The ‘thrill’ of the hunt

Since Damaris asked the chief honcho to give us warning before he and his calvary come charging across our land in search of some unfortunate creature, it has been relatively quiet on the hunting front. A few days ago, though, we started noticing a regular group of cars parked just off the last stretch of public road (before it becomes our private drive). From the rifle-shots, it was clear that they have taken to hunting in the woods belonging to the Church. These woods abut our land but are at least 100 metres from our house so we are out of range, at least.

I wouldn’t mind if they concentrated on shooting pigeons, the rabbits and hares which find our orchard so nutritious, wild boar and crows but they insist on shooting thrushes, woodpeckers and anything which is foolish enough to think a tree in the middle of the woods is a good place to live.

These hunters are a funny lot. Mainly middle-aged to elderly men, they dress up in camouflage gear, smoke the Italian equivalent of ‘Capstan Full Strength’ cigarettes and creep furtively from bush to bush. They will also take the liberty of throwing their rubbish down in your field and even building a hide from corrugated iron sheets and anything else at hand.

From time to time we have to go to the ‘Hunting and Fishing’ shop (also an ironmongers). We’ve renamed it the ‘Rootin’, tootin’, shootin’ shop’ for obvious reasons. It is usually full of the aforesaid old men hanging around boasting about (presumably) the smallest bird they’ve ever shot. Apparently it’s ok to shoot migrating birds because they aren’t native. You can never be too sure what they are talking about because the nose-tapping and whispering stops as soon as you enter the shop.

Fortunately there is a growing movement – particularly among the younger generation – that finds hunting unacceptable. Unfortunately, the government makes a great deal of money from license fees paid by hunters so it is not about to throw that revenue away. This leaves each individual land-owner to attempt to come to some agreement with the local hunters group.