Wild Boar: A Case for the Most Beautiful Game Animal
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About this ebook
Pursued throughout time by kings and the common man, the wild boar has intrigued and beguiled hunters throughout the world. With so much sensational news of problem wild hog populations and unwanted interaction with humans, a need has arisen to remind us all of the nobility that surrounds this ancient and prized game animal. He is near the point of being reviled in some quarters. Author Mark Ferdinand pays tribute to the wild boar and makes the case for elevating its status to that of the most respected wild game species that hunters give chase to. A humble hunter makes the case for wild boar being the most beautiful game animal.
Mark Ferdinand
Mark Ferdinand lives on the South Texas coast with his wife, daughter and son. Fishing the surf, hunting, gardening, carving, auto and home repair occupy his spare time. He has written on the topic of autism spectrum disorder from a father's perspective in parenting articles and in other non-fiction venues. Having limited typical communication skills, his son introduced Mark to new ways of interpreting his needs and aspirations. As his son grew older Mark became fascinated by the story potential within these amazing children. This prompted the creation of a dynamic adventure story focusing on a character with autism. After completing his first novel, Fortune on the Spectrum, he decided to compile a group of lifetime stories that brought him to the unusual occupation of snake venom extraction called You're Gonna' Get Bit!: Harrowing Tales of Herpetology. Corpus Christi author and Texas author Mark Ferdinand. Mark writes novels with autistic characters, Texas fiction, and true tales of reptiles and amphibians.
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Wild Boar - Mark Ferdinand
WILD BOAR
A Case for the Most Beautiful Game Animal
by
Mark Ferdinand
Copyright © 2019 by Mark Ferdinand
markferdinandbooks@gmail.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK
Mark Ferdinand is also the author of Fortune on the Spectrum, You’re Gonna’ Get Bit!, The Autistic Prankster, and Every Tiki has a Spirit
There is neither lion nor leopard that slayeth a man at one stroke as a boar doth, for they mostly kill with the raising of their claws and through biting, but the wild boar slayeth a man with one stroke as with a knife, and therefore he can slay any other beast sooner than they could slay him. It is a proud beast and fierce and perilous, for many times have men seen much harm that he hath done. For some men have seen him slit a man from knee up to the breast and slay him all stark dead at one stroke so that he never spake thereafter.
— Gaston Phoebus
If you can imagine that a painting can draw you in, if you can imagine that it can create an obsession, then you can understand the power it can have. If you have never experienced this, imagine that it can.
My father left post-war Germany in his late teens in order to embrace a life in America. He left a number of relatives behind, many of whom are there to this day. When business obligations granted a merciful window, he made occasional return visits to the old country.
Once I became of travel age, I joined him on a few of these return visits. To be truthful, I found them to be an unpleasant obligation, not the type of exciting travel that I naively envisioned as valuable - white sand beaches, swimming pools, amusement parks.
It was on my third visit there when I had a combination of experiences that altered my view, not necessarily at the time of the trip, but these experiences seeded a view that emerged later in life.
My mother had taken us through countless castles, museums, points of interest, all a great burden for a young brat to endure. One particular castle made a difference though. This one held a notably high number of large paintings and tapestries. Paintings of such size that they dwarfed my adolescent body as I turned my neck up to look at them.
A common theme in most of the paintings made something evident in this special castle, the occupant loved the hunt. There were at least twenty different pieces devoted to the royal hunt, hunting tools, quarry, and the resulting bounty. This in addition to countless paintings that celebrated the wondrous surrounding landscape.
My parents walked quickly through the collection and the other historical artifacts of the property, and I was left to experience the pieces on my own, spending time as I saw fit with those that held my interest. It was before these paintings that I spent the entirety of my time, simply staring.
The long dead artists had perhaps no awareness of my time spent with their work. The paintings themselves gave no impression that they were aware of my existence or of my presence before them. In such seeming stillness, however, there was tremendous energy and intensity between us.
This was years before I was officially educated
about paintings via an art appreciation class while attending university. I had no knowledge of these artists, the medium, the techniques, the style, or even much in the way of the history of the area, the castle, or its original inhabitants.
Looking back on it, this turns out to be a good thing. Were I to be preemptively trained on the background of each painting, from the artist themselves to the events being portrayed, who knows if the effect of each work would have been altered for me by instilling preconceived notions? I am thankful for having been able to go in cold and view each piece with fresh eyes and a young mind.
The initial experience was more than enough to impress me. I was at first taken in by the boldness of the colors and the realism of each scene. Scenes would vary from hunting in the wilderness to celebrating a successful hunt in a clearing or meadow. Also presented were images of workers and chefs processing the meat of the animals. Other paintings depicted the implements of the hunt including lances, bows, arrows, swords, knives, and crossbows.
Regarding the quarry, there was much variety. Game birds of all types were featured in the more pastoral paintings that featured men in charge of processing game in the field, as well as servants preparing meals in the royal kitchen for that night’s table. Implements and cutlery were featured along with cuts of meat, and still-feathered game birds of all colors boldly showed off their beauty even in death, waiting to be converted to table fare.
Then of course there was the grandest of paintings involving the pursuit of big game; the European red stag, the Eurasian brown bear, and the wild boar. I confess that I remember less of other popular species of European big game being depicted such as Mouflon ram, as my attention was pulled to my favorite animals at the time and my memory restricted to what captured my attention most.
The consistent backdrop of each hunting scene was the greenery of the surrounding forest. Having visited the Black Forest of Bavaria before this day, I had experienced the darkness it was capable of. Unlike the forests of Colorado where I had grown up, these had a foreboding quality to them. They evoked not a sense of fear necessarily, but a feeling of awe, a cautionary respect for the potential for a young person to be swallowed up and lost in the darkness.
Perhaps if there was such a thing as Google Earth at the time, the mystique and formidability of the dark German forests would have been ruined for me. No doubt today one could use this tool to hover over the site and quickly spot numerous towns just a short distance away, while on the ground the thick forest still seems endlessly wild.
None of that was relevant to my eyes of the time. I was young and went into the gallery with a relatively unspoiled mind. The impact was true and pure because of that, and I was transported in time to the days when the forests were truly immense and spreading eastward through the European interior.
This imposing darkness of the forest was captured consistently, even by different artists. Moreover, in a scene which featured an open clearing or the castle itself, still one could see the ominous presence of the forest in the background, waiting patiently for anyone that dared to enter, while feasts or the processing of game carried on among safety in numbers.
In an intimate hunting scene, with the viewer placed in the middle of the action, up close and personal, the surrounding forest interior was highly detailed despite its inherent darkness. The definition of the tall pines and ancient oaks was never neglected, despite the lack of daylight allowed by them. This indescribable shade of forest green would be cemented in my mind as my favorite