Memories of a hare hunt to tell: enthusiasm has no age and has breath to spare. The adventure of Giacomo and his holy grail: the hare.
Now that the cold has arrived, remembering the warm opening of the hare hunt a few years ago can only please. Since the wood is not enough to heat this room, I just have to remind myself of how exasperating the heat can be and at the end of the summer season of 2011 the heat was really unbearable. Only 4 crazy people like us could go hunting anyway: the group of the usual suspects still today consists of me, my son, my father and my brother; the whole family, and every hunting day is a celebration. We take the opportunity to get away from the women of the house who are the best you could wish for, but they talk, they talk, they talk until they drop. So even on that day at the end of summer, it was decided to leave for the hare hunt, since I have hunted very few of them since I have the license. In short, the hares and I have an open account, but it seems that they are not at all frightened by this fact. That morning the appointment was under the house for 4 in the morning.
Off the road we reached a hilly area not far from our land: the scent of Mediterranean scrub at dawn is intense and tasty. I see that my father, no longer a young man, is breathing deeply and I wonder what memories he is chasing.
We close the car, take our dogs with us and head towards the hunting area which is normally quite rich. It is six in the morning, we wander like mad wasps but we do not find even a rag of hare. My father and my brother begin to snort symptom of an early abandonment of the hunting day. On the other hand, the heat begins to charge and those who know Sardinia know well how intense and penetrating it can become. At eleven in the morning our game bag counts two partridges, one shot by me, one by my brother. For the rest, the mood is under the shoes. We separate, we cover the whole hill and we begin to lose sight of each other until I hear my son yelling at us: it seems that he has sighted a hare. I do not believe him immediately: the bush is high and he has never had a great spirit of observation, but since he runs like a pony in the jar and since my father and my brother are stranded under an old cork, unwilling to continue , I decide not to leave my son alone. I don't want to have to go look for him in Sassari.
I start to run, if we can talk about running. The land that might seem flat is characterized by a slight slope that is notoriously the cross of hunters and mushroom hunters, and the dried Mediterranean scrub does not facilitate the undertaking. Never mind, I can't leave right now: I would feel really old especially since I got high enough to notice the hare advancing with a certain caution. No, he must not have seen or heard me, and I do not see the shadow of my son. As any good father would do, I tell myself that Fabrizio can handle himself, and I concentrate on hunting.
The situation is this: I am far enough away from the hare to be able to shoot successfully, but the ground does not offer me hiding places and in addition my dogs roam around me. This means that the hare will notice me shortly. I think very little about it, I load the shot, I shoot and of course I'm wrong. At this point the scene is from a western movie: the hare turns to me, looks at me, I look at her, she turns around and runs away. Even when the adrenaline is high I remain quite realistic and I know that that hare will probably never be mine, but the desire to capture it does not command it. At the cost of getting sunstroke, I decide to reduce the distance: obviously my goal is to run faster than the hare and for a few minutes I succeed. The terrain is not congenial to my friend, much less to me and we are both exasperated. Every now and then I stop, take aim but always make a mistake and while I see not far away bushes of brambles and piles of stones I think that the dream of catching the hare I can also abandon it. Finally Seven decides to help me: it is my setter, old but still efficient. He runs, he does it faster than me and certainly more elegantly and before the hare reaches the brambles I decide to fire a new shot. I do not understand if it was successful also because I immediately stumble on a protruding boulder and beached on the ground.
The curses are all there at that moment, I am alone, I am hot, and I have a thirst that cannot be told: moreover I think of the useless effort made. You will imagine my happiness when looking up and looking up I see Seven walking towards me with the hare in her mouth. I almost get emotional, get up, clean up, and go back to my parents. I wonder what happened to my son: I begin to worry. I look left and right, I call him but nothing. I find it a few minutes later under the cork with my father and my brother eating cheese and drinking wine. In the face of youth!