Hog Hunt

Sunday 4 October… There have been some posters dotted around Cooktown advertising the annual Hog Hunt weigh in at the Top Pub-----10 o’clock to 1 o’clock today. Every year the local farmers and country boys have a 3 day cull of ferule pigs in the area, as they do a great deal of damage to crops, ecostructure and breed like rabbits. The pigs are hunted with dogs then sometimes shot but mostly stuck. Sunday morning is the weigh in and there are prizes for all sorts of categories. As we watched the pigs being brought in, lashed to the side of pickups, to be weighed, there was the most indescribable smell imaginable. At home, the smell of dead foxes that have been lain about for a couple of days is bad enough, but this!!!! The temperature is around 32C, the humidity 80% and we are wrong for wind. Just as well there was a plentiful supply of V B and at times we wished we smoked again!! Even the locals are not impervious to the stench. There were several colourful characters in the pub, one had just returned from a fishing trip in his tinny, pissed out of his head, another with a huge chain round his neck with a swiss army knife on it, the chain being big enough to tie up Captain Cooks ship, then there was a guy who took his false leg off, and propped it at the bar, well it must have felt hot. (Reminded us of Rolf Harris’s Jake the Peg)
All the pigs were brought in and weighed using a spring balance suspended from the jib of a monstrous mobile crane. In total there were 108 pigs, the heaviest being a boar of 122Kg’s that’s 268lb’s or a 13 and a half score pig if you are a pig roaster. There were prizes for the pig with the biggest hooks, ( fangs) and for the most maggoty pig. Village fetes at home have competitions for the doggie with the waggiest tail or the one the judge would most like to take home,----------- here, the competition is for the ugliest mutt! There may be a whole new way of thinking at next years Newbold fete, but ……there again……..!!
The top pub where all this occurred is about a mile away and the truck full of dead pigs was taken away 3 hours ago and we can still smell it here --------what a crackling day!!