In style, scale, and composition, this work strongly resembles Courbet's first hunting scene,?The Quarry, a great success at the Salon of 1857 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). The present canvas is distinguished by the assortment of dead game, including a wild boar, a partridge, a deer, and a hare, a presentation recalling precedents in seventeenth-century Flemish painting. An avid sportsman, Courbet ultimately devoted some eighty pictures to subject of the hunt.