Boar-laden bike flips on hunter

Rick Thomas is helped by emergency crews after 11 hours. Photo / Supplied

The wife of a pig hunter trapped in the bush for 11 hours after flipping his boar-laden quadbike said her husband would get hell from his mates - despite badly breaking his leg.

Carterton man Rick Thomas, 53, broke his leg in two places and his ankle when he rolled his quadbike on the way back from a hunting trip this week near Ruakokoputuna, south of Martinborough.

He was comfortable yesterday after surgery to have pins and rods fitted into his leg at Wellington Hospital.

His wife Debbie said she spoke to him just after he came out of theatre. "He was groggy as. He just said, 'Hello I am fine'. But he was that groggy I thought 'that was a waste of time'!"

The bike flipped at 10am on Thursday and Thomas was not rescued until after 8.30pm.

Debbie said at first he was pinned under the bike, which had a large boar strapped to it, but when he crawled clear he could not walk to safety.

"When they found him he was pretty thirsty. He had been in the sun all day and he was pretty dry ... he was pretty buggered really."

She called the farmer on whose property he was hunting at 6.30pm to say he had not returned.

A longtime pig hunter who works in vineyards around Martinborough, it was the first time Thomas had taken his new bike hunting. It replaced one that had blown up the week before.

Debbie said he was in a lot of pain on Thursday night, but the incident would cause more embarrassment than anything. "He's going to get hell from his mates."

Farmer Wayne Malcolm said he came across Thomas just after 8.30pm but apart from the obvious pain he was in "there was no drama, really".

"We carried him down the track and put him on to another quadbike, then got him down to the helicopter."

Thomas was stabilised at the scene by a doctor and ambulance crew and transported to hospital by the Westpac Rescue Helicopter.

- additional reporting by Wairarapa-Times Age