ON THE WILD SIDE Taken for grunt-ed
THERE is only one animal in Great Britain I am genuinely afraid of… and for good reason.
It’s a beast that can weigh more than 150kg, has four-inch tusks – and isn’t afraid to use them – and reproduces at an alarming rate.
The wild boar is not a creature to be taken lightly. To some they are a menace and to others they are a total delight. Wild boar are a relatively recent returnee. Like the beaver, these porky punks always used to live in Britain, but were missing for much of the last 400 years after being hunted out of existence.
We had a taste for boar meat back in medieval times, so much so that hunting them was reserved for the nobility and royals.
If you were not of high enough standing, the punishment for killing a boar was blinding. Ouch! The meat must have been pretty tasty to warrant such a harsh penalty.
The term venison, which now only refers to deer meat, used to apply to any game animal, including boar.
For the last few hundred years
Brits attempted to recreate the flavour of wild boar meat by giving pigs cider to drink.
The emergence of boar farms since the late 1980s has given us access to the real thing.
Boars and pigs are almost genetically identical. Boars were the ancestors of all modern pigs, but 15,000 years of breeding has changed the look and behaviour of our porkers. Interestingly, they have been domesticated for only half as long as dogs. In the last 10 years the wild boar population of Britain (starting from small strongholds of escapees and introduced animals, as in the Forest of Dean) has exploded. They have gone from about 100 individuals to more than 1,600. There doesn’t seem to be a way to stop their expansion either.
When culls were introduced in order to protect land, 30 boars were killed in one year. Culling has expanded every year and last year 500 were shot, but it hasn’t hampered them in the slightest.
A group of boars is called a sounder and is likely to be made up of females and young. You will know boar piglets by their charming stripes, which are used for camouflage. Males are more likely to be solitary if not breeding. These hairy hooligans are usually nocturnal, and you will know their presence by the trail of destruction they leave behind. They drag up the soil with their snouts in search of tasty roots. This is bad news if you are a farmer, but great news if you are a wild forest floor looking for regeneration. Whether for or against the wild boar, these bristly beasts are here to stay, so we’d better get used to boar burgers.