DRIVEN BOAR IN CROATIA-LASAROTTA
THE GLITTER of a forest in winter beckons a team of 13 guns visiting Croatia for the first time to shoot driven wild boar. They hail either from Yorkshire or, like their captain Philip Rhodes, from Lancashire, and the white rose men, say that Rhodes could almost pass for one of them, he’s that good. Booking the trip 10 months previously, Rhodes made it clear to the Folkestone-based Lasarotta sporting agency that his team does not hunt in fenced areas. Each gun has paid an all-inclusive fee of £5,640 for four days’ sport and a possible bag of 100 boar. Ten of them are highly experienced and recently broke an area record in Hungary by shooting 89 boar in three days. Rhodes is on his peg for the first drive, a .410 cartridge - belt around his waist but with a side-by-side Chapuis Armes double rifle 9.3x74R at the ready. “I can detach the ’scope and shoot open sights,” he says, and that’s a plus in a sport that demands fast, instinctive shooting. Rhodes is match-fit. He recently went ...