Hunting in Sardinia with the Pointer: The Sardinian experience of hunting partridge in the company of your pointer, between nature, passion and friendship.
I am Tuscan, born a few decades ago (now it is not necessary to go into details) in a family well linked to the territory either for the practice of sheep farming which was then abandoned in favor of catering, or above all for the practice of hunting.
My Sardinian-born father, transplanted to Tuscany out of necessity, has always practiced hunting, and I have always wondered if he loved us or his pointer dogs more.
Since I was a child I was surprised by their almost innate ability to target prey: “It's their job” my father told me, and it was obvious that they did it for the best, even though nature didn't do everything. During the closed periods of the hunt, my father spent with his family pointer, in training, long hours. Maybe that's why I got fond of hunting: it was the only way to spend time with my father and his friends and at the age of 10 he considered me old enough to follow him during his summer outings, when he was training those fantastic pointers. .
I remember that at 18, given my promotion with flying colors, he decided to let me take the hunting license and organized a nice trip to Sardinia. I hadn't seen it until then, but it was like coming home: it may be that my father and I were made to feel right at home right away. They told me about the stunts made in youth among cousins, the sadness of the departure and the wonderful hunting experiences, and my father immediately took on a softer dimension: then he too had been a boy! I had learned in the long years of going out to go with the dog, on the other hand dad's pointers were almost like brothers to me: we understood each other with a single glance.
That morning we left at dawn and for the first time I discovered the taste of Sardinian vine water, su fil'e ferru. I still remember that hot numbness, and that excitement that never left me again. It was so dark that it felt like night and we began to climb in the car along paths that literally exploded with colors and scents at full day.
They told me that the Sardinian partridge is not too cunning, and that a minimum of experience and knowledge of its habits are enough to hunt it: I was happy not to be alone, I knew nothing about the Sardinian partridge. They said that to hunt partridges it was essential to go at dawn where the partridges spent the night: only with their morning song was it possible to precisely identify their position, at which point the dogs would do the rest.
We freed the dogs just when the sun began to color that wonderful Mediterranean scrub which was sometimes a desert forest: to hunt the Sardinian partridge it is essential to be accompanied by excellent auxiliaries. In that moment I began to love those pointers exactly as my father did; we were becoming accomplices.
It was thanks to the statuesque and elegant dog stop that I was able to hunt my first one partridge. Call it luck, call it skill, that day was not only rich in game, but also and above all in experiences.
There were so many partridges then and one would never have imaginedto that soon, among reckless hunters, foxes, crows and jays stealing their eggs, the Sardinian partridge would become a rare species to hunt.
Even today with my son I organize wonderful excursions in Sardinia: it is important that he too knows his homeland, I tell him about his grandfather and I bring him closer to my passion for nature and hunting. We start with our dog, our rifle and our cartridges loaded with pellets nos 7 and 6.