If one boar can overpower the other by pushing, there's no seriously violent fight. For equal combatants though, the fight's just beginning. The boars pop their jaws and slobber foam, working themselves into a fighting mode; the pumped up boars then slam their heavy heads and tusks mightily into the body of the opponent. Now starts the pounding, the grunting and the wounded squeals. The frothy slobber flies into the air, to the ground and all over the combatants.
It can be a fight to the death, but the death is rarely immediate. The loser leaves the battle ground first to live or die on his own. The winner will also leave to recover from his injuries or die.
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Here's my favorite little sprout of a boar-with-an-attitude, facing off with a black barrow hog twice his weight. If you could see from above, you'd see them flexing sideways to form the typical C shape of hogs approaching each other for a fight. |
| Now they're pushing in earnest to see who's stronger. The little tough guy won. |
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This time he's picked a fight with a larger and more seasoned young boar who's not happy about it. My guy lost. |
| But he still swaggered off the field like it didn't bother him a bit. I have an idea that today's winner is going to have a serious fight on his hands again when pee wee has grown a little more. |
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At times the squalling of a caught hog will draw in other enraged hogs, but it's not because they want to rescue a buddy...they come purely from inflammation of their aggressive drive. Hogs that approach a downed comrade come not to mourn, but to dine. Hogs are not nice to each other, or to anyone else for that matter (apart form maternal groups, but after pigs are weaned, even they're not that nice). Boars have been known to circle around a human adversary to initiate their own attack from behind. A boar, pressed by a pursuing pack of dogs will still make the extra effort to hook the hunter as he's passing, and some boars get so ticked off and insulted that they'll continue to harrass and bite at a hunter that is already up a tree.
Someone who has injured a wild boar, might get a look--directed to only him--that could kill, and with the boar's first opportunity, be the target of its charge.
The hunter's wisdom when boar hunting is to, in a confrontation, "pick your tree" so you will not take that extra millisecond to decide which one to climb
Below you can see these two gargantuans straining their immense bulk, testing each other's strength. After the fight, each had injuries; the lighter colored hog decided to give up the field.
The light hog suffered deep punctures in each shield and a gash across his nose from eye to eye that came right to the edge of the eye itself. The black hog was lame for a while from injuries to front and back legs, whether from cuts or bites or just straining we couldn't tell. Both boars recovered fully, and as far as we know they never encountered each other again.
