In the hot sun of a mid-November afternoon I was returning with thrushes with Vincenzo. We hadn't fired much that day, and from the edge of the woods the few echoes of our shots had stopped at least half an hour ago. Finally a thrush passes. And it falls. Without taking our eyes off the point where we think we will find it, we walk with a soft step. Our eyes meet, 10 meters from us, the round, vacant, astonished ones of a hare. A young subject was standing right there at the edge of the woods.
When he notices us he crouches down, as if to spread himself on the ground to make himself less visible as possible. The ears lowered to lick the back, motionless. A perfect prey, indeed, the worst prey. Defenseless, defenseless, lacking the proper context of tracking and hound skills that make the hare one of the most fascinating animals to hunt. Yet, the loaded rifle, on his shoulder, asks for justice.
Our justice is this living hare or, in any case, that it is not the vile shot of those who met her by chance to take her life. This animal is not a piece of meat, game in general in my opinion is not. The dignity of our prey, and the dignity of the hunter itself, as a man, is sublimated in the correctness of the hunting action in which they confront each other.
I do not know how many, among my acquaintances or among those who read, would have let the hare gain the wood as soon as it felt safe, as we did that day.
The temptation to shoot a wild deer certainly touches everyone, but I wonder: what fun to shoot a roe deer on the run while we are in the wild boar? Or a woodcock while we are returning to the thrushes? The trigger finger takes a life, but hunting is not death.
Hunting is emotion, skill, knowledge, sacrifice. Immolating our marksman instincts on the altar of respect for the wild is a great sacrifice, but it is also what distinguishes the hunter from the killer.