Boar Hunting
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a favorite sport in the Middle Ages . Royalty itself did not scorn to take the field with horn and horse, boarspear and boarhound, to hunt the wild boar. Several species of wild swine range the forests of the Old World, but the wild boar of the hunt is a large, strong, swift, courageous, easily provoked animal with dangerous tusks. It has a grayish black, woolly coat, interspersed with long hairs which increase on the back of the neck and shoulders into a bristling mane, giving the animal a ferocious aspect. In Quentin Durward, Sir Walter Scott, it may be recalled, describes William de la Marck as "the Wild Boar of Ardennes." Quentin himself won the favor of the French Louis by rescuing him from the tusks of a boar and then keeping his own part in the affair to himself. A few specimens of the wild boar still linger in North Africa, Asia Minor , and in the forests of large landed proprietors in eastern Europe where it is still hunted. The present czar of Russia takes an interest in the sport. The boar's head was the sign of a tavern in Eastcheap, London, well known to readers of Shakespeare. It is the well known heraldic emblem of various old families. The boar's head at table, and boar's head carols were a time honored part of English Christmas festivities. Then was brought in the lusty brawn By blue-coated serving-man; Then the grim boar's head frowned on high, Crested with bays and rosemary. Well can the green garbed ranger tell, How, when, and where the monster fell; What dogs before his death he tore, And all the baiting of the boar. --Scott, Marmion.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Aiton's wrote this in 1910 the wild boar seemed a relic, with "a few specimens still linger" in North Africa, Asia Minor and the private forests of eastern Europe — and the "present czar," Nicholas II, would be dead within a decade. The animal's fortunes reversed completely: boar are now among the most widespread large mammals in Europe, numerous enough that they are culled in the millions and treated as an agricultural pest and a carrier of African swine fever. In Britain, where they had been extinct for roughly three centuries, escapes from boar farms in the 1990s founded free-living herds in the Forest of Dean and the southeast that now run into the thousands. Hunting them is no longer courtly sport with horn and boarhound but population control, argued over by farmers and rewilding enthusiasts.
Written for this edition, 2026.