A Pig-Sticking Adventure.

Feilding Star, Volume 31, Issue 278, 31 May 1897, Page 2

A Pig-Sticking Adventure.

CLOSE QUARTERS,

'Twas in the early seventies, ou unfenced country, with plenty too many in fact— of wild cattle and pigs. How" ! ever, I was young and active and the cattle shooting and boar apeariug made grand sport. My horse, an old trooper, and my spear, an army bayonet on a manuka pole, were good enough in thoir way, and hundreds, I believe thousands of the boar family fell beneath u.s On the day in question the quarry bad all but escaped me, it had been a race across a flat covered with rushes and tussock grass. His Lordship had entered a narrow defile leading up to a flat lying some seven or eight feet higher, terrace formation. The track was very narrow being worn down by successive generations of Captain Cooks. To cut tho story short the boar entered this track just as I »ot up to him. I had time for I one thrust with the spear and sent it home, back of the shoulder. I did not think it was sufficient, so I tried to force my horse through tho gutter. When abont half way through, with just my head and shoulders above the level, the hoise could get no further, and moreover one of my feet was jammed fast between the horse and the bank. More awkward still, the boar instead of tryiug to escape doubled back after be had reached level ground and stood almost over me champing ssivapely. I could not throw my«elf off the horse, nor could I use my spear without sitting upright, which was out of the question, as I had to lean r;ght over to the opposite side of the trench to keep away from the boar, whose power I well knew. Great flakes of bloody froth were falling on my hands and clothes, and I could see that the boar was slowly bleeding to death. Then there was the danger of the pig jumping or falling in upon me. For more than five minutes I lay like this, when with a squeal down went the boar— dead or nearly so. I had some difficulty in preventing the carcass fiom rolling in upon me, and then with the aid of my spear I extricated my foot, and dismounting, backed the horse out of the track, considering myself very lucky in setting off with a sprained ankle. — B.L.