Tony Baker and the Hall Boys experience a gruelling hunt after swamp-dwelling feral pigs.

We pulled up to the homestead and Gary shut down the Defender, and so ended an hour of torture. No, I'm not talking about some rough pot-holed and corrugated road, I'm talking about an hour of listening to Dwight Yoakam! You'd think a displaced Pom like Gary would like the Beatles or something but no, much to everyone's misfortune he's into country. A quick chat to the station manager and it was back into the torture machine for another hour
of driving to the campsite. Yes, these Northern Territory stations are big.

After driving through the dry and dusty paddocks filled with bent over spear grass and termite mounds it was hard to believe the sight that greeted me as we pulled up to the campsite -a huge lake 3km square. It was teaming with bird life and in the centre, every tree was festooned with flying foxes, the wind was in our faces and the smell was something that we would have to get used to.

"Let's go for a quick walk around the lake before we set up camp, what do you reckon?" Gary said with his usual enthusiasm, and with a "Yeah, all right," from his son, Matt, and I we broke out the guns. Gary was using his
trusty Marlin .45/70 levergun shooting 400gn cast projectiles that we'd made the day before;
Matt had his hard hitting 12 gauge Rossi coach gun and was using Winchester SGs (a combination that was to prove ideal for the type of country we were to hunt in); and I had my handy Mauser-Vergueiro in 8x57mm Mauser. It's no flashy Remington or Winchester but this accurate little rifle has been my first choice for my pig hunting trips
ever since I moved up to the Territory.

With guns ready we set off around the bottom end of the lake. The wind was at our back at this stage but by the time we'd, reached the other side of the lake it should be in our faces. Twenty metres from the campsite we hit an obstacle that was to prove the bane of the hunting trip: grass. And not just any grass, this stuff was shoulder-high but it had been blown over by the "knock em down" winds to form a tight mat about waist high.

Gary and Matt Hall with Rip and the first pigs of the trip.

Rip, the wonder dog, had no trouble navigating through the tunnels under the grass but we had to high step over the bloody stuff; 10 minutes of this and my legs felt like I'd climbed the stairs at Centrepoint Tower! It was then that Gary uttered those fateful words "It wasn't like this last year, Bakes".

Another 10 minutes of our "stair climb" and my legs had thankfully gone numb, but to make matters worse we had hit water, which was only ankle deep slush, but enough to make the walking all the more harder.

We were 10m from an old fenceline when the bird sounds of the lake were drowned out by the loud unmistakable grunting of pigs. It seemed that Rip had come across a mob of six pigs snoozing in the mud and they were voicing their displeasure at the feisty Jack Russell who'd interrupted their sleep. Gary and I rushed to the fenceline, we could make out the backs of two pigs lying in the mud behind a thin patch of grass. "You take the left one on three," I whispered. "Right," Gary whispered back. "One, two, th..." boom. Bloody Gary jumped the gun, so to speak, and
the Marlin went of like a cannon, with my Mauser cracking to life a second later. A huge water geyser erupted behind the pig I had aimed at, making me think that I had missed, but the hog didn't move. But his mates sure
did, Gary's pig died on the spot, as he cranked another round into the Marlin and fired at another pig to have it go down. Two more broke away to the left and as Gary lined one up, the pig was dropped by Matt who had just
joined us, so Gary moved his red dot sight to the other fleeing pig only to see that one drop as well as Matt fired the second barrel of the Rossi. The pig that Gary had seen go down was up again (don't know how with a 400gn
projectile drilling a hole in it) I fired at it but missed and Matt was dispatched to finish him off.

As Gary and I dragged the pigs together for a photo session Matt returned with the news that the pig had reached top gear and disappeared into the high grass and was not able to be found. No one likes loosing a wounded animal but with the grass the way it was locating the pig was impossible. The pigs we had on the ground were not exactly huge(hell, they weren't even big) but they were pigs nonetheless and had got the group off to a good start with five pigs accounted for.

In the after-action wrap-up, Matt said that he saw me cutting loose with the 8mm and that after I fired my first shot I had apparently fired and hit another pig, then had a shot at Gary's fleeing pig but missed. I ended up emptying my mag but in all honesty, I can't remember much after the fIrst shot. Pig fever? You bet!

We continued on into the slush, then the slush got deeper and deeper and we ended up in water up to the tops of our thigh. Not knowing where the water ended we elected to battle on in the direction we were headed, for one hour we waded through that bloody swamp with Gary and I taking turns carrying Rip (short-legged dogs and deep water don't mix). Our legs grew heavier as the "quick walk around the lake" turned into an endurance test. We didn't loose our sense of humour though, as we laughed at the situation we had got ourselves into. Luckily there were no snapping handbags in this lake, but we did have Gary muttering:

"It wasn't like this last year, Bakes".

