Sketches From My Life / By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha

by Augustus Charles Hobart-Hampden

I have known many instances when, on hearing a jolly row in the covert, I have crawled in on my hands and knees, and found a boar being bayed by my spaniels—in fact, I have killed more pigs in this way than in any other. The danger is that you may have your dogs killed by the boar; this has happened to me on one or two occasions, more especially with young dogs.

I had once a cunning old spaniel dog (poor 'Dick,' well known to most sportsmen out here), who has frequently come out of the wood with his mouth full of pig's hair, he evidently having torn the hair off the animal while laying in his lair. (Dick was never hurt by a pig.) I have often surrounded, with my brother sportsmen and myself, large bushes in which the piggies were securely hidden, driven them out, and shot them as one would do hares or rabbits.

I have heard a good deal of the danger of pig shooting, on account of the savage propensities of the animal; but I have found that, with very rare exceptions, the Anatolian wild boar always runs. It is true that they (she or he, the females are the most savage) have a nasty knack of giving a sort of jerk with their heads, when fighting or even passing an enemy, and that jerk means to a man the ripping up of his leg from his heel to his thigh, to a dog the tearing open of his entrails.

On one occasion I was out cock shooting, when some shepherds' dogs in a valley adjoining that in which I was walking started a large wild boar, a beast they call a 'solitaire,' from the fact that he is always seen after a certain time of life alone. The animal made for a ridge dividing the valleys; on getting there he passed along the sky-line, about eighty yards from where I was. I changed my cartridges and fired a ball at the pig, who rushed away, apparently unshot; on going to the spot, however, where he had passed when I fired, I found some drops of blood. This blood I traced for about half a mile, till I came to a large clump of bushes into which my spaniels dashed, evidently close to their game. I heard a tremendous row in the bushes, had hardly time to prepare when the great beast with his eyes all bloodshot and foaming at the mouth rushed straight at me. I was on a narrow path, from which there was no escape, as the boar was tearing up it, followed by the dogs. I fired a ball straight in his face, at the distance of about two yards, in spite of which he rushed straight on, knocked me clean over, and while passing me made the usual dangerously effective jerk I have alluded to above, by which he cut my boot from the ankle to the thigh, drew a little blood just above and inside of the knee; after which the boar rushed headlong for about thirty yards and dropped dead. I found that my bullet had smashed through his forehead straight between the eyes and gone into his brain.

He was an enormous brute, weighing when cleaned twenty-one stone; carrying the finest tusks I have seen anywhere as belonging to a wild boar. I only had one man with me; we were what may be called eight miles from anywhere. Still I was determined not to leave my prize; so I sent my man for a country waggon, and sitting down on my now harmless beast, smoked cigarettes and waited quietly till the vehicle came.

Now, apropos to wild boar attacking people, I am convinced that this animal had no intention of attacking me.

He was, though badly wounded by the first shot, running from the dogs, and I got in his way. Voilà tout! On only one other occasion I nearly came to grief while boar shooting. On my arriving at a Turkish village one night, I was told that there was an enormous boar in the neighbourhood, who for a long time had been the terror of the country, inasmuch as he, accompanied by a large party of the pig tribe, had rooted up the crops all round the village, destroyed gardens, and tradition even said had killed children and eaten them (this latter story I don't take in). However, the poor people prayed me with tears in their eyes to rid them of their enemy, which I promised to do if possible. So the next morning off we started in the following order: first, myself and friends, accompanied by the elders of the village armed with old-fashioned guns; then the young men with knives and big sticks, the women and children bringing up the rear as lookers-on. I and my two friends were escorted into the centre of a large wood, in which very original seats in trees had been knocked up for us. The object of these seats was for our personal safety, but I as a sportsman saw at once that to be up a tree was not only advantageous in that respect, but also that we should be much more invisible, hidden among the branches of a tree, than by being stationed on the ground. So we mounted our trees, and the beaters went into the woods some half a mile from us. I never heard such a row as they made when they began the drive; they beat drums, fired guns, rang bells, and it was evident to me that no wild beast would hold to his lair under such a torrent of abuse. I found the words they were using were curses on the wild boar. I saw two or three fallow deer glide past me, with their usual ghostlike silence, and shortly afterwards the woods very near me seemed to shake with something coming. Suddenly some fifteen to twenty wild boar appeared among the bushes, coming straight towards me. The first of these was an enormous brute, evidently the boar we wanted.

I heard shots on either side of me from my friends, but I kept my eye on the big boar. To my astonishment he came right under the tree where I was sitting, and stopped to listen.

He cocked his head on one side, looked all round him, but forgot to look up the tree he was quite close to, in which was his enemy.

Taking advantage of this I fired a ball and an S.S.G. cartridge into him, before he could make up his mind which way to go; he gave a tremendous grunt and rolled over. I had not time to be overjoyed at my luck before I found myself rolling on the ground alongside of my victim, who, not being dead, was by no means a pleasant companion. The fact is that the seat on which I had been perched, having been very carelessly put up, had given way, and down I came from a height of about twelve feet. The branches of the tree had broken my fall, but my gun had fallen out of my hand and I had sprained my ankle, so that I was in rather an awkward position. The boar was shot through the spine, and could not get along, though he made frantic efforts to get at me.