WE all have our trusty go-to place to try and escape the daily grind.

For Ipswich businessman Dave Morris, it’s wild pig shooting way out west.

As well as getting away from it all, disconnecting and winding down, Dave is doing a good deed for graziers by getting rid of feral pigs.

Pigs were brought to Australia by the First Fleet. They soon escaped and established wild populations that have blown out.

They can have two litters of a dozen or more piglets a year.

Queensland has millions of feral pigs that spread invasive plants, carry diseases, degrade soil and water, and damage crops.

Worst of all, they kill calves and lambs and even their mothers. Cruelly, horribly, mercilessly. That’s where Dave Morris comes in.

Queensland's Department of Primary Industries and its federal counterpart say it’s up to landowners to manage feral pigs.

Dave has become a regular at certain properties and he’s relied on by graziers to help protect their young animals from the marauding pigs.

“The main one is lambs,” Dave said.

“Last year, I shot 436 pigs on one property and they still lost between 800 and 900 lambs from wild pigs and foxes.

“They love me because I go out there every August for a whole month and they lamb in September.

“When I go to each property, I go and see the owner and they point out the problem pigs and it’s my mission to go and get those pigs for them.

“All the professionals that go out there, they only take the big ones because they want to sell them.

“They don’t touch any of the smaller stuff. Where, to me, a pig is a pig and it’s going to eat lambs.”

With more emphasis on animal welfare these days, Dave said he’s spoken to people who feel sorry for the pig.

“They do until you tell them the stories I’ve seen, like a big boar coming in and waiting until [a lamb or a calf or a goat] has been born – because they can smell it coming out – and as soon as it hits the ground, the pig eats it. Right in front of you.”

He recalls sitting up all night waiting for a particular boar to come back to a waterhole after he identified it coming in and eating baby goats.

“I was up a windmill for 11 hours,” he said.

“If they smell or see you, they’re gone so you’ve got to pick the wind - get up high if you can.

“So, I just climb up the windmill with a piece of rope down to my rifle, pull the rifle up, and just sit up there, basically.”

Dave Morris started shooting when he was 13, on the 4ha block on Briggs Road in Ipswich where his family lived. He started going out west when he was 16.

“The girlfriend I had at the time, her father was a shearing contractor and he got me onto a property at Mitchell and I’ve been shooting out there ever since then,” he said.

“Then we went further out - about 140km south-west - and got on to some more properties out there and I’ve been shooting on those ones about 30 years.

“You just get to know each property owner and now I’ve got five or six in the one area.

“I just go out myself. Occasionally someone will go out for a week with me. I try to keep it me and one other.”

Do the property owners pay him?

“No, not at all. I just love doing it; just to be out there in the fresh air,” he said.

Dave has owned Ipswich Pool and Spa Centre at East Ipswich for about 38 years. About 10 years ago, the trips out west took on a new significance: mental health.

The phone rings as we’re talking. “That’s the main thing,” he said, before ducking off to answer it. “There’s no phone service out there.

“Running your own business and everything is a lot harder than people think.

“So, I just get out there and turn the phones off and that’s it. There’s nothing.

“Even the drive out there - once I get past Toowoomba, I just relax and just cruise out there.

“There’s no rush. Where I go, I’m in the middle of 400,000 acres [162,000ha] with nobody.

“One time I was out there for 29 days and I saw one truck.”

He laughs at the memory: “So yeah, that’s definitely how you clear your head.

“I try and go at least four times a year.

“I normally go at Christmas for a week, Easter for two or three weeks, August for at least a month and then one more in there somewhere before Christmas.”

At other times he and his wife pack up their caravan and go up north or wherever - without guns.