Luxury Goods SpecialWild-boar hunting

Don’t worry,’ said our guide, Niels Bryan-Low, his eyes bright with malice, ‘the only time a wild boar is really dangerous is if you get between a mother and her baby.’ A few minutes later, crunching across a patch of orange ferns, there was blur of movement to our right. Niels froze, sniper-style, and we turned to see a terrier-sized wild boarlet, striped dark brown and fawn, zigzagging towards us through the undergrowth. ‘Shit,’ said Niels, cocking his rifle. ‘Where’s the mum?’ Within seconds, I had hauled myself up into a fork of the only sapling in sight, leaving Niels and my boyfriend to die below. My left foot, balanced upon a slender branch, trembled pathetically.

Over the course of our wild-boar-hunting weekend in France, the oily click of Niels’s gun became a signal for me to stare frantically around for trees. Wild boar or sanglier may weigh more than 400 angry lbs, with ten-inch lung-puncturing tusks but, like Daleks, they are not much of a threat if you are a few feet off the ground.