CHASE WORLD: Wild Boar Hunting in Maui

.... It's a rainy Sunday here on DelMarVa, so I will digress briefly and catch up with some notes I've been meaning to add here.

right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">

I ended up with 85 hunts for my hounds for the 2012-13 season. Bobby and the others had well over 100. It was a good season, but I wouldnt say it was our best. Meanwhile....

When a friend of mine , the profession

al huntswoman for the Santa Ynez Valley Hounds in California, asked me if I had any interest in joining her for a wild boar huntwith catch dogs in Hawaii this past May , it took me...o, maybe 2 seconds to decide if that were something I might reeally want to do....HELL, YEAH!!!! We planned the trip to allow 5 full days on the island for a couple of days hunting, rounded out with lots of hiking and beach time. And the trip went pretty much as planned!

We were scheduled to hunt Tuesday and Thursday. However, heavy rain in the hunt area on Monday afternoon washed out the road, and Kurt ( our host) notified us of the cancellation at 9:30 pm on Monday night. Uh-oh... Since we had never met Kurt in person, and all of our cell phone conversations with him since our arrival on Maui had been very garbled, both Claire and I wondered if this guy was really going to come through for us. He did. Wednesday morning he called us to say that we could have a "short" hunt that evening ( he works on a cattle ranch , so the hunts could'nt start until 5pm).

Kurt picked us up at our B&B in Makawao at 4:30 pm, and less than 1/2 hour later we were walking his 6 catch dogs ( Catahoula/Cattle dog /Bull terrier mix. They must be able to latch onto a pig and also work cattle) into shoulder-high brush along a steep hill. For over 2 hours, until sunset, we scrambled through , over and under the thickest vegetation I've ever been in. But although some traces of a boar were seen,, the dogs never found one.

Now, Claire and I had already hiked for 3 consecutive days, on the toughest trails I could find via the internet. Trails not less than 4 miles long, with steep increases in elevation( our goal was to get the BEST views of Maui from atop the highest ridges) had our legs screaming before we began the hunt. We hadn't expected to be scrambling up and down steep inclines covered with shoulder-high vegetation for yet another 3 hours!

Thursday, however, we opted NOT to hike and instead spent our last morning on the beach down at Wailea.

OK, I'm 60 years old here, andsince I'm pretty CERTAIN there will never be another photo of me in a bikini on a beach in Hawaii EVER AGAIN, it's going in the record. Tough shit if you think it's appropriateor not.

The beach at Wailea, taken before the tourists in the resorts that flank it were even awake.

Kurt picked us up Thursday afternoon and this time we headed to the cattle ranch where he had been seeing boar all week. We headed out into the bush on a Polaris loaded down with 5 people and Kurts' dogs. After a very short drive Kurt stopped the Polaris next to a 6' high double-strand barbed wire fence and allowed the dogs to cast. Immediately, the dogs took off and within seconds were out of sight. We heard them bark, and next thing Claire and I knew, Kurt,Stone and their friend were FLYING over that barbed wire. (Stone about 14yo- explained later , "when we hear our dogs bark, we need to GET TO THEM right away." The concern being that a boar can injure a dog in an instant, and Kurt had just lost one of his best bitches to a boar the week before. )

We followed , managing to scale the wire without getting hung up or ripping our clothes in the process.

The dogs had encountered the boar, as evidenced by the gore mark between the eyes of one of them. The pig managed to get free though and in its' panic fell over a steep cliff to a canyon about 200 feet below. Dogs and hunters scrambled/slid down the slope as far as we could until we encountered a ledge with a 15-20' almost vertical drop to the bottom. Steep enough that we had to hand the dogs to Kurt one at a time so he could drop them down to the canyon floor below. Kurt slipped and managed to scrape up the left side of his back. It looked like a good case of road rash, and I could tell by his grimace that it stung!

Dropping the dogs, one by one, down to the bottom

Kurt, about to jump to the canyon floor.

OK, so we are now boxed into this narrow canyon with uneven, volcanic, rocky footing beneath our feet and tall brush growing up all around us. And a very rattled wild pig somewhere in the proximity. We couldnt see him, nor hear him. And the dogs werent acting like they knew where it was, either. I remember Claire telling me, "boar never run UP". And then I remember thinking to myself "just stay behind the guy with the GUN!"

The footing down there was just a bit rocky! Right here, we are all wondering where that damn pig was!

Finally, we heard a dog bark ABOVE us and I watched as Brownie harked to it. (Couldnt see the other dogs,but they, too, ran up the side of the ravine to join in. A mad scramble up the cliff ensued as we all followed , and we heard the pig squeal when the dogs latched on to it. They had bayed the boar in a shallow, cave-like hole. There was room for only Kurt and his friend to enter so Claire and I could only hear Kurt as he ordered the dogs to let go of their quarry. Instantly, the dogs emerged from the pigs' lair and made their way towards us. Very impressive!

Scrambling up to get to where the dogs have caught the boar. Kurt is ahead of me, upper left corner

It all happened so fast, and the adrenalin rush was awesome!

We now had a dead pig that needed to be dragged back up to the top of the ridge. I continued to video while Claire grabbed the fourth leg and helped. By the time the boar was gutted and loaded onto the Polaris, the sun was just above the horizon.

The view from the ridge top, right after loading the boar.

Kurt asked us if we wanted to continue to hunt on in the dark ( silly boy), and soon we went to try and find another victim. The dogs were cast 3 times , without success. The full moon was getting higher in the sky, yet it provided little illumination. The guys were now wearing headlamps, and Clair and I were doing our best to keep from tripping over rock outcroppings as we followed behind them through the brush. When a large crash was heard in the bushes about 100 feet ahead, Kurt threw me his light and then took off running behind Stone and Brownie. Almost at the same time, Claire and I heard more rustling in some bushes about 50feet to our right. The other dogs headed in that direction. It was a brief "OSHIT" moment when we realized there had been more than one boar hanging out at this spot. The guys had gone on ahead after Brownie , and neither Claire nor I had anything more than a Nikon in our hands.

Moving on to try and find another boar, a calf jumps in front of the Polaris.

The other dogs came right back to us, and not long after, so did the guys. But Brownie was nowhere to be seen or heard.Kurt said he thought that he had heard her scream one time, but nothing after that. This was cause for concern. Ifshe were in pursuit of the boar,she would be barking, and if she had caught it and latched on to it, we would be hearing the boar squealing. But there was only silence in the darkness, and that made us all very uneasy. We spent the next 90 minutes looking for that dog, all the while Claire and I were hoping that nothing bad had happened to her. Kurt had just lost one good bitch to a boar the previous week, and we didnt want him losing another one on our account.

After checking several cattle watering troughs for Brownies' tracks, we slowly started to head back to where we had begun the hunt. Finally, in the headlights of the Polaris, she appeared. Unharmed. Kurt: "I feel alot better now". Just a bit of an understatement - it was a BIG relief to us all.

It was now around 10pm, and I guess since we had only had one kill, Kurt felt obliged to ask us if we wanted to keep on hunting. In unison, Claire and I hollered over the din of the ATV's engine. "HELL NO! -these dogs are STAYING right HERE!"