against the rules to follow a wounded beast until the beat was over, on account of the risk from other people's shots; but, when the beaters came up, I followed his tracks about forty yards down to a shallow rivulet which he had passed through, going, as shown by the tracks, like a wounded animal but without any blood. Just beyond the water I found what appeared to be a bit of brain on a bush and thought it impossible he could go far. But as he had gone into the next beat, I could not go on without disturbing it, and I told the keepers and beaters to look out sharp, as the boar might not be dead. But when they came up at the end of the beat, nothing had been seen of him. I asked the President to let me have one of the men with a dog to follow the trail, but I could see that no one thought that I had really hit him, and I got some friendly chaff when I left the party at lunch. The dog was a sort of lurcher and his owner had the credit of being a skilful poacher. We were able to follow the track about 150 yards up a slope from the rivulet, and there I found the biggest boar that had been killed that season, stone dead, with a bullet-hole in the back part of his skull, from which some brain protruded. In all my experience I have never known any animal go so far with such a wound. As he was my first boar in Belgium and had a very good coat and tusks, I had him stuffed in Brussels and he now stands in my hall.
An even more exciting encounter than this occurred three or four years after, when we were down a favourite beat for pigs known as la Forêt. I was posted in the middle of the line of guns about half-way down a long slope under tall beech trees, with little or no underwood, so that one could see the ground clear for 300 yards in front, where thick brushwood began. I sat against a tree as still as a post, watching and listening to the sound of the beaters, who could be heard half a mile away, until I saw a herd of at least twenty-five pigs, mostly sows and yearlings, come slowly out of the thicket, and stand listening and looking to see if the coast was clear. Luckily the wind was right, and in a short time the whole lot came trotting on in full view straight to my post. I had a *303 magazine rifle firing ten shots without reloading, and determined to let them come close up before opening fire, and get as many as possible. I got three down in no time, but by that time they had seen me and turned towards my next neighbour on the left, so that I could not fire again without risk to him. If they had gone on past the line, I might have got three or four more behind me, but they went close past him and then turned up the line, where two more were killed by other guns. My neighbour, who was not a member of the Club, but an officer of the Forest Service who had been asked as a guest and who had never seen wild pigs so close before, lost his head completely and never fired a shot. But as one of my pigs crawled on and died at his feet he was intensely delighted, thinking that he had really killed it himself. I thought it was a pity to spoil his pleasure by claiming it myself, so I said nothing about it till the story leaked out through a man who was with him and was certain that the forester had not fired at all.
On the best day I ever had at Bouillon I killed three pigs, two roe and a fox, but I have known eleven pigs and twenty-eight roe killed in a day. On one occasion the Prince de Croy, who was one of the best shots in
