Uhunt Mag Information

• Posted By : BRISTLE UP
• Posted On : Jan 12, 2020
• Views : 591
• Likes : 4
• Category : PIG DOGGING » HUNTER & DOG PROFILES
• Description : Chloe Mathers - Shadow 3yo Bullarab Catahoula & Rogue 1yo Brain Neal/Warrego Arab x Tycline Dane Mastiff

Overview

• By Chloe Mathers
  
  I’ve been seriously into hunting with dogs for the past few years, but as a kid, my family and I would head out west occasionally and chase pigs with guns. It wasn’t until we bought our own farm which consists mainly of traprock mountain country, we realized that to catch anything decent in the mountains we really needed dogs. We decided to buy a pup and train her up to catch the pigs we saw but soon lost sight of as they ran up into the mountains. This started the craze that has led to where I am today. Hunting with dogs gives you the utmost satisfaction that personally I don’t get from shooting. Training my dogs up myself and after putting in so much time and effort into them, for me, there is no better feeling than when they surprise you and pull up a big boar.
  
  For us hunting is a family thing, usuallyheading up the back of our farm with our two dogs and more often than not  Uncle Garry and his dog join us. Without my two dogs, hunting wouldn’t be the same. Chasing pigs is a great way to keep them both physically and mentally fit and also, I cannot think of a better way to spend quality time with them. Our dogs are both Bull Arab with different crosses. We didn’t really look at the deep history of their lines but instead focused on the parents and their following traits of temperament, size, health and their known hunting abilities. Both of their lines are easily trained; they are both very loyal and would do anything to please their owner. My two girls work very well together, pushing each other and continually learning from one another. Both of them are very good around the house and absolutely love people.
  
  Shadow - 3YO Bullarab x Catahoula
  Shadow was a good puppy, but like most of them, she was into everything. She chewed up plenty of plants and toys. She had a strong drive but was still very carefree and an absolute sook for cuddles and attention (not much has changed there). Shadow has always been very good with young kids and other dogs. For the first six months of her life she used to get very car sick, throwing up within the first half an hour of every car trip, thankfully she ended up growing out of it! Shadow was straightforward to train, she picked up on all the standard commands very quickly. We showed Shadow her first pigs at around a year old. We were riding around the front of the farm checking on stock when we came across a couple of smaller pigs laid up at a spring. She took to it straight away, lugging straight up. 
  
  Being our only pig dog and not having anyone to learn off, it was a slow start only getting pigs now and then when we eventually saw some. After Shadow had been on about 15 pigs, we went out with a friend who had dogs that were already finding and catching plenty of pigs. It definitely helped with Shadow’s confidence and helped to get some numbers into her. Shadow is now very cool, calm and collected. While still being a younger dog she betrays the personality of an older dog taking over the role of our late Cattle Dog, Matty. Losing Matty changed Shadow overnight from a silly puppy into a mature dog. While this made her slightly lazy, it also changed her hunting style as she instantly started to use her head. Shadow has successfully found out to 500m in the thick mountain country, resulting in good hooky boars.
  
  
  
  Shadow is mostly silent when she hunts, and she never trail barks. Although, when she used to be on her own and the pig stood to fight she would bail until the perfect opportunity arose to grab it, but if the pig was running she’d run alongside it and grab it straight up. With our other dog Rogue by her side, nothing gets away from them now, and they show no bail. Shadow works well on her own and well with other dogs. Shadow is now 3 and has been hunting for 2 years. In this time, she has been on just over 100 pigs and has learned to hit them hard. If we hunted in easier country, I have no doubt that she would be finding consistently out to a good distance. But with the thick mountains and elusive boars, she’s had a bit of trouble on her own. This is one of the reasons we went out and got Rogue. 
  
  Getting another pup, we thought would help add to Shadows confidence and help push her out a bit further, therefore pushing each other to be better. Our aim for the next couple of months is to try and get out west where the country is a bit easier than the mountains and see if the dogs can pull off some good finds. Instead of finding pigs up and down mountains, the flat country should be much easier to navigate and easier to find the pigs. Even though Shadow had a very slow start, she still surprises me with a good find off the quad every now and then and is now able to find off a fresh scent. With us focusing on this and walking the mountains in winter, we should be able to add some consistency to her hunting with time and numbers. 
  
  Rogue - 1YO Brain Neal/Warrego Arab x Tycline Dane Mastiff
  Rogue was a pretty good puppy, with the usual things of chewing Shadows cheeks and ears, always wanting to play from the moment she woke till she would fall asleep at night. She has an insane hunting drive, never giving up. While she is carefree and very good at home, no squeaky toy or clothes peg is safe. As we say, if it’s on the ground and in her yard its fair game. Now, while she is still crazy and hypo, she can be a very loving and caring pup when she wants to be. She doesn’t give cuddles up very easily, so you lap them up while you can. She is definitely becoming more and more sooky as she gets older and slowly matures. She is very good around young children and other dogs. Rogue was very easy to train; she learned the basic commands very quickly and was a very intelligent pup, maybe too intelligent for her own good. 
  
  She was shown her first pig at 4 months old after her last puppy vaccination. She was intrigued but sat back while Shadow caught and showed her, her first couple pigs. The next pig Shadow actually found up the back of the farm and Rogue lugged up straight away and has never shown any bail or backward step since. Rogue has a lot of prey drive and covers a lot of ground in a very short time frame. She is a complete nutter, and it is this that results in numerous vet trips due to her ripping holes in her leg from sharp rocks, being impaled by a stick, always running into fences ripping her face and having to have a few days off from ripping her pads. She doesn’t exactly run nicely through the mountains; she does everything at 100 miles an hour. I am hoping this is what will make her a great dog once she starts to mature a little bit. Her nose never stops, and she is quickly learning to use it.
  
  
  
  Recently she has been pushing out to the 500m mark successfully finding a few pigs off the fresh scent, and she’s also flown off the buggy going out to 1.5km on her own in the thick mountains, where we could hear her trail barking, but unfortunately, she lost the pig. She has also assisted Shadow with a few finds and with more numbers and more experience I believe she will end up pushing out past Shadow and start finding/pulling up her own pigs. Unlike Shadow, Rogue isn’t exactly a silent hunter. You can hear her trail barking from hundreds of meters away. Rogue pulls up her own pigs by bitting them on the nuts to turn them around or smashing them at full speed to stop them on the spot. She has no backward step and at 6 months old was lugging straight up on 80+kg boars. While Shadow may have missed out on having someone to show her the way, she is definitely starting to make up for it now with Rogue. They push each other and give each other a lot of confidence. Together I believe they have a very bright future!