Thrush hunting. A new territory, the step now over, could be the prerequisites for a hole in the water. But why close the doors to luck? A hot afternoon in late October can offer unexpected implications. Chronicle of a return to thrushes in the splendid setting of the Tuscan Maremma.
Text and photos by Vincent Frascino
“Dear all, the team dinner is set for Wednesday, October 30th,” the secretary of my boar hunting team announces laconically. At first I am perplexed, but then I say to myself “What better way to celebrate my birthday than in the company of my hunted friends ?!”. While I am going to Capalbio for dinner I decide to anticipate the escape from the hospital and to give myself a few hours of leisure in the scrub to try to return to the thrushes. The previous week, for three consecutive days, there was an entry of thrushes according to many exceptional, but at the moment the pace is at a standstill.
Going up the coast in the very early sunny afternoon, I realize that this is the millionth time that I go to Rome from thrush hunting in Tuscany, yet it is also a "first time": although a frequent visitor to this land, both for the driven wild boar hunt and for the selection hunt for ungulates (so much so that I have established my hunting residence here), in fact in splendid Tuscany I have never hunted thrushes, which were my first hunting love born and lived almost exclusively in Calabria, my homeland.
First of all, I look for my friend Alberto, the backbone of the team I belong to, and I propose an afternoon thrush hunt, certain of his experience and knowledge of the areas and happy with his pleasant company. A previous commitment prevents Alberto from succumbing to my flattery from Candlewick, but he gladly offers to accompany me and show me an area that could be lucky. “The step ended a few days ago, and in any case you are not in Calabria here so do not be under any illusions! But in my opinion, towards dusk three or four thrushes you shoot them! "- with these words Alberto leaves me in a quiet area, with the woods behind me, a narrow strip of scrub in front of me and in the distance an extensive olive grove, potential area refreshment of the few thrushes around these days. Alberto probably does not know that even in Calabria the golden days in which there were stratospheric numbers during the pass are over, but all in all I don't care about the numbers. Today is my birthday and the only thing I want is to enjoy a few hours of peace in the bush ... if some thrush wanted to end up in the game bag, I certainly wouldn't disdain it. I have no big claims and with this spirit I look for some branches that can simulate a shed to blend in a bit.
Not even the time to charge that my attention is attracted by a thrush that passes about 100 meters from me, to my left, and while I meditate whether or not to move in that direction a second thrush retraces the same trajectory, giving me the confirmation that it is there that I have to position myself. The third thrush this time cleaves the air on my new position, it is a long shot but must be attempted. I give it more than a meter in advance and as I pick it up I think satisfied "Then there are thrushes in Tuscany!".
They exist and how! For nearly an hour, thrushes keep returning to my right and left. The shots are almost all very long, but the lead 10 of the cartridges loaded by my friend Luigi leaves no escape for the thrushes, which fall electrocuted around me. Although used to hunting thrushes without retrievers, I find it hard to retrieve the felled ones: the tall grass risks swallowing them and making them disappear in my eyes, and I have to do my best. Without ever looking away I run left and right as I shoot, I try to intercept the prey in free fall in the not very short time that such long shots offer me. I am literally astonished: I would never ever have imagined that in just one hour I would have had the opportunity to see, shoot and embody so many thrushes! I truly consider myself more than lucky. Observing the behavior and the trajectories of these animals, I realize that they are not specimens stabilized in the territory but a lucky aftermath of the pass that has just ended a few days ago.
When the deadline allowed by the hunting calendar arrives, I unload my rifle and stop in the scrub with my gaze still fixed on the sky. The blue and red-veined light of the autumn sunset is pierced by zirling black arrows that continue to re-enter the woods behind me. It is amazing how a wild so small and "fleeting" in its appearances can arouse such fascination in the hunter. It will be its shrewdness, its ability to identify and dodge the predator, to identify disturbing elements and get around them, but the thrush is truly a wild that excites and attracts me like few others.
When I reach Alberto at his house, he is curious to know how it went. Without commenting, I begin to get the thrushes out of the trisacca. At the fifth thrush that I place on the table Alberto starts rolling his eyes and with a satisfied smile he says to me “So you really enjoyed yourself today!”. I continue to arrange the prey that I have embodied, until I count seventeen. A truly respectable game bag! I can only agree with Alberto, who as we reach the team for dinner taps me on the shoulder and says "Today the best birthday present has rained down on you!".