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.”