Mysterious hole

On a walk with the dogs today to an area of steep hillside near the house where I rarely go, I came across a hole.

The mysterious hole

It didn’t immediately strike me as being an animal’s den because its main thrust, so to speak, was vertically down rather than horizontally into the bank.

I had a walking stick with me and I prodded into the dead leaves at the bottom: it didn’t seem to go anywhere.

The strange thing was that, just before finding the hole, I’d noticed, as if marking out its location, 4 saplings snapped off near the top with the broken part left dangling. This was no coincidence and definitely the work of a human.

So what was some surreptitious hunter signposting, either for his own purposes or those of someone else?

Did it mean that the hole itself was the work of a human and if so, what could it possibly be for? Hiding-place for contraband? Wine cooler?

Alternatively, it might have been made by an animal, and the hunter had left signs so he could find it again.

It could have been dug by a wild boar. The pits they scraped in the vegetable garden looking for truffles were deep and neat. But their visit was characterised by multiple holes: in fact they fair honeycombed the ground. This was just one hole.

Porcupines dig burrows, but they would have gone deeper. They also sleep during daylight hours in tunnels of bent grasses, but this was far too laboured to be a casual resting-place.

I’m mighty puzzled.

Hare today

It rained today which is probably good news from the hunting point of view – there’s unlikely to be any.

There was in the week though. The guy who managed a quick hunt before donning his tuxedo to attend a wedding was back again. And he did actually phone the night before, for which I was effusively grateful.

He told me that he’d be coming onto our land between 9.00 and 9.30 am. I planned to let the dogs out at 8.15 so I’d have plenty of time to get them in again.

I hadn’t let them out, therefore, by 7.15 am, which was when he turned up. He’s another one like the surveyors who can’t tell the time.

He also told us he’d be hunting wild boar, which would have meant he was quickly through and off our land.

Instead, he stuck around for 2 hours, sending his dogs through the woods and stomping all over the field.

I guess he was after hares, and I would also guess that he killed one because I heard 2 shots, one of which was followed by a scream. Hares scream when they’re caught.

Hound of the Baskervilles - a hunting dog in the orchard

I managed to get a photo of one of his dogs as it made a last pass through the orchard. Having rounded them up, he drove away.

No man is an island

Our place is definitely not an island, let alone the castle that Englishmen try to turn their home into. It sometimes feels as if our privacy and tranquillity are under siege.

Today I’d just brought Kepler in from doing his early morning ablutions when all the dogs started baying and jumping up at the bedroom windowsill, nearly tearing the curtains.

Outside was a hunter making his leisurely way up the hillside in the company of 3 dogs. He wasn’t wearing an orange reflective jacket so I knew he wasn’t part of the official ‘squadra’ which, in any case, would have alerted us (I hope).

I shot out in my dressing gown and called to him from the drive.

The upshot of our shouted conversation was that he claimed to live locally and be after wild boar. He said he knew the huntsman who normally phones us, and that he would get our phone number off him and phone us in future.

His parting shot (no pun intended) was that since our land is not a ‘Reserve’ - by which is meant somewhere that hares, for example, are reared for sport - he has every right to hunt across it.

I phoned the normal hunt spokesman who just kept repeating that they always phone us. He wasn’t sure if he knew this guy. The one he thought it might be was going to a wedding today …

I phoned our neighbour who knew that pet dogs could be killed by hunts crossing the land, and also knew that nothing could be done about it.

I can understand that a boar hunt would be a complete farce if it had to circumvent this and that protected piece of land, but I should like us to be accorded the courtesy of a warning so that we have the opportunity to protect ourselves.

The trail bikers who came up the drive this afternoon warrant less consideration, as far as I’m concerned.

I would have expected the overgrown continuation of the track to be a deterrent in itself, but Clive says that in his heyday he would have taken a bike right up the hill, over the tussocky grass.

Hillside where trail bikers might have made sport

It follows, therefore, that  these bikers could in theory have spent all afternoon criss-crossing the field, mangling juniper bushes and orchid bulbs, endangering the dogs and driving us mad with the noise.

Which is why the West tribe as a unit, Kepler included, sent them packing.

Hunting dog

The other day we were warned about a boar hunt crossing our land and nothing happened. Today we had no warning but a hunting dog came right up to the house.

The hunting dog

It must have been lost, or at least a maverick member of the pack.

It may well have caught the scent of wild boar because they’ve been in exactly the places it was sniffing.

Whatever the justification, our dogs had quite a lot to say about it.

Kepler was the first to spot the intruder, and gave tongue in his dulcet tones, followed by a deafening volley from the other 2.

I can’t quite make out if they want to join in, or are voicing their objection.

Anyway, I managed to photograph our visitor inches away through the patio door.

Boar hunt

Just as we were getting up today, we had a call on the cellphone. It was from a hunt organiser, giving us half an hour’s notice before a boar hunt came onto our land.

This personal warning came about as a result of my going into the Comunita Montana to explain that we couldn’t see the notices posted at the beginning of the road unless we went out.

The idea is to give us a chance to get the dogs in. And keep them in.

Today we heard some rumpus but saw neither hide nor hair of the hunting dogs themselves.

When they do come, they’re unmistakeable because they reconnoitre right up to the walls of the house, sending our dogs into a frenzy of territorialism. Plus they wear bells round their necks.

The photo is of a similar occasion on our land another year.

A boar-hunting 'posse'

The whole event can be quite exciting: watching for the lead dog, seeing the others come into view, then the huntsmen…

I’ve no problem with the controlled culling of wild boar although I wouldn’t want to witness the kill. Boars have no natural predators here and could quickly become a major pest.