The snipe of Piazza della Vittoria: Three friends, at the end of the hunting season, decide to end it with a joke in the rice fields near Pavia.
When hunting there are no certainties in terms of results, all hunters know this. Going snipe hunting increases these uncertainties even more. For the uninitiated, this bird is considered one of the most difficult prey to hunt. His senses, his behavior, I would even say his "personality" make him one of the most difficult birds to settle. Once alarmed, the snipe does not pawn or try to hide among the vegetation, but on the contrary irremediably takes off and does so basically against the wind.
An expert hunter knows well that it is more effective to always proceed with the same behind, to try to force the snipe to departures that are not optimal for him and to side shots, for which a zigzag flight on a horizontal plane is linear, not complicating the shot further. As for me, I have no difficulty in saying that this bird is the most difficult prey for me to catch. Some hunters do not persevere in a type of hunting that yields poor results, preferring more accessible prey that give more satisfaction.
I don't, however. Some would say notwithstanding, but I state that mostly because I'm not very good at hunting the snipe, I want to try my hand at this hunt to measure my skills and improve them year after year, without expecting to reach perfection. I just need to be good, not perfect. My name is Carlo and I and stubbornness are the same thing. Fortunately, I'm not the only one who thinks so. This comforts me in a way. There are two other stubborn like. They are my two best friends in life and in hunting, Matteo and Giovanni. We live in the beautiful Pavia, the capital of rice. All three of us have decided that until we are good at hunting snipe, we will not set up any more prey. I know you are thinking, that we are three crazy. But if madness is the most widespread condition among men, as a great philosopher said, I would add that madness is the virtue of geniuses.
We are over thirty who have been hunting for a few years. One evening we gathered to decide which prey to start with and, above all, who to learn to hunt from. After many hunts for the most varied huntable species, last year we decided that this hunting season would be dedicated to snipe. A long-time hunter, sharing our idea with him, once said: “A difficult prey for someone with little experience like you. You are sure. Look, sometimes it's frustrating ”. “But no”, we answered in chorus, “what do you want it to be? It is a prey like any other ”. We never said that. From the beginning of the opening the game bag was crying for a shortage of prey. Fortunately, we are three funny guys and so we played down the ineffective hunting trips, making fun of each other. None of us three have ever been offended, indeed. Not taking yourself too seriously in life is a good antidote to the difficulties you face.
One day, which I will never forget, Matteo comes to pick us up because he had to talk to us. It was strangely silent. We thought he had some problems and we were a little worried. Park the car and head towards Piazza della Vittoria. We stop in the center of the square and Matteo looks us straight in the eye. We, ready to give vent to a problem that was bothering him, were ready to listen. With an uncommon naturalness, Matteo says: “Guys, what should we do with this snipe? I'm tired, let's make a decision, the season is ending. We cannot close it with these results ”. John looks at me in disbelief and replies: “Who knows what I thought you should say! And I was worrying that you had who knows what problem, but there it goes !! ". Matteo bursts out laughing. "I wanted to test the degree to which you care about me, that's all." We laughed loudly. Passers-by looked at us, even with a little envy, because seeing people smiling these days is becoming a rare thing. We went for a coffee. After a long discussion about whether or not to continue the snipe hunt, we decided that we could not withdraw from the fight now. Giovanni, somewhat reluctantly, accepted. This bird is the lord of the rice fields around Pavia, so if others succeeded, I don't see why we shouldn't have become as good as the others.
We set the day for the hunting trip. Matteo, a great lover of animals, would have made available his two splendid pointers, stella and giselle. The latter are two very calm and self-confident auxiliaries, able to restrain their emotions to never get snipes out of range. We trust them, they know how to play their part. On the other hand, the pointer is considered one of the most elegant dogs in hunting, both for the firm and for the gallop with his head held high to find the wild even in vast environments, thanks to the highly developed nose. It is, nicely, defined by some as "A nose with 4 legs underneath". It is a breed of British origin that takes its name from its ability to target prey. We are aware that snipe hunting requires a silent hunter, with good aim and steady wrist, with great shooting accuracy: you must shoot immediately and, above all, avoid waiting too long, so that the irreparable does not happen, that is that after the flight the snipe begins its typical zig zag away, when they emit a kind of loud popping "kiss", with the typical "gnech-gnech" sound. It is no coincidence that the snipe is also called goat in the sky because of this verse. We are ready. On Sunday we head to a paddy field near Pavia, in the locality of Lomello. We get out of the car and take down our equipment: three Montefeltro woodcock 20 semiautomatics with 70 cm long barrels and cartridges loaded with lead n.10. We had paid attention to the smallest details. We are ready we told each other within himself.
We walked into the paddy field with the dogs sniffing the tracks. "Why don't we walk that canal?", Matteo said, "maybe a snipe jumps ..." "Of course we could also do it, so then even if there was it has to be hit and I think that snipe will have a long life", I replied smiling. Again we didn't want to take ourselves too seriously, as if we wanted to exorcise the tension. We walked along the canal, exchanging glances from time to time .. Around us the silence dominated the rice field. When the thought was about to cross my mind that the season would end without having even caught a snipe, Giovanni yells: “Look! a snipe! ". I was about to aim, but behind me I heard another cry from a snipe. For a second I thought we were surrounded. We took up our guns, and Matteo and I each aimed their prey. They are long, but we wrap them up well and they fall out. The dogs celebrated our shots.
We were no longer in the skin. We take our prey and continue the hunting day, aware now that luck had not turned its back on us. In fact, shortly after I heard a blow: it was Giovanni who next to me had just raised another pair of snipe: boom ... boom ... one falls. Giovanni recovers his pretext and exclaims: "Siiii". The day went on like this, with snipes sprouting everywhere. The paddy field had become our theater of the recovery of a hunting season that was ending in the best way. The cold hadn't made it difficult for us to walk, nor did the terrain. We were so euphoric that nothing would distract us.
The day had come to an end, the game bag was full and we were delighted. The next day we met again in Piazza della Vittoria to toast the end of the hunting season.