UNGULATA--WILD PIGS.
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 Charlotte Sound
in June, 1773, on his famous second voyage, “Captain Furneaux put on
shore, in Cannibal Cove, a boar and two breeding-sows, so that we
have reason to hope this country will, in time, be stocked with these
animals, if they are not destroyed by the Natives before they become
wild, for afterwards they will be in no danger.”
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, however, were mistaken by them for horses,
they having some vague recollection of those which they had seen on
board Captain Cook’s vessels. They forthwith rode two of them to death,
and the third was killed for having entered a burying-ground. A very
old man who had known Captain King related this singular story to me.”
Dieffenbach’s credulity seems to have been played on as regards the
horses, whatever approximation to truth there is in the other part of
the story; it is most improbable that any horses were on board any of
Cook’s ships.
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_.