BELGIUM 79 



that the new law, now under consideration, will be an improve- 

 ment. 



3. Poaching, ever on the increase, is assuming alarming propor- 

 tions, and constitutes an actual menace to sport. Cases of poachers 

 firing at keepers, with even fatal results, are becoming commoner. 

 Bands of twenty or thirty masked ruffians think nothing of trespassing 

 on an estate and killing the game under the very eyes of the 

 keepers, the latter being surprised and powerless to stop them ; 

 and there is no saying where their audacity will stop. Only last 

 November, seventeen poachers even attacked the gendarmes, who 

 were going to help the keepers ; and it would take a volume to 

 accommodate the press accounts of even last year's poaching offences. 



The foreigner visiting Belgium should furnish himself with letters 



of introduction, for, with these, he is sure to find among Belgian 



sportsmen a warm reception and every courtesy. Shooting and 



hunting dress and all such details of sport are practically the same 



in good circles as in England. As to weapons, they naturally 



depend on the game, but the 12 -bore is in general use. For 



deer and wild boar, sportsmen use either double Express, 400 or 



450, or carbines of 12 or 450 ; and for some years those who shoot 



big game have been more and more in favour of the 



"drilling," i.e. the three-barrelled oun, two above of „, 



^ * Shooting. 



12 or 16 bore (12 for preference), the third and lower- 

 most rifled and either 450 or 360. The taste for high-class weapons 

 is general, and it is not unusual to see at shoots several first-rate 

 English guns, though the weapon most in use is perhaps of Belgian 

 make and worth about £2^ to ^35. 



