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Honor and Glory

Honor and Glory




 

King Victor Emmanuel and the Boars

The Days’ Doings, Vol. VII, No. 174, selection from p. 4, Sept. 30 1871, published by Days' Doings Co.: New York, USA

A pair of boars in Italy prove that prey can sometimes also be predator. While out engaging in his ‘favorite sport’ of hunting, King Victor Emmanuel came upon two belligerent pigs that killed his horse and gouged his thigh before his rescue. Elite hunting survived well through the nineteenth century, perhaps not as much an exclusive right, but more a mental construct.

 

 

Boar Hunt on the River Tigris

The Days’ Doings, Vol. XII, No. 313, selection from p. 12, May 23 1874, published by Days' Doings Co.: New York, USA

Three men, poised in three separate pits in the ground, having waited in hot, biting discomfort all day, prepare to shoot upon a herd of wild boar. This hunting escapade, rife with amusing anecdotes involving the aid’s donkey, demonstrates the goal of sport hunting. According to the narrator, the hunter values wild boar as purer than domestic pig, for the former breathes fresh air, exercises in its wandering, does not wallow in filth, and has an exclusively vegetarian diet. Yet these huntsmen do not seek the flesh, but hide and honor. Despite the meat of younger, smaller hogs being far more palatable to humans, the men aim for the larger animal in order to gain its head as a trophy. The pattern persists earlier in the hunt, when the hunters shoot a large hyena and easily dispose of the carcass, while taking pains to bring the fur back to camp, merely to convey the success of their excursion.