Whether it’s pig hunting through remote Marlborough mountain trails, dragon boating or out on horse treks, it’s rare to find Kim Swan sitting still – unless, of course, she’s writing a new book.
The day before the Weekly chats to her down the line from her home in Waihopai Valley, near Blenheim, Kim had done a 100km bike ride to mark the winter solstice, while also raising awareness of heart disease. The adventure-seeking 59-year-old simply hopes she can inspire a few people to get fit despite the winter months.
“Life is for living,” she says. “I was widowed at 31, so it made me realise that you have to grab life by the balls and enjoy it because the housework is always going to be there!”
Kim has been entertaining Kiwis with her hunting escapades for decades. In her 10th book – released last month – she shares her favourite pig-hunting stories from the hilarious to the hair-raising.
She hopes Hog, Dogs and a Rifle will be enjoyed by anyone who loves a good yarn, dogs and rugged places or – with this country’s current cost of living crisis – is keen to give hunting for wild game a go.
“I was born into a family of outdoors adventurers and my mother took me on my first hunt,” recalls Kim. “It’s a family tradition that the babies are out on the hill by the time they’re two weeks old.”
So was she instantly hooked on the sport as a child?
“No! I used to be terrified,” admits Kim. “I think most children are or else they get absolutely exhausted waiting for a deer to step out on a clearing.”
By the time she was 12, Kim had a motorbike, a rifle and a shotgun. Weekends were spent embracing nature and roaming around the hills in Kawhia (where she was raised on Waikato’s West Coast), happily hunting ducks or pigs on her own.
These days, the full-time forestry worker lives with her husband Poss, 52, who she jokingly describes as being ‘the boy-next-door’.
“I met him after my first partner died, so I wasn’t the black widow, but the white widow,” laughs Kim. “Poss was doing farm work on a lease block beside me. He’s always been amazingly supportive.”
Perhaps surprisingly, though, the couple don’t go pig-hunting together.
“It’s an unusual life but one that I always feel so, so lucky for,” enthuses Kim, who gets hunting “withdrawal symptoms” over summer when it’s too hot to take her trusty canines out all day for fear of heat exhaustion.
“I live somewhere beautiful and rural, don’t have a mortgage and work alone – unless Poss and I have both been contracted to do chainsaw thinning. I don’t wear a watch and I don’t use a cellphone.
“People say to me, ‘How can you live without a cellphone?’ and I’m like, ‘I don’t know how you can live with one!'”
Extolling the virtues of a rural life, she adds, “I could be sitting at my writing desk one day or scaling a mountainous ridge to survey wildlife the next. Or slinging a rifle over my shoulder and hunting boars in the morning, then driving my ancient tractor for hour upon hour in the afternoon.”
Despite a couple of knee surgeries, Kim hopes to never stop hunting. The heaviest boar she remembers carrying out of the bush, with help from her mother, weighed 89 kilograms and stags aren’t much lighter either.
Her mother continued hunting until she was 60 years old, but was forced to stop because of early onset dementia.
“By that stage, Mum would head off hunting, walk up the road with her dog and sometimes a rifle, and then she’d get halfway up the road and think, ‘Am I going out or am I coming back?’
“Thankfully, in Kawhia, where everybody knew her, locals would pick her up in all sorts of strange places and take her home.”
Kim says one of the best things about living in rural New Zealand is not feeling any obligation to retire from her physically demanding lifestyle.
“For other people, retirement is about having quality time for themselves. But I get that out here every day!
“The fact that I am a woman, a mother and almost a grandmother [Kim’s first grandchild is due this month], sport grey hair and a limp makes no difference to my work rate or hunting capabilities. I pride myself in that regard.
“I often compare myself to a car,” she grins. “Most women are a vehicle that’s been looked after and regularly maintained and serviced, whereas I’m an old Hilux ute that’s been thrashed around and looking a lot worse for wear with pieces falling off. But it’s had a great time!”
Hog, Dogs and a Rifle by Kim Swan (Bateman Books, $39.99) is in bookstores now.