearless Tess hit him front on with PJ at her side.

Not to be outdone the boar bolted downhill in a flash of speed that would do justice to a rifle shot, a bluff impeded their way, well the dogs way but not his, unseen by me, but heard, he went strait over, not stopping for a hundred feet until he hit the rocks in the stream bed below.

That should have been enough of a head start to leave the dogs well behind, but he had not thought of one thing. The stop below being so sudden, you know, the bit that hurts the most. Well it hurt him because he was stunned for the 30 or so seconds it took Tess to arrive and start a hard bail on a rocky beach at the base of the cliff.

Hell, I’m thinking, cause I was worried that the dogs had gone over too, this is too good to be true, and then PJ arrives and the battle royal begins and I am there in the pound seat as proud as punch of the two best dogs in the world.

If I could have written a script for the next part of "The Pig Hunter", movie it would have been written exactly as the scene was about to unfold. In my view, unparalleled heroism on the part of cameraman, (that’s me) a stoned boar and dogs…
TO BE CONTINUED (Or to cut a long story short buy the DVD)

PS. This chapter would have run longer in this edition but the writers time has been taken up with more important stuff…..like going hunting… and winning first prize for the best Red Stags head at the Hawke's Bay NZDA and second for a Sika…. And getting the best Red Deer footage ever filmed for "Wild New Zealand Part 2 - The Deer Hunters", a movie that will be released in the next couple of weeks… oh yeah and five pigs for this week... And my wife is hoping I’ll grow out of it that they would.

P.S.S Where I had got too by the time the dogs had hit the boar was about opposite where he had been rooting, the bank dropped steeply from there to the creek below, A smattering of pseudopanax and kanuka gave enough wood to hold onto while scrambling down the face with camera in one hand and a hope that the dogs would nail the boar in the stream bed where he had come to a sudden stop after going over the bluff in an attempt to evade the pursuing dogs. The speed at which he had made the decision to bail out surprised me, I would have expected him to put up a fight for a minute or two but he had not s topped for more than a few seconds before he leapt over a near 100 foot bluff.

Tess was there faster than I thought was possible and the battle royal was about to begin. I don’t know that I have ever been prouder of my dogs than I was when PJ arrived on the scene a half a minute later, I was no more than 30 meters above the action on the opposite side of the creek with a view through the trees and the camera was soon winding the film through and I knew that the action was unfolding was as good as I had ever got. I thought it could not get better than this when all of a sudden the boar lunged at PJ who had bailed to hard for this boar to put up with. At what seemed like the speed of light the action jolted me into realizing that hell this was good but there was every chance I was about to see one of my precious dogs killed in front of me when I was hell bent on my own selfish need for footage.

Leaning out of the face I was perched on I must have lurched and put more weight on the kanuka I was holding when thru the viewfinder I became aware of the scene climbing up through the screen. Then I realized the bank and tree had given way and I was on the way down, slow motion but uncontrolled and I had no option but to go with the flow and hope to ride it out to the creek bed below. It was all over before I could blink but the stop at the bottom came up bloody fast and although I was on upright when I hit the creek bed the sudden stop slumped me onto the ground followed by a solid smattering of fallen rocks and branches that enraged the boar even more and he charged.

Not the kind of action you expect from a boar more than 10 meters across the creek but action faster than the speed of light, it may have been sped up by my stunned mind but before he hit the edge of the stream on his side my heroic dogs both hit him behind the ear on opposite sides his charge was halted by mid stream in a shower of water that got to me faster than I could comprehend the sequence of events but it gave me time to be back on my feet with the camera filming every part of the action and me left in absolute awe of the action that was unfolding in a deafening fight of three adversaries at the speed of light.

The two dogs had been on a hell of a lot of pigs before this and I often wondered how they survived some of their past encounters but what was unfolding before my eyes left me in absolute awe of their ability to stay out of reach of the boar as he slashed and charged his way through the bail. Its not often that you get a boar bailed in a relatively open and with only two dogs in an area where both he and the dogs can perform at the very best.

It was a situation where I think that if the dogs hadn’t been on a hundred or more pigs together then the wouldn’t have been able to perform as team like I had never seen before. This was the first pig I had ever seen them bail and because I didn’t have a gun, the camera was more than enough to contend with, I was in a position in which I was not only putting myself at great risk but the dogs as well. I was desperate for some extreme action footage but as soon as I was fell down into the battle zone I found I wasn’t quite as brave as I thought I was.

Being on your own, miles from the nearest road, without anyone knowing where I was within 20 kilometers and not long before dark added a whole new dimension to what had turned in an instant from the greatest action I had ever seen to a situation where I had to pull something out of the bag to get the punch up that was happening under some semblance of control.

While I was thinking what the hell to do and filming the action at the same time PJ was hard bailing at the boars ear, too close the boar thought and at lightening speed he lunged at PJ, how he whipped out of the way as fast as he did defied logic. The sheer bravado of Tess, a heading dog with no real weight behind her was awe inspiring, When the boar lunged at PJ she came in from the opposite side and savaged him enough to draw his attention away from PJ who he could have ripped when PJ reached the water edge had Tess not drawn the fury away.

One thing I was about to learn in the explosive action that was taking part, not more than 5 meters from the camera lens, was that when you are filming a boar that close, and he eyes you up and charges you, it doesn’t happen like you think. For a start you are concentrating on streaming the action into the camera and the boar charges you. That scene has to come through the camera lens, through the workings of the camera and into the viewfinder. When the scene gets to there it has to reach your eye and then your brain and after a few calculations you figure out you are in the shit but its too late to do anything about it. Why, well the boar started his charge half a second ago and you needed to take flight at the same time, in half a second a boar is so close to nailing you there is no time to get away so the best thing is to just panic.

The skill of the dogs was the one thing that saved my bacon, as soon as he broke the bail to have a go at me the dogs upped their tempo and hit him hard, hard enough to turn him and give up on nailing me. The second time he tried the same charge I’d gained a bit more confidence, I had him worked out I thought, I was filming with one hand clasped around a manuka growing out of the side of the bank above of where I was filming from. So he charges me and I go to swing up the bank out of harms way, well that was the plan, the trunk gave away before I had half my weight on it and I fell heavily down on the rocks back first.

Somehow as I was falling I had time to realize that I was drenched by a splash of water, from the boar as he hit the edge of the creek on his way to deal to me. The velocity of the water the commotion of hard dogs and the snarl of a nasty boar fired my anger and I was back on my feet by the time the boar was pulled up midstream by two dogs loyal to the bone.

It was then that I picked up the first rocs and hurled it after him in a fit of rage, missed him by about a metre at a range of 3 meters but it was enough to get him to high tail it back onto the rocky beach on the other side of the creek. He then turned and squinty eyed he stared a defiant look that said I’ll get you ya bastard. Another rock was soon hurling his way and even before it missed I had another one at hand.

Dawson Bliss - "The Fourth Article"

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Dawson Bliss - "The Fifth Article"

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Dawson Bliss - "The Sixth Article"

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