Over the last decade and a half, the gradual opening of Russia and Eastern Europe to the West has created a number of new hunting opportunities for American sportsmen. Brown bears can now be taken in Romania; roebuck, stag, and chamois are hunted across Central Europe; and wild boar can be pursued from the thickets of Yugoslavia to the steppes of Russia. Novel forms of hunting are available as well, including "driven hunts," with beaters and dogs—a style that descends from the European feudal tradition, rather than a Daniel Boone type of frontierism, which is our native hunting archetype.

I am not a hunter, although I grew up with hunters and don't object to hunting, as long as the quarry is plentiful and the conditions are sporting. I don't condone any kind of bear hunting. If I hunted, I'd go after the European wild boar, Sus scrofa—the most intelligent of all game animals. The fabled boar also possesses great quickness, keen hearing and sense of smell, and has a stately disregard for human predators that the skittish roebuck and chamois entirely lack. In addition to their cunning, fearlessness, and ferocity, the males seem to know how to kill a man—to get their tusks under the femoral artery, at the top of the thigh, and rip upward, causing the victim to bleed out in less than six minutes. The animal is not native to North America. The "boar" that is commonly hunted throughout the American South is actually a feral pig (Sus domestica), sometimes crossed with imported wild boar. With its floppy ears and blotchy, partly bald hide, the wild pig is a much less elegant animal than the European boar; a famous example is Hogzilla, the monstrous 800-pound tusker shot in Georgia in 2004.

I became interested in European wild boar during my first extended stay in Tuscany one July about 20 years ago. The villa we rented was one of several belonging to the della Gherardesca family, among the oldest in Italy, and it was in the Maremma district, near the Ligurian coast, where the largest and fiercest Italian boars are found. In Tuscany, wild boars—-cinghiali—are as common as deer are in Connecticut, but far more mysterious. We knew they were around, because they were very destructive rooters; farms, gardens, and vineyards all suffer damage from wild boars. However, being essentially nocturnal, boars hide themselves; in the daytime they sleep in the darkest and thickest parts of the woods, and wallow in muddy washes that the Italians call insogli.