26 July 1999
Today Mr. Delacour, Bill, Fleur, and I went on a hunting expedition. It took them most of yesterday to convince me it was okay to kill the animals. They said as long as we try to make it quick and we use everything we can then there is nothing wrong with what we are doing. Our main goal for the expedition was to find a sanglier, better known as an Erymanthian Boar from the story of Hercules. We were also on the look out for Dahu, Yale, Guivre, and Graphorn(Although we don't have a large enough group for an adult). Of those four only the Dahu can really be taken down magically with such a small group. Much like dragons their hides/skins make stunners near useless. That's where the three spells preceding this entry come into play. The first one, intorque telum spicatas, conjures and banishes a barbed spear. When done correctly it should be able to pierce even dragonhide, it won't bring it down in one shot but with a few hits it should take down anything we may encounter. The next one is a variation of the incarcerous, instead of three ropes it forms a net which can be used to tangle up and slow down our targets. Last but not least is a spell Bill provided, aigída aspída, the aegis shield, which I have actually seen once before when Riddle was dueling Dumbledore. While it is very taxing to maintain a properly done aegis shield should save oneself from most creatures in the world.
We started off in the southern mountains by the sea at dawn. Apparently boars tend to be out the most either then or late evening. The trip got off to a great start and we encountered our first boar only a little more than an hour in. The thing was bloody huge. On four legs it was as tall as Bill and had six tusks around its snout the longest of which was probably bigger than my arm. Thankfully Mr. Delacour knew what he was doing. To take it down he had us spread out around the boar. On his signal he started to transfigure the ground into quicksand while Bill and Fleur started using the incarcerous variant to keep it in place. That left me having to fire on the beast. I managed to get to two clean shots and one glancing blow before it was able to break free. Thankfully it chose to escape rather than attack so I didn't need to use Bill's shield, but we did have to chase it down on brooms. While it was much harder to get a good shot, under the combined fire of all four of us we did bring it down. So not only did I get a ton (literally I think) of boar parts, I found my new favorite thing to do on a broom. I love quidditch, but hunting from a broom was just surreal.
By the time we got it broken down it was lunch time so we had a bit of a rest before we went higher up the mountain to find Dahu. Dahu are kinda like deer but they have horns and the legs on one side of their body are longer than the other. Since it is not as magically resistant as the others Mr. Delacour suggested it would be cleanest to take them down with stunners. We ended up killing six of them since I wanted some to practice with. Fleur said they are known as tricksters, and I couldn't help but imagine George's future children terrorizing Hogwarts with these wands.
Since we had not seen any signs of Graphorns or Yales we decided to move onto the countryside in hopes of encountering Guivre(They described them as a large winged serpents). Unfortunately we came up empty handed, and ended up going home with only the Boar and the Dahus. Still I consider it a productive day and am kinda surprised that no one ended up needing medical attention given my usual luck.