Five days ago, Friday 19 February 2016, the award ceremony of the fourth edition of the scholarship "Gianni Pericoli" by the headquarters of Chianciano Terme (province of Siena) of ArciCaccia. Pericoli was the local manager of the association, who died on February 19 four years ago following a road accident during the capture operations in the Chianciano repopulation area. The scholarship is promoted in favor of elementary school classes and in this edition the prizes were awarded to the third and fourth of the Mencarelli and De Amicis institutes. The assignment also took into account some lessons in the classroom that were taken care of by a wildlife technician of the ArcoCaccia Toscana, without forgetting the exit during the hare catches, one of the most important moments.
As explained by the same association, also in this fourth edition of the event the enthusiasm and happiness of children were predominant elements, testifying to the fact that activities linked to nature and its knowledge (of which hunting is one of the fundamental aspects) always interest and involve. The pupils have done some valuable works, well instructed by the teachers, and they reworked the animals known during this experience with different expressive forms: in particular, those produced in papier-mâché were appreciated, in addition to the poems that emphasized the main characteristics, such as the colors of the pheasants, the agility of the roe deer and the speed of the hares, but also the mythological legends conceived in relation to the birth of wild species, the drawings of these animals in their environments and origami.
Gianni Pericoli was remembered, in particular, for his boundless love for nature and hunting: the hunting activity was also conveyed by the unforgettable manager as a something full of knowledge and cultural meanings. In the official statement of ArciCaccia we read how Pericoli thought of the dominant, emotional and irrational animalism you should not respond with the "wall of incommunicability" nor with the flattening of a culture that should not be indulged in its vulgar violence.
This is why ArciCaccia underlined how the identity pride of the hunting activity is linked to the cultured and motivated claim of a levy which is useful for the conservation of the environment and which continually rediscovers its popular roots. Furthermore, hunting should eschew elitism from a cultural point of view, as it is only harmful and sterile. The hope was to reconstruct the cultural autonomy of hunting, the initiative dedicated to Pericoli è destined to continue for a long time to come.