Boar hunting

Boar hunting was historically a dangerous exercise due to the tusked animal's ambush tactics as well as its thick hide and dense bones rendering them difficult to kill with premodern weapons.

It is native across much of Central Europe, the Mediterranean Region (including North Africa's Atlas Mountains) and much of Asia as far south as Indonesia, and has been widely introduced elsewhere.

The boar spear was sometimes fitted with a cross guard to stop the enraged animal driving its pierced body further down the shaft in order to attack its killer before dying.

In India, pigsticking was popular among the Jatts, Gujjars, Rajputs, Sikhs, Maharajas, RajGond Rajas and with British officers during Victorian and Edwardian times.

"[4] In ancient Persia, aristocratic hunters used elephants to panic boar into marshland shallows, where they were then shot at from boats.

Scholarship recognizes the boar hunting as an example of martial prowess in the Ancient World, but also involves the death of a male hero, sometimes connected to a goddess.

[6][7][8] In ancient Greek culture, the boar represented death, due to its hunting season beginning on 23 September, the near end of the year.

According to Pliny the Elder, Fulvius Lippinus was the first Roman to create a reserve for wild boar, where he would breed them for hunting in his land in Tarquinia.

[9] An archeological find from Mérida, Spain, dated to the fifth to third centuries BCE, depicts a male youth upon a horse, carrying a spear or javelin; he is accompanied by a hound and hunts a boar.

[10][11] The Germanic tribes responsible for the sack of Rome were avid hunters, though unlike the Greeks and Romans, they considered the deer and not the boar as the most noble quarry.

This is corroborated by documents from noble families and the clergy demanding tribute from commoners in the form of boar carcasses or body parts.

[12][citation needed] Wild boar hunts are still popular in countries such as India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Italy, Germany, Poland, Argentina, Russia and Australia.

[citation needed] An annual boar hunting competition is held in the Australian town of Jambin, Queensland which is considered to be the country's largest such event.

[13][14] The three-day competition attracts hundreds of competitors who compete for prizes while attempting to cull the wild boar population in an effort to protect local farming land.

A 14th-century depiction of boar hunting with hounds
Floor mosaic , 4th century, from a Roman villa near Mérida, Spain
Pigsticking from horseback in India
Royal hunt carving at Taq-e Bostan .
Sport with Dogs.–"How the Wild Boar is hunted by means of Dogs." Facsimile of a miniature in the manuscript of the Livre du Roy Modus (14th century). Depicts mounted hunters and catch dogs.
A bronze sculpture from the early 1900s, depicting two "catch dogs" working a wild boar.
Roman relief, c. 3rd century of hunting wild boar with a bay dog.
Boar Hunting in Germany (17th century)
Tusks of a male wild boar, hunting trophy