The other day as we were sitting down to lunch in our farmhouse kitchen, we were disturbed by a high-pitched squealing, clearly from a creature in some distress. Peering out the window to the farmyard below, Mario’s wife held a rabbit by its feet, the last of its lifeblood staining the grass below, a macabre stain on the garden tool with a serrated edge lying culpably next to it.
It was something of a jarring image, one that has stayed with me. This shouldn’t be a surprising sight, they are animal farmers after all, and out here in the Italian countryside one is constantly reminded of seasons and cycles and life and death. But the banality of the death implement, identical to one that we use for pruning bushes and cutting small branches, along with the knowing, terror-induced screams of a normally-silent animal, lent a heavy aspect to the fate of a “commodity” whose fate was predestined anyway.
Somehow the hunter walking through the fields with a wriggling wild hare in his hands (I saw this scene the other day) conjures a different image – the odds were stacked against the hare, true, but at least he had run around outside for a while, and had the possibility of escape (however slim), unlike his sentenced farmstock brethren.
Which brings me to the Italian – or rather, marchigiani – hunter, a constant sight alongside the rural countryside out here. While almost every square inch of land is put to farm use, in between the fields, tucked into the dales and ditches, are thickets of bush and brush in which live the targets of their bloodlust – hare, pheasant, wild geese, fox, and the big prize, cinghiale (wild boar).
He’s invariably in his camouflaged fatigues (the hunter, that is), looking the part as he ambles through the fields in search of prey one-tenth his size whose dearth of knowledge and access to the kind of hardware that will ultimately spell their doom stacks the odds even further against them.
I’ve often wondered why the marchigiani huntsman wears camouflage – it’s not as if he tries to conceal himself, creeping along quietly to sneak up undetected on his quarry. He crunches through the bush, constantly exuding the giveaway odor of cigarette smoke, as subtle and inconspicuous as the bounding, barking dogs that accompany him, bursting with energy out of their caged existence for these moments of freedom.
His auricular and odorous prudence aside, the marchigiani huntsman is equally adept on the visual front. As I drive along the backroads concentrating on my immediate task of avoiding potholes, tractors, and other cars driving towards me on my side, with casual ease I invariably spot him a literal mile away across the fields as he “stalks” his victims, making a wonderful bulls-eye himself should one have a need for a spot of target practice.
Talking of targets, their shots frequently pierce the silence, normally raising an eyebrow and a consideration as to its proximity. This past week the shots were particularly close, so we peered out the farmhouse window and saw one of the camouflage brigade abandoning his cigarette and charging down the hill after his prey. This was not without a wheeze and a wobble, I might add – it seemed as if this level of physical activity presented a rather infrequent demand on his body.
Ahead were his dogs, yapping and tearing into the bush in front, blissfully ignorant of what they were after. A frantic quack-quack disturbed a duck which went frantically flapping off just inches ahead of the dog’s snapping teeth.
And then everything went still. They – hunter and dogs – stood around with attentive anticipation, waiting and listening as if something was imminent. Perhaps it was the duck he was shooting at after all. But if it was injured, or dead, it wasn’t giving itself up easily. We watched for a while, and then, bored with the (lack of) proceedings, went back to our things.
I’m not sure how frequently this scene replays itself across the
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