Hunting in the valley: emotions of a Bolognese hunting day

Duck hunting: If you believe that to have fun and spend a few days of pure hunting well-being you have to dust your passport, you are wrong: Italy is still able to offer thrilling and exciting experiences. Take for example that beautiful hunting farm we visited last year, just outside Bologna ...

I heard about this wildlife hunting company on the outskirts of Bologna in a bar. As usual, I wrote down the name and some opinion convinced that soon I would lose the piece of paper and the memory of that chat. Things, now I can thankfully say, went differently. The few days spent in that small wildlife paradise were beautiful, satisfying and let's face it, even a little relaxing. A few weeks after the conversation I told you about, I happened to run into advertising for a company that, in addition to organizing naturalistic events for the little ones, gave hospitality to poor mistreated hunters who love hunting in the swamp, to dabble in barrel with a rifle in hand. I put two and two together, and I thought it was meant to be. In a few hours I recovered the usual team of hunters looking for adventures and booked.

No noteworthy episode during the outward journey, just a lot of enthusiasm and a pinch of goliardia, as happens when traveling among men, but the beauty of hunting holidays is not that too? We took the rooms, had dinner and waited for the following morning: everything as I hoped. We headed to the meeting place where the two boatmen, Giacomo and Pierluigi were waiting for us. “Here it is always so shortly before dawn”, they told me immediately understanding my interest in that still silence that had something unreal about it. It was that time of day when the nocturnal birds have gone to sleep and the diurnal ones haven't woken up yet: no wind, no voices, no nothing, just peace. And the peace continued for a long time as I had never seen such silent boatmen before. We slipped without a word on the placid waters: it seemed as if we had tripped over the pages of I don't remember which novel. There was a smell of marsh water, cattails, sedge and great hopes for the morning that was about to begin. Abandoned in the barrels, our boatmen placed the molds and the live decoys and silently waited for the dances to open.

After a while the sleepy nature began to wake up. He found us with rifles on our shoulders still unloaded and eyes full of wonder, waiting for some signal. The concertino started with the wild geese: they make a hellish mess but the solo stopped soon. I don't know how long it will take, but the sky soon became a highway for ducks and teals whizzing by. The symbiosis with Filippo, my neighbor in the barrel, is ancient and now well established; it is important when two are hunting. The first mallard if he took it, the first and second teal instead I caught them myself.

Between one shot and another I think this is a real paradise. The vegetation is varied: there are rows of poplars, willows, alders, reeds that sink their roots in the shallow and opaque waters. Nothing strange that the area is densely inhabited by feathered beings. During a single day I glimpsed herons, ashes, egrets, wood pigeons, swamp miles, cormorants, moorhens. Not enough for you? There were also bitterns and some immigrants. The plague of the area seems to be the red-eared turtles: I won't even tell you the story, since it is the same as it was before the coypu and gray squirrels. They are abandoned by some fool who no longer knows what to do with it, and they put chaos in spectacular habitats.

The morning of hunting flies away among captured mallards and boatmen who come and go silently. All thanks to this spectacular place and this five-star hunting farm: it is the competent management that has made it a place to fall in love with, beautiful not only for us hunters, who enjoy it for a few months a year, but also and especially for the little ones. The educational and naturalistic events bring abundant schoolchildren closer to the swamp and the valley all year round, a rather clever way to bring water to your mill and make your business something surprising.

At this point the story could be interrupted but not: immediately after lunch the owner offers us a hunt for wandering with pointing dogs. We were tired but who could give up? Large hedges, reforestation and intensive cultivation have given hospitality to us, to two English setters and a Breton spaniel. What did we bring home? Beautiful pheasants and some hare. A day of those that I will never forget.

Editorials 1

Niccolo Maria Coppola says:

6 years ago

Hello, I am writing to you from southern Italy, Gallipoli to be precise. Being passionate about aquatic hunting, I would like to know the name and contact details of the Bologna wildlife-hunting company you mention in the article? I am interested in further information for the next hunting season

Niccolo Coppola