The wild boar (Sus scrofa) is the wild ancestor of the domestic pig. 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.
Currently wild boars are hunted both for their meat and to mitigate any damage they may cause to crops and forests. A charging boar is considered exceptionally dangerous quarry, due to its thick hide and dense bones, making anything less than a kill shot a potentially deadly mistake. Hunters have reported being butted up into trees by boars that have already taken a glancing shot.
Read more about this topic: Boar Hunting
Famous quotes containing the words wild and/or boar:
“Wild Bill was indulging in his favorite pastime of a friendly game of cards in the old No. 10 saloon. For the second time in his career, he was sitting with his back to an open door. Jack McCall walked in, shot him through the back of the head, and rushed from the place, only to be captured shortly afterward. Wild Bill’s dead hand held aces and eights, and from that time on this has been known in the West as “the dead man’s hand.””
—State of South Dakota, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Is a man too strong and fierce for society, and by temper and position a bad citizen,—a morose ruffian, with a dash of the pirate in him;Mnature sends him a troop of pretty sons and daughters, who are getting along in the dame’s classes at the village school, and love and fear for them smooths his grim scowl to courtesy. Thus she contrives to intenerate the granite and the feldspar, takes the boar out and puts the lamb in, and keeps her balance true.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)