Stray hunting: The description of the best known and most widespread form of hunting in Italy, the ways in which it is practiced, the use of the dog and the fauna that is established.
The wandering form is considered one of the funniest hunting methods, where you fully experience the contact with nature. In the hunting field there are many hunting techniques, each of which has specific characteristics concerning the methods and weapons to be used, in order to obtain the best results in terms of game bag. One of the funniest, according to many hunters who express their favorable opinions on the main hunting forums, is definitely the wandering hunt.
The latter consists in practicing hunting with or without the aid of the dog, wandering in search of the fauna to be killed. This hunting mode includes some variants and the choice of one of these excludes the possibility of practicing the others.
To practice roaming hunting, the hunter is strictly bound to the territory of the "Hunting Area" or the "Alpine District" to which he is registered. Specifically, this means that a pheasant hunter cannot kill a hare, or an ungulate hunter cannot go down to the plains and shoot migratory birds.
The reason why many hunters consider the wandering form as one of the funniest techniques / modes is due to being in close contact with nature, taking long walks among the vegetation, listening to the sounds, smells and colors of the landscape. Sometimes it happens to be literally surrounded by silence, broken only by the sound of footsteps on the frozen grass and by the continuous movement of the dog that, nose to the ground, looks for a trace. The hunter not only breathes the smells of the damp ground, but must interpret the signs of the passage of the animals, scan the horizon and "dialogue" with his hunting companion, the dog, to better coordinate the hunting action.
Hunting “in wandering form”, with or without the aid of the dog, is aimed at settling both migratory and sedentary ones, such as hares, rabbits, pheasants. Depending on the areas in which the wandering form is practiced, the latter provides different modalities. The one perhaps best known to the public is the one with the pointe dog. For the latter, dog breeds are often particularly suitable as pointer, English or Irish setter, Italian or German bracco.
The dog goes in search of the fauna, approaches with caution and at the hunter's command makes it fly up with a last leap, to give the hunter the opportunity to shoot it down. Pheasants, gray partridges, woodcocks and snipe are the most settled prey, as they make mimicry and immobility their main defense weapon and escape only when they warn and are alarmed by an impending danger. The dog is also used simply to locate the hidden fauna to bring it out into the open, thus giving the hunter the opportunity to see it, and then carry out the rest once killed.
Ungulates are also sought-after prey in wandering hunting, always with the help of dogs: for the hare, the fox and the ungulates, hounds are used, dogs with great resistance that incessantly beat the ground in search of the wild animal. they track him down and chase him. From the technical point of view, their work is divided into four phases: research of the past, approach, discovery and pursuit. In this mode the hunter stays in contact with his auxiliaries thanks to their incessant shouting. The pack of dogs often moves a considerable distance from the hunter, remaining both out of his control and over-excited by the hunt.
For the wandering form, however, it is not binding to use a dog, since many prey can be identified without its help, simply wandering calmly in the right places: just think of the moorhens, animals that frequent ditches and ripes and are particularly slow in leak. In the latter case, the problem consists in the recovery of the killed or injured animal, which the hunter must seek only with his eyesight, a sense that is difficult to use in the dense vegetation, when instead the dog's nose is extraordinarily more efficient. Using a dog involves not only a better success of the wandering form from every point of view, but also and above all it avoids a huge number of animals that are injured and not recovered, destined for a slow and inexorable agony, which are added to those actually embodied by hunters.
Other hunters, often nicknamed “hedge burners” by their colleagues, lurk near the vegetation and patiently wait for their prey to shoot them. Until a few years ago, other animals were also used as a hunting aid for the wandering form. An example is the ferret, a small mustelid that, especially in Sicily, was used in rabbit hunting, entering the burrows to which almost all the exits were previously closed. The rabbits, frightened and attacked by the ferret, flee through the only open exits in front of which there is the hunter waiting for them with the rifle pointed.
Another animal that can be used is the hawk, one of the forms of hunting permitted by law. Reminiscent of the Middle Ages, the wandering form with the help of the falcon is one of the most particular and demanding ways for this hunting technique.
The form of wandering hunting, as already mentioned at the beginning, is one of the most characteristic, even if to practice it you need a lot of experience and the advice of an expert, since you often go alone.
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