Skylark hunt: Memories of skylark hunting in the lower Maremma, with the technique of jumping, in stalking or in the Pisan style.
I think it's been at least ten years since I went every year, in October in the lower Maremma, in the beautiful town of Tuscia, in the province of Viterbo. I visited it with pleasure not only for its naturalistic wonders and because of the fact that my in-laws lived there, but also because it was possible to hunt for wonderful larks that even Piero, my father-in-law, loved to hunt. His wife loved them a little less, but she was resigned, since hunting was her husband's only passion.
At first they had thought of lending us a small apartment that they normally rented, just to leave Lisa and me some privacy, but in truth their house was so large and empty that there would be comfortable three fully loaded families. Furthermore, living under the same roof, Piero and I could leave early for long hunting days that normally opened at dawn.
I am Sardinian, so I know some beautiful landscapes, but I assure you that the lower Maremma is worth visiting, with its typical hills all sown with corn, rich in fragrant wild herbs, stony and sandy soils. The first few times the landscape really left me breathless, then slowly I got used to the beauty of the area, but never to the unforgettable hunting days I spent with my father-in-law and his friends.
At dawn, when the weather allowed it, even before hunting larks, we dedicated ourselves to the despoiling of thrushes, in olive groves that grew on the outskirts and then we poured into a group downstream, to silently approach the places of pasture of the larks, where jumping shooting was practiced.
Before hunting with Piero I had never practiced this technique which, on the other hand, proved to be particularly simple, at least if the larks are close to you. All you have to do is walk in the fields where the larks feed, push them on the fly and be ready to point and hit them. The thing is not too difficult if the larks they are close, quite complicated when they are far away: in short, a good training ground for any hunter.
More rarely, hunting from stalking was practiced. In that case the night before we visited the hunting area and at dawn the following day we were already there, with a camouflage hut, a mirror, a fake hawk, and a whistle.
The cartridges we normally used were the 32 grams with 11.10 lead and the game bag was always full on our return. I have always found this technique much less fun and less correct, so whenever possible we tried our hand at jumping.
But the lark hunting technique that I preferred was the Pisan one with the owl: it was necessary to have at least two. One had to hunt, the other had to walk with the owl in sight of the larks, carried on a cork and tied with a cord of about two meters.
In short, hunts of the past that are linked to my dearest memories.