THE EUROPEAN BEARS AND THE WILD BOAR 
Those who wish to add this gallant foe to their list of trophies can still 
do so by going only a few hours from London. There are “shoots ” both in 
Belgium and Normandy where twenty or thirty wild boars are usually 
killed in the winter drives. For those who love company and good fellowship 
in sport this is doubtless good fun and not a little dangerous, for the 
hunters usually exceed the game in their numbers and are often so keen 
and enthusiastic that bullets are apt to fly in all directions. Yet most 
Englishmen are solitary creatures, preferring to hunt alone and to find 
and stalk their quarry after some display of venery. So they will go farther 
afield where they can stalk it on some open hillside or take their chance 
of a shot when the game has been moved in some hastily improvised 
drive by peasants. 
For courage the male wild boar has no equal amongst wild animals. 
A single Indian pig has been known to beat off a tiger, whilst a European 
boar will often successfully charge through a whole line of guns. From 
Holinshed, who speaks of boar-hunting as a “ verie dangerous exer- 
cise ” to Major Shakespear and Colonel Kinloch, all hunters endorse the 
amazing pluck of this animal. An old wild boar really knows no fear, 
for he shows his fighting disposition from the moment he is aroused. He 
trots away slowly as if under protest and with a sullen savage gleam in his 
eye, plainly evincing that he would rather stop and fight than run. Even 
when attacked with modern rifles many accidents have happened, whilst 
a few hunters have been actually killed. Only three years ago a wild boar 
that had been wounded by a Paradox bullet in Normandy fatally ripped two 
sportsmen, both of whom died of their wounds. 
Combining as he does both pace and strength as well as pluck, English 
sportsmen delight in hunting the wild boar with rifle and spear as our 
forefathers did with horse, hound and lance; but as it does not come 
within the province of this work to describe sport with wild animals other 
than with the rifle we must leave hunting with horse and spear to other 
and more experienced writers. 
There are many places where the sport of hunting the wild boar with 
horse, hound and spear is impossible, and where the animal is such a 
curse to agriculture that he must be destroyed by any available means. 
“ From the Black Sea to the Bay of Bengal,” says Mr Phillipps- 
Wolley (“ Enc. of Sport,” p. 121), “ there is a ringing of bells by 
night, a blowing of horns and sounding of clappers, together with 
an irregular musketry fire all through the ripening time of the grain, 
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