We eventually reached dry land and made our way back to the vehicle. With camp set up and lunch consumed we had a blissful one hour rest before the afternoon session.

At 4 o'clock Gary roused us and we set off on another lap of the lake. We headed in the same direction as before but went a bit wider to avoid the water. Pig sign was plentiful and I ended up following little pig highways through the grass as they went from one small clearing to another. We still had to do the leg lift thing but the going was a bit easier than the first lap.

You couldn't really call this hunting, more like trolling for pigs, except we weren't in a game boat. We were wading through the grass hoping to bump into something, and bump into something we did. We had just passed the area were we'd bagged the first five pigs when Matt gave a low whistle. He had seen some grass move, not knowing what he saw, Gary and I stayed put as Matt moved forward, a couple of paces was all it took for the pigs to spook and they bomb burst, going in separate directions. Matt ran forward about 10 paces and raised the shotgun to his shoulder and fired, down went the pig, he then took off after the other one. By the time he got back (unsuccessful) Gary and I were standing over his pig, a chunky sow that had taken the full force of the SGs to the head and neck area -a perfect shot.

Back in the grass for more "trolling". With the first lap being such a trial and this one halfway through, I can tell you I was more than a little stuffed, and when Gary bumped more pigs I just didn't have the legs. Gary and Matt raced away after them with the speed of a thousand startled gazelles, bounding over the grass like Olympic hurdlers. I saw a ginger sow as it hit a cleared area and raised my rifle but lowered it again as I saw Gary out the comer of my eye. I ran after my hunting mates and kept up for the first 5m or so but gave it away for a bad joke! I watched Gary bounding away and suddenly there was a grunt from the grass next to where he landed. Gary let out a
loud "Oh, shit', jumped sideways but kept on running after the main mob. I was doubled over catching my breath when I heard a noise coming from the area Gary had passed, and from out of the grass trotted a pig. "Well
bugger me," I said as I raised the Mauser and touched off a shot. The pig squealed, faulted, then bolted, I gave chase but the grass swallowed him up. I stopped beside a tree and hopped on a log to get a better view, then off
to the left of me came the sound of splashing then silence. I cast out from the tree into the slush again but could see nothing. Returning to the tree I climbed on the log again and heard grass rustling behind me. Peeking around the
tree I saw another pig trotting through the grass headed my way. I let him come to me and at a distance of 5m I let him have it. No doubt about this one, he hit the deck and stayed there.

By now, Gary was on his way back and about 100m away when I saw a ginger sow trying to sneak away on my left. I turned, led her, fired and dpwn she went. Gary arrived and I told him what happened. The pigs must of simply stopped and hid in the grass and waited until Gary and Matt had passed by (cunning as outhouse rats these things). Matt turned up and between the two of them they hurdled over the grass for about 300m and didn't fire a shot, whereas I'd stayed still and downed two pigs and a possible third. Sometimes it pays to be unfit.

The rest of the hunt was uneventful as far as pigs went, but when we reached the top of the lake we saw a sight that none of us had ever seen -bats, millions of them. The sky was full from horizon-to-horizon, it was a fantastic sight and it was a fantastic smell too!

We made our way back to camp and arrived in the dark, all the time hoping we would not get shat on from a great height.

We got up at the crack of dawn the next morning and it was freezing (a chilly 5 degrees). Long pants were the order of the day and I was glad I packed them, as I don't think my legs could have stood wading through the grass again. As it was it took three weeks for them to stop itching.

The wind was blowing the same way so we headed off in the same direction as the day before. A loud grunt followed by some squealing in the general area that Matt shot his sow in stopped us in our tracks. We looked at each other then slowly moved forward, I looked to my right and saw a pig feeding in a clearing. It wasn't the pig that we'd heard grunting but it would do. I raised the Mauser and fired, down she went. I say she because it turned out to be a sow (will I ever shoot a decent boar?!)

That pig turned out to be the last one for the trip, and we returned to the campsite, packed up and headed back to the
homestead. The trip back wasn't as bad as the trip in, with a bit of concentration on my part I found that I could block out almost any country music tape that Gary cared to play! .

"Bakes"

This article appeared in the August, 2003 edition of the "Sporting Shooter" magazine. Copyright approval has been given to "Bakes" for this article to appear here.