Most people think they know all about pigs, and hardly associate them with wild life in New Zealand. They usually consider them the dirtiest creatures on earth, and yet, with remarkable inconsistency, they eat ham and bacon without inquiring too particularly how the animals producing them were reared or fed. The pig is naturally one of the cleanest animals and most particular feeders known, and it is only the filthy way in which most people keep them which is responsible for their popular reputation. Pigs are the commonest of the larger mammals which have become feral in New Zealand, and are the most widespread. They are plentiful in wild bush country from the North Cape to the Bluff, and have also gone wild in the Chatham and Auckland Islands. I hope to be able to tell the majority of my readers some facts about these much-maligned animals which they did not know before. Pigs (Sus scrofa) belong to the section of Ungulates known as the Artiodactyla, or even-toed. They walk on their third and fourth toes, which are the only ones to reach the ground; those on each side, which are much smaller and higher up, are the second and fifth digits; there is no trace of the first. Pigs are distinguished by several characters, of which the most outstanding are the bristly skin, the flexible snout tipped by a fleshy disk within which the nostrils open, the numerous teeth and tusk-like canines, while the teats extend along the underside of the body. They possess a single stomach, and are consequently non-ruminating animals. Pigs increase at a great rate, for they commence to bear young when about a year old, and bring forth several at a birth. Domestic pigs produce twelve, or even more, at a time; but wild pigs seldom have more than six or seven. We have the most exact data as to their introduction into this country. Captain Cook informs us that while he was in Queen Forster, in his journal, says, “They were turned into the woods to range at their own pleasure.” In the following year (October, 1774) he says, “We took the opportunity to visit the innermost recesses of West Bay, in order to be convinced, if possible, whether there was any probability that the hogs brought thither about a year before would ever stock those wild woods with numerous breeds. We came to the spot where we had left them, but saw not the least vestiges of their having been on the beach, nor did it appear that any of the Natives had visited this remote place, from whence we had reason to hope that the animals had retreated into the thickest part of the woods.” Most probably this is what happened, and these first pigs were probably the progenitors of many thousands. On the 2nd November of the year 1773 Captain Cook gave a few pigs to some Natives who came off in their canoes near Cape Kidnappers. Thus pigs were first introduced into both the South and North Islands of New Zealand. I do not think there is much doubt that the wild pigs of the South Island—“Captain-Cookers,” as they came to be called—were the progeny of those originally set free at Cannibal Cove, though Cook himself recorded in 1777, “I could get no intelligence about the fate of those I had left in West Bay and in Cannibal Cove, when I was here in the course of my last voyage.” There is an earlier record of the introduction of pigs into the North Island, for in 1769 De Surville presented the chief of the Natives at Doubtless Bay with two little pigs, but there is no record as to what came of them. The next introduction was apparently on the occasion of the visit of Captain King, Governor of New South Wales, to the Bay of Islands in 1793, when he gave the Natives two boars and ten young sows. Dieffenbach, who was in New Zealand in 1839, but who is not a reliable authority on any matters relating to Maori stories or traditions, gives a different version of this gift. He says, “Captain King, at the end of last century, landed at the north end of the island, and gave the Natives three pigs, which, The pigs introduced into the country in the early days were evidently of more than one kind. Mr. R. Scott, formerly M.P. for Central Otago, tells me that the wild pigs formerly so abundant in this district were “originally a variety of the Tamworth breed—long-snouted, razor-backed, built for speed rather than for fattening, quick and agile in movement. The predominating colour was red or sandy red, with some black, and a few black-and-white, but these may have come from an occasional tame boar which strayed and became wild. At the time when they were most numerous in Otago they were decidedly gregarious, usually three or four generations running together in mobs numbering from half a dozen up to forty or even fifty. When attacked by dogs, if cover, such as flax, scrub, or high grass, was handy, they made for it, and would form a circle, with the older pigs on the outer ring and the younger ones in the centre, for greater protection. The boars, particularly the old ones, lived alone, and roamed far and wide. The habits of the wild pig were clean.” The late Mr. Robert Gillies wrote that “in 1848, the year of the settlement of Otago, wild pigs were very common on the site of Dunedin.” In 1854 he and a party killed seventy pigs at the back of Flagstaff Hill in two days. “The long, pointed snout, long legs, and nondescript colours of the true wild pigs showed them to be quite a different breed from the settlers’ imported pigs. Their flesh tasted quite different from pork, being more like venison than anything else.” The wild pigs of the North Island were a different race from the “Captain-Cookers,” and were probably the progeny of animals imported at a later date. Dieffenbach says (in 1835), “The New Zealand pigs are a peculiar breed, with short heads and legs, and compact bodies.” The increase of the wild pigs in pre-settlement days was very remarkable. Nearly every sealing and whaling vessel which visited these Islands between 1800 and 1830 took away quantities of pork as part of the cargo to Sydney. Dr. Monro, who accompanied Mr. Tuckett on his trip through Otago in 1844, speaking of the hill country south-west of Saddle Hill, says, “There is a famous cover for pigs, too, between the upper part of the Teiari [Taieri] Valley and the sea. The whalers come up the river in their boats and kill great numbers of pigs here.” After settlement commenced and people started to cultivate certain areas and to run sheep, wild pigs came to be looked upon as animals to be killed out. Drummond tells us that “they multiplied astonishingly, and enormous numbers assembled in uninhabited valleys far from the settlements. At Wangapeka Valley, in the Nelson Province, Dr. Hochstetter in 1860 saw several miles ploughed up by pigs. Their extermination was sometimes contracted for by experienced hunters, and he states that three men in twenty months, on an area of 250,000 acres, killed no fewer than twenty-five thousand pigs, and pledged themselves to kill fifteen thousand more.” At the present time wild pigs are still common in nearly all scrub or thin bush country which is not too near settlement, and to those who like the element of danger in their hunting they afford good sport. They are usually pursued by dogs, often specially trained for the purpose, which after a time succeed in bailing up their prey. The pigs prefer to take their stand in the hollow of a tree or some such locality, and an old boar will often do considerable damage to the dogs before he is despatched. The orthodox manner is to run in and stab him; but a man without a gun has little chance if he ventures to close quarters with a bailed-up boar. As to the food of the wild pigs, they root up the ground wherever the bracken fern (Pteris aquilina var. esculenta) is found, the starchy rhizomes furnishing abundant nutriment. They are also very fond of the thick rootstocks of spear-grasses (Aciphylla) and other umbelliferous plants, and have largely eaten out these plants over large areas. In the Chatham Islands they have been mainly responsible for exterminating the fine native forget-me-not, known as the Chatham Island lily. In the Auckland Islands they have destroyed great areas of Bulbinella and Pleurophyllum. |