Loved and loathed at the same time, the dingo is a shy and intelligent killer of livestock, protected in some places but not in others.
Only seldom have I deliberately set out to hunt a dingo. Usually I’ve come across them by happenstance. More often this has occurred when a mate and I were hunting apart; one of us starts it running and the other gets the shot.
Sometimes curiosity will be their downfall and on a few occasions when I’ve surprised a dingo, it has only run a short distance before stopping to look back, offering an easy shot.
The dingo isn’t indigenous and is thought to have arrived here about 3500 years ago in company with seafarers from southeast Asia.
It isn’t a large animal, closer in size to the cattle dog. It comes in quite a few different colours, ranging from pale yellow to black and tan and light to dark brown.
The pure-bred dingo is very wary and will make every effort to avoid all contact with humans.
This canine can cause thousands of dollars of damage to stock. The killing instinct is ingrained in them and a dingo doesn’t kill merely to satisfy its hunger, but to satisfy a never-ending bloodlust.
The dingo’s senses are all well developed. Their sight, smell and hearing are acute. Add to that a fertile intelligence and you’ve got a quarry that the hunter/rifleman finds very difficult to stalk.
The hunter can try to howl ’em up or stalk them in the early morning or at dusk when they are most active. I have watched hunters calling up dingoes by imitating their howling and in my younger days was fairly successful at it myself.
But from my observations, limited as they are, I think that most of the dingoes called in are young dogs who are tempted to see what all the fuss is about.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the old dogs and bitches are harder to fool and just sneak away. The best time to howl is during the months of April, May and June, when the dogs are back on the whelping grounds.
An old bushman mate told me of a better way to call dingoes. He’d get into a yard where calves were being branded and record their pained bellows. Then he’d get an amplifier to increase the volume and take it to an area where he knew dingoes were living, find a hide and turn up the volume. He said this method of calling would often bring a pack of dingoes eagerly running in.
Sometimes, the hunter will come across two dingoes travelling together, a dog and a bitch. You should always take out the bitch first because the male will run away a short distance and if you emit a short howl he is likely to stop and look back, allowing a second shot.
He also warned me, “Don’t shoot the male dog first because you can howl all you like but the bitch won’t stop.”
Don’t confuse dogs gone wild with dingoes. A dog gone wild is one that has gone astray from some pig dogger, got lost and gone feral. A bitch may mate with a dingo and be accepted into the pack, but a dog is likely to be killed.
The dingo bitch comes on heat from March until May and has one litter of pups per year. After a gestation period of 60 days the pups are born during the months of June and July. It is always the mother of the pups who hunts to feed them, while the dog acts as protector of the litter.
The youngsters stay with their parents until almost fully grown but once they are half grown they accompany their parents on killing sprees and are taught how to kill. Once the mother comes into season again, the pups are chased from the den before the arrival of the next litter.
All the dead dingoes I inspected in my area were what most people assume dingoes naturally look like. They were all healthy and in prime condition, compact looking animals, light yellow in colour with a broad head and pricked ears, powerful jaws and a short bushy tail that is often curled up over its back like a Canadian husky.
There’s a second type that’s taller, heavier and stronger looking that I’ve seen in southern Queensland’s cattle country; similar in most respects, but with longer legs and tail. These dingoes run in packs and half a dozen may band together to chase a young cow out of a mob. They run the beast until it falls and then attack it all at once, swarming all over it and ripping and tearing with their fangs until it is dead.
The dingoes I’ve seen in the NT and Cape York are smaller, half-starved looking animals that hardly seem capable of killing anything bigger than a wallaby or a piglet.
Finally, there’s the crossbreeds which can be part dingo and practically any other breed of domestic dog. The female dingo will cross with any kind of dog when in season, but they usually cross with fighting breeds, not by preference but because any of the gentler dogs will be ripped to pieces if they go near a bitch when she is in season and accompanied by other dogs.
Crossbred dogs become a problem when they are sired by one of these fighting breeds such as a German shepherd, staghound, bull mastiff or cattle dog. There have been a number of instances where a pack of these wild dogs have attacked bushwalkers and tourists but they usually don’t fare as well if they tackle a hunter. Pure-bred dingoes have no dew claws and a crossbred wild dog can be recognised by a lack of dew claws.
While I don’t regard crossbreeds as being any more cunning than the pure dingo, they are more likely to be less afraid of humans and more aggressive towards them. If you leave a dingo alone, it’ll leave you alone, though if you wound it with a hurried shot and attempt to follow up, you may well be attacked.
In remote areas where they’ve never seen a human, dingoes can show their curiosity. On one occasion in the NT, my client had just bagged a trophy buffalo which we had started caping out, when he asked me if he could get a dingo.
“Why don’t you shoot one of those?” I asked and pointed at two dingoes sitting watching us about 150 metres away. He rested his rifle on the dead bull and shot one of them. Its mate didn’t stop running until it was out of sight.
Dingoes are interesting animals to hunt. I don’t know of a more intelligent quarry and feel a grudging admiration for them. But while they must be kept under control, I’d hate to see them wiped out.
Often at night, while sitting near my campfire or rolled up in my swag in some remote area, I’ve been lulled to sleep by their mournful howls.
The dingo has become as much a part of the Australian landscape as the kangaroo, and for as long as it stays away from pastoral areas, it’ll survive. It is only when this silent killer sates its bloodlust on domestic stock that it needs to be culled.
0 Comments