Pre-season Training
The hunting season starts in under 2 months, so some friends and I took our dogs out for some boar training. My younger brother came out with me this time, and we had loads of fun. Baron's been staying with him temporarily, and he's done a terrific job with him.
We got there the night before, had a terrific outdoor meal with everyone, and some interesting conversation about the Nihon Ken. The next morn we were up bright and early for a great Japanese breakfast, then on to training.
Baron was amazing, but he's already had plenty of experience in the mountains, and my goal was to let my Shikoku pup Rome see boar again. Unfortunately he was really having any of it and was more interested in playing with the other dogs. We'll see how he develops over the hunting season.
Here's a friend's Kishu baying the boar. Unfortunately we ended up having to use a very large boar. The larger boar don't move around very much, and are much easier for the dogs to bay up. It's like that in the mountains as well. I guess the larger they are, the less of a threat they feel the dogs are to them, plus the larger boar tire faster.
Here are two Shikoku baying. The smaller female is just around a year old, and this was her first time seeing a boar. At first she didn't show any interest, but caught on very quickly. She has amazing potential, and by her second round later in the day was learning by leaps and bounds. You can see the male here gets charged and almost pinned by the boar, but barely manages to counter and flip himself over it.
'Kuro-yotsu-me' (black-four-eye) or B/T Shikoku are a minority in the breed, but yesterday I got a chance to see a mother/son combo baying up a boar. They were very nice dogs, calm, friendly, but tenacious in front of the boar. It's possible that they haven't had enough experience on boar to get the distance between them and their prey right. For everyone that watches watches my videos/reads my blog and thinks it would be fun to test their dogs on boar, or start hunting, well boar are dangerous game. I haven't seen any serious injuries in training, but I've seen my share in the mountains. Yesterday I had an unpleasant reminder of how dangerous boar can be if the dogs are even a millisecond too slow to react.
On another note, talked to the local hunters and found that they are testing wild boar for radiation in most prefectures up north. Some of the numbers I saw for boar in Fukushima/Tochigi were 7 times higher than legal consumption levels. Even in Ibaragi the numbers were 2-3 times over the limit.
We got there the night before, had a terrific outdoor meal with everyone, and some interesting conversation about the Nihon Ken. The next morn we were up bright and early for a great Japanese breakfast, then on to training.
Baron was amazing, but he's already had plenty of experience in the mountains, and my goal was to let my Shikoku pup Rome see boar again. Unfortunately he was really having any of it and was more interested in playing with the other dogs. We'll see how he develops over the hunting season.
Here's a friend's Kishu baying the boar. Unfortunately we ended up having to use a very large boar. The larger boar don't move around very much, and are much easier for the dogs to bay up. It's like that in the mountains as well. I guess the larger they are, the less of a threat they feel the dogs are to them, plus the larger boar tire faster.
Here are two Shikoku baying. The smaller female is just around a year old, and this was her first time seeing a boar. At first she didn't show any interest, but caught on very quickly. She has amazing potential, and by her second round later in the day was learning by leaps and bounds. You can see the male here gets charged and almost pinned by the boar, but barely manages to counter and flip himself over it.
'Kuro-yotsu-me' (black-four-eye) or B/T Shikoku are a minority in the breed, but yesterday I got a chance to see a mother/son combo baying up a boar. They were very nice dogs, calm, friendly, but tenacious in front of the boar. It's possible that they haven't had enough experience on boar to get the distance between them and their prey right. For everyone that watches watches my videos/reads my blog and thinks it would be fun to test their dogs on boar, or start hunting, well boar are dangerous game. I haven't seen any serious injuries in training, but I've seen my share in the mountains. Yesterday I had an unpleasant reminder of how dangerous boar can be if the dogs are even a millisecond too slow to react.
On another note, talked to the local hunters and found that they are testing wild boar for radiation in most prefectures up north. Some of the numbers I saw for boar in Fukushima/Tochigi were 7 times higher than legal consumption levels. Even in Ibaragi the numbers were 2-3 times over the limit.
Comments
Other than that sad ending for the B&T Shikoku, looks like it was a great day. I'm glad Baron hasn't lost a step. Hopefully Rome will come around with a little practice.
Thanks for sharing!
You can really see the difference in the drive/commitment/interest between the Shikoku and the Kishu.
Sucks about the radiation issues. I was wondering if that would happen as I recalled reading that the boar around Chernobyl are still radioactive today! I'm glad there is testing being done - will you have access to tests (geiger counter) you can run on boar you catch?
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Good luck with the up coming season!
I'm glad she is OK.
Thanks for posting videos looking forward to hear about Rome.
Mei I'd put her up. She's a b*tch. She's make it through. ha ha ha.
Honestly, really cool vid, and I hope you have a great season with the dogs.
Sad to see, but sadly boar hunting with dogs or without is dangerous.. Good to see what a boar can do so someone who is thinking about this will not go into it without being prepared. Even shows how dangerous it is just to train.