March announced itself with its usual dysphoria: rain, sun and wind intertwined in a kaleidoscope of colors and temperatures that did not allow any kind of forecast. Vincenzo's morning outings had been increasingly poor in encounters and so three in the afternoon tickled the imagination with their ill-concealed promises. The Saturday preceding the posting at half height between the edge of a beautiful grove at the top left and the shady ditch at the bottom right I had been deceived on the one hand and thrilled by the other. I never expected to see two little ones and two adults where never in the last two years had an elf come out.
My rifle pointed haughtily towards the ditch while, to my left, four roe deer, three of which can be picked up, grazed happily with a view of the “hunter and companion”. Tangled up in plastic and uncomfortable poses to frame the animals in the binoculars, we were holding our breath trying to look like shrubs. Imperceptibly, between a bite of grass and a game of distracted roe deer, I tried to gain centimeters and position myself in their direction. My movements were the same slowness as a sunflower turning in the rising light of the sun. I don't know how, but in the end the female was in the optics. I would have preferred, as per my personal preference, to withdraw a small one but, given the circumstances and the imminent date of closure to the bald ones, I would not have made much trouble. The indigo sky that was the background to the male and the female, higher than the little ones who jumped lower, fascinated and irritated me at the same time. Two or three meters would have been enough and a natural backstop would have freed my phalanx on the trigger. But nothing, the female was always in heaven. Darkness loomed, although the magnetism of the last sun now buried behind the Maremma hills still tempted my eye to linger on the roe deer. If I hadn't seen her half an hour before, I would never have intercepted her, and least of all I would have established sex and class. But the temptation to shoot was always there to provoke me, just a step down towards the dimple and I would certainly have taken it, although "certainly" is not a word a hunter uses willingly.
The mockery of that exit still burns as I load and set the rifle, once again aiming for the ditch in the lower right. A little out of luck, so that they don't think they will succeed up there in the sky, a little out of logic, because, apart from the first time, the roe deer we saw here have always come out of the lower, dense and shady part of this wood. We swing at 360 degrees, up to hills kilometers away. Being up here is a reward, a gift of life to forgive the working week in a chaotic metropolis. Usually it is enough to come here to be happy, but today it is not enough. The plan is far from complete and the previous release still burns with joke.
It is still daytime when female and baby look out into the dark pit. Class zero is a female, she moves little with respect to her mother, she is cautious and restrained in her movements. If it were not for the infantile appearance, it could be attributed a more "adult" behavior. I'm not in the mood for romance, I have the cross on the roe even before Vincenzo confirms my distance. In fact, I had set the clicks of the 200 meters as soon as the two roe deer had appeared on the fresh and short grass of March. Vincenzo confirms the distance of 230 meters and prepares for the roar. My hand wraps languidly over the thumbhole of the rifle and my finger touches the trigger. Despite the recoil, I manage to follow the reaction of the roe deer in perspective which, after a jump on the spot, is sucked into the brambles surrounding the ditch. The adult female has a second stall then with two jumps returns to the wood, following another trajectory. We wait to rejoice because it is not certain that it will be trivial to find the roe deer. The time to recover the equipment and slowly reach the anschuss takes about a quarter of an hour, and so we employ the canonical waiting time. A large patch of blood promises us an easy recovery before it's dark. We calmly follow the evident blood traces up to the animal's remains, almost completely covered by the cold and crystalline water with which the rains of March have replenished the flow of this small stream.
Softly lying, with its winter fur cleansed of blood and shining with water, the somersault has an almost fairytale appearance, and reminds me of Ophelia, Hamlet's unfortunate mistress who drowns her young life in the water of a river. The dark and cold of the last winter nights loom. We recover the roe deer by dedicating to it the due honors with a short rite, and we leave this wonderful corner of Tuscany, which has given us its Nature, beautiful emotions, and a pinch of poetry.
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Roe deer hunting, Ophelia.
I do not appreciate selection hunting especially for roe deer, fallow deer, deer, beautiful animals and Kings and Queens of the woods that should be watched and not killed, in this story the hunter should be more than satisfied just to have enjoyed their presence while grazing for an infinite time.