These little piggies (and biggies) went to the pub

I'm a pig lover.

Porkers, oinkers, hogs, grunters, squealers, swine I love them all and I love all of them, from a roasted shoulder to a cured leg, cute whiskers to curling tails.

Well, perhaps not all of them. Several years ago, I was a few days upriver in Borneo, visiting a village of longhouses where tourists seldom ventured. When we arrived, the men of the village were out on a pig hunt, and when they returned after dark, they dressed the two smallish boars they had caught on the banks of the river and roasted them over an open fire.

As the honoured guests, Julie and I were presented with the tastiest tidbits, which turned out to be a slice of charred snout and a rubbery organ that I suspect was a kidney. Of course, we accepted with exaggerated gratitude, chewed with mock delight and, under cover of darkness, flung the unswallowable remnants into the river behind our backs.

But moments of piggy delight far outweigh that memory. In Madrid, which is pretty much ground zero for the swine lover, I ate at Botin, the oldest restaurant in the world. The specialty is cochinillo asado (roast suckling pig), and 12 years later I can still remember the crispy skin and delicious dribble of fat running down my chinny chin chin.

Madrid is also home to the Museo del Jamon (Museum of Ham), a chain of six restaurants where the walls and ceilings are filled with hanging legs of ham. It was far more interesting than the actual museums full of dusty relics. Here, the artwork comes off the walls, is carved up and stuffed inside delicious sandwiches.

In the 1990s, I came across New Zealand's own version. The Pork Store was in either Palmerston North or Hamilton (bland North Island cities blend into one in my memory) and was full of gleaming stainless steel. It was set up as a fast-food operation selling fried pork strips, and the owner told me he was planning on rolling out franchises across New Zealand. As far as I know, the idea never flew, and the restaurant is gone.

Here in Motueka, we treat our swine with more respect than trying to turn them into Big Macs. We do them the honour of chasing them through the bush, killing them and then lugging their dead-weight, blood-dripping carcasses back to civilisation to brag about their size and guile.

The high point of the local hunting season is the Riwaka Hunting Club's annual competition, which is on this weekend. As you read this, about 200 hunters are following their dogs through the Otuwhero Valley, the Kaiteriteri Forest and at various secret spots from Golden Bay to Marlborough to the West Coast.

Sunday afternoon is the weigh-in. When I moved to Riwaka two years ago, I was warned about this by my pacifist vegetarian neighbour. She described the gruesome sight I had just missed, telling me that stuck pigs had been lined up dripping blood outside the Riwaka pub, traumatising young children.

So last year, when I went to cover the weigh-in, I wasn't sure what to expect. What I found was a community celebration, where I saw a good chunk of the population of Riwaka drinking jugs, munching venison burgers and telling each other outrageous lies about their hunting exploits. Pig hunting stories are like fishing stories, except the hunted animal can weigh 100 kilograms and may well decide to turn around and charge you.

Meanwhile, kids as young as four were strapping a 20kg pig to their backs and running around an obstacle course. They didn't look traumatised, and a few of them boasted to me that this was easy-peasy compared with helping their dads lug pigs out of the bush.

The pig-carrying competition is back this year, as well as the kids' possum-throwing competition, which was dropped in favour of gumboot throwing last year. The club had been worried that having kids chucking a dead possum might look a little insensitive to animal rights types.

This year, they've come to their senses, remembered they are a hunting club and brought back the possum although for the under-sixes, they've decided to make it a stuffed possum. As organiser Tony Riordan put it: "We want to be slightly PC but not over the top. We don't want to be dictated to by the PC world we live in." I can't imagine many of the Riwaka hunters I have met even talking to the PC world, let alone allowing themselves to be dictated to by it. Burly men with guns don't take dictation, I figure.

Which is not to say they fit the Crumpy stereotype. Several women took part last year, and Kether Voss, a kayak guide from Marahau, explained the appeal. "It's an excuse to be a kid again, sliding through the bush. You're wet, you're cold, and you're up to your knees in water."

I love the pig, but I'll stick to getting my fix from the butcher babe of Murchison Meats, Belinda Girl, whose bacon was named best in New Zealand in 2008.

I'll let others get wet, cold and possibly gored, but I'll celebrate their exploits at the pub on Sunday. I may not have had practice at lugging pigs out of the bush, but I'm confident I can fling a possum with the best of them.

Motropolis is Nelson Mail reporter Alastair Paulin's regular dispatch on life in the small smoke. It appears fortnightly in Weekend.

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