Selection hunting - Each killing is a story, which sometimes begins days, months, seasons in advance. A leader sighted, sought, desired, chased. Or the animal appeared as if by magic where a moment before there was only grass, or stones. Everything that happens before the shot is fired condenses, is sublimated, in the millimeter movement of the phalanx on the trigger. And in that magical moment, when all the accounts add up (or almost) and the adrenaline is at its maximum, everything ends. But sometimes it all starts from there. It depends on the outcome of the shot, an outcome that is not always obvious and can take many hours of sleep and a lot of serenity away from those who exploded it.
In the instant of the shot everything is confused, the blaze blinds, the optics jerks, the noise stuns and the prey often "evaporates" or snaps quickly until it is lost in our eyes. The reaction to the shot is a fundamental evaluation, which is not always possible for the hunter, and the figure of the companion is decisive (also) in these cases.
Faced with the desolation of a anschuss deserted the temptation to "go looking for" the affected animal (?) should give way to the wisest decision to activate recovery.
The retriever is certainly not a benefactor available 24 hours a day to solve the doubts of unfortunate hunters, but a figure specialized in the verification of the shot and in the search (hopefully with recovery) of injured animals. More than a figure, it is a man-dog binomial, a magical concert of developed abilities and natural gifts, placed at the service not so much of the hunter who has "lost" his prey, but above all of the wild animals that are likely to be injured, to whom it is necessary to offer a dignified end and an adequate fate, rather than left to rot in the hands of saprophytes. Of course, activating recovery can mean returning the next morning (if you hunted in the evening) to take advantage of the light and the day. This implies a certain availability of time and the recuperator and the hunter who, often, have a job to be reckoned with. But if the alternative is to leave in doubt the outcome of a shot that may have seriously injured the animal, condemning it to a slow and cruel death, the choice to go hunting knowing that we are not available on the day could even be questioned. after recovering a possibly injured animal.
In the most severe times, in the most extreme weather conditions, the recuperator is generally happy to intervene, since every recovery means for his own auxiliary experience, notions, growth of a skill to which nature has predisposed him, but which only practice can to develop.
For the hunter, collaborating in recovery means growing, maturing in his own experience, becoming aware of his weapon, ammunition, ballistics applied in the field, the biology of wild animals and the consequences of a gesture - pulling the trigger - which very often closes a page. hunting, but sometimes it opens a whole new, fascinating chapter.
Photograph by Vincent Frascino.
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