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Rick Mayne Passes

I was saddened recently to learn that my old friend Rick Mayne had passed away last year. The local hunting and shooting fraternity has lost a fine friend and role model, and I extend my belated but sincere condolences to Rick’s family and friends, many of whom are my own hunting pals of yesteryear.

Older readers may remember the articles I wrote on hunting bushpigs with dogs (June 1995 edition). That year I was privileged to be extended a permanent invitation to hunt with a club formed by farmers and locals in the New Hanover, Wartburg and Grey-town areas of the Natal Midlands, for the purpose of hunting crop-raiding bushpigs. The bushpig problem had become so serious that maize and sugar-cane farmers were threatening to poison these raiders, and nobody wanted that because of the fallout effect on other wildlife. So the club was formed, based in New Hanover, the hunting grounds of my boyhood, and came to be in high demand every weekend.

Crucial to the club’s efforts was a pack of superbly trained bluetick hounds led by a battle-scarred old warrior named Spyker who became a legend in his own lifetime. Spyker was