CHAPTER XI
SPORT IN BELGIUM AND BRITTANY, 1891–1899
In 1891 Mr. E.N. Buxton, who was a member of the Société de Bouillon, an old-established shooting syndicate in Belgium, offered to resign his membership in my favour if agreeable to the members, and I was duly elected.
The Club was comprised of twenty members, mostly Belgian officers and noblemen, who for many years past had met twice a year at Bouillon in the Ardennes, to shoot over a large tract of forest which they rented partly from the State, partly from a commune and partly from a private landowner. The rules of the Club made it obligatory to subscribe for the term of their lease, which was renewable every nine years; and to conform to certain rules which experience had proved necessary to ensure safety to the guns and beaters, and to maintain a footing of friendly equality among men of various nationality and age. The President was a very keen old sportsman and he, with the Secretary, the Comte de la Faille, made the arrangements for the sport, and gave all the necessary orders to the keepers, of whom there were five. The Club met every year in the third w f eek of November and the second week of January at Bouillon, where the Hotel de la Poste was reserved for the three days that the battues lasted; though it was an old-fashioned country inn, we had most comfortable quarters and excellent cooking.
On my first visit I was received in a most friendly manner, and soon found that the French that I had learnt in Brussels as a boy enabled me to make myself quite at home with them. I must say that a keener lot of sportsmen could not be found in any country, No weather ever stopped them, though the winter in the Ardennes is both cold and wet. Breakfast was on the table at six every morning, and the carriages which conveyed the guns to the rendezvous, often six or eight miles off, started at 6.45 a.m, and if anyone was not ready he had to come on as he could. Lots were drawn for places at breakfast every day, and though, hot soup and coffee were provided at lunch for both guns and beaters, every one ordered and took out for himself whatever he liked best.
The modus operandi was as follows:
The guns, usually ten or twelve in number, for there were always several absentees among the members, were posted in the rides at from sixty to one hundred yards apart, according to the size of the beat and the thickness of the covert; and the game was driven by a line of from thirty to forty beaters towards the guns. The game consisted of a few red deer, which nearly always went back and were rarely killed, a considerable number of wild pigs, and a good many roe, with a sprinkling of hares, pheasants, hazel grouse and foxes. Each gun carried a rifle, and usually a gun loaded with heavy shot for roe, but we seldom fired at anything smaller than roe, until the beat was nearly over, for fear of turning back pigs and deer. Some of the members were remarkably good and quick
shots with a rifle, but it is a very difficult thing to make sure of one’s
139
