During a week of summer holidays in Maremma, the invitation to a containment exit at the boar with the aspect mode. The pleasure of the company and the opportunity to hunt wild boars in a season that is usually only an occasion for melancholy winter memories, was soon associated with a great enthusiasm for the experience of hunting at night.
The temporary stalking, in fact, are set up in the late afternoon and the appearance lasts until late at night. In Tuscany, as in almost every place, hunting is almost always associated with the convivial aspect, and the teams that do not organize a lavish lunch (or dinner) at the end of the hunt are rare. In this case, despite not being a real team, the selecontrollers involved in the exit, in spite of the bizarre late afternoon schedule, certainly do not miss a substantial snack. For the occasion we were guests of the Suardi family, owners of the company in which the containment was organized. In the garden of the splendid farm, surrounded by farmhouses and fields, the friends of San Martino sul Fiora set up in no time an "interesting snack" based on cheeses and Chianina steaks, with which we refreshed ourselves in cheerful company before completing the formalities of registration and arrangement of the post office. In the cool of the centuries-old oaks, with a breathtaking view in our eyes, many of us almost want to stop there and contemplate the expanses of wheat dotted with poppies ... but the "duty" calls us, and still with a little piece in our mouth, and with the sun high in the sky, we are going to fasten our boots and prepare the rifles. We are not many, and the area to be checked is quite large.
Off-road vehicles plow the fields, sowing hunters 4-500 meters apart. I, because of the crutches I have to use to walk after a small accident, I move with difficulty in the grass, and kindly Maurizio, responsible for the arrangement of the hunters, assigns me a comfortable stakeout that I reach easily as soon as I get off the jeep. Today my friend Fabrizio accompanies me, with whom I have shared many experiences of hunting wild boar and, for the first time this aspect. I am happy not to be alone, for me it is a new experience, I certainly would not know how to manage many aspects, including in particular the choice of the position based on the wind and then, above all, the darkness. Selection hunting is not new to me, even if up to now I have practiced it exclusively with roe deer, but at dusk we usually leave the stalking. Here, however, it is completely different: it is in the dark that the beauty begins! “June is truly a formidable month for hunting”, we reflect with Fabrizio, while we arrange the stools in the grass, high enough, to cover us up to our shoulders “It's seven in the evening and there is still a lot of light! A thousand things can be done in a day like this! ”. In fact, while we were having dinner, I feared in my heart that we were delaying a bit, but now that we are posted, I realize that there is still a long time before the animals go out to pasture in the fields. As I walk here and there, half hidden by the grass, I see Fabrizio coming back from afar [he had gone to retrieve the tripod he had left in Maurizio's off-road vehicle, ed] and gestures with his hands as if to say “a lot of stuff !!”. As soon as he sits down, he whispers to me “You have no idea! As I passed in the field that separates us from the post office on our left, I crossed a very busy trot, and around there is all loose earth ... I think there will be fun tonight! ". Fabrizio's enthusiasm heartens me, and I'm happy to have him as a mailmate, I have a lot to learn from him: terrific hearing, hawk's eye, great knowledge of wild boar and excellent "shooter", surely the friend of Porto Ercole can define yourself as a professor on the subject for an inexperienced person like me! We are silent and still like mummies. It is a very special situation for me: orange jackets, placed all around, suggest a wild boar hunt, but the contemplative atmosphere and the timetable evoke the selection hunt ... A very interesting experience!
To open the dance is his friend Franco who kills a boar in the middle of the wheat in the middle of the day. With the sun still hot and high, a low-pitched grunt snakes right in front of us. We have no real blind spot except a few meters that separate the edge-stain from the slope of the hillock on which we are stationed. Yet the sound seems to come from right there. I am very attentive to any further acoustic clues, but I cannot change my position now, I would make too much noise, so I sit on the stool with the rifle resting on the tripod hoping that it does not turn out to be too high. Both Fabrizio and I turn our attention to our right, certain that the last grunt has come from there. "Just turn your eyes to the left, Pina, stay still, there's a wild boar staring at us" whispers Fabrizio. A shiver runs through me, I turn very slowly and I see the very black animal silhouetted in the middle of the daisies, with the high griffin probing the air. From one moment to the next a gust of wind will reveal our presence. The boar begins to walk with a low muzzle, it gives me time to turn my head, body, tripod and finally the stool. It stops for a few moments. “It's 130 meters. Shoot as soon as you feel like it ”Fabrizio urges me.
The reticle is still, the boar enough ("of course boars are not like roe deer" I think while my target is never perfectly a marble statue), I aim just behind the front shoulder and "BAM!". The explosion of the shot surprises me and makes my ears ring. Fabrizio saw the animal fold on its hind legs while the outgoing ball raised a strip of earth. We observe the animal flee with a desperate race supported only from the front towards the thicket of a bush that is in front of him and to our left. The abundant blood on the anchuss and the tugging of the dying wild boar in the brambles give us the certainty that we will find it there. The light begins to oblique on our field, the millions of yellow daisies that dot the hill seem to become phosphorescent, the clear sky from the north takes on ever more incandescent tones, the eye gets used to the ever more compliant light ... "A herd!" Fabrizio whispers astonished with the binoculars pressed over his eyes. “I count eight! Two sows and the rest porcastri "I confirm, trying to make a good impression with my" prof "," They are very far away, the binotelometer marks 290 meters! ...
I'm not shooting him from here ”I clarify, excited and very happy for so much opulence. "We are waiting for them to get closer, now we are in good wind, they should not rush us and hopefully not even see us, if they come within feasible distance you can shoot". The herd moves compactly, sometimes some pigs try a flash of autonomy and go away, a sow grunts and calls it to order.
The north wind brings us some guttural sounds, more and more distinct as the wild boars approach ..
From the ground with one backpack on the other I am quite stable, but the distance is still too much. I'll wait. But at a certain point a single mind seems to guide the branch towards the stain that frames (in this case, alas, as a curtain) to our field. They move and are far away. “No, no… I don't shoot, and then I have already shot just before. Do it yourself!" I pass the rifle to Fabrizio who without too many compliments puts it on the tripod open in front of him, puts his eye in the optics, turns the magnification knob very slightly and a shot explodes that makes me jump, although I expected it. From the binoculars I see a wild boar rolling in the grass, the one closest to him taking a lightning run-up and the other animals forming a black train that goes to take shelter in the thick of the bush. “Bravo Fabrizio! …Thank you! I didn't feel like it! " “It's perfectly normal, don't worry - he reassures me - with so little light, the animals never perfectly still, it takes a bit of experience!”.
The black mantle of night advances and stifles any glare behind the distant mountains. Small bright LEDs thicken and take on force until they illuminate a moonless night. “I didn't think the stars shed so much light” I observe to myself and once again I thank my lucky stars for making me live another great hunting adventure.
Text and photos by Pina Apicella