The guns are blasting outside, so it must be hunting season
in Umbria. Mushroom hunters battle
for territory, clusters of men dressed in camouflage gather on the sides of the
road clutching walkie talkies in one hand and the lead of a barking dog in the
other. Cinghiale is hunted ‘in battuta’ meaning the hunters and their dogs bark
and whoop and flush the prey into a tight spot and then they shoot it. I have
mixed feelings about battuta style hunting as it doesn’t’ seem very sporting to
have 10 men with advanced weaponry, dogs and a lot of communication devices
chasing after one wild boar. On the other hand, the terrain around here is
seriously challenging, one misstep and you disappear into the bowels of a
bottomless ravine, so maybe it’s best for everyone if they hunt in a group. That
is, everyone but the cinghiale.
Dana McCauley’s recent blog post “How Bloodthirsty are you?”
is a lively piece where she grapples with her own issues about hunting.
I have to support responsible hunting because I love to cook
and eat game, so I can’t be wishy-washy on the subject. But, could I pull the
trigger? I just don’t know.
According to my dear friend Jay Cassell, a life long hunter
and big muckedy-muck editor at Field & Stream, the number of hunters and
women hunters has risen in the US to around 15 million, but as a percentage of
the overall population, the hunting population is shrinking and women account
for less than 10% of hunters. Jay thinks I should take up hunting, and maybe
I’ll go out with him when we get back to NY, if only to symbolically honor the
fallen deer (Because Jay, if I go out with you, I totally expect to come back
with a nice buck, none of this, oh better luck next time nonsense like you pull
with fly fishing!).
In Umbria, hunting is so woven into the fabric of life, you
just accept that in the fall it sounds like you are living outside the Green
Zone in Baghdad, it’s best to wear a red bicycle helmet and you always hope
that sooner or later someone is going to hand you a choice piece of cinghiale.
This weekend, we are serving cinghiale with black olives at the Taverna del
Verziere during our Festa del Bosco and I promise to say a small prayer of
thanks to the animal spirit. It’s the least I can do.
So, what about you? Do you eat game? Could you pull the
trigger?
I do eat and enjoy game. I have nothing against hunting so long as the animal is respected and used well. It is actually hunting as sport alone such as trophy hunting or using only a small bit of an animal and discarding the rest or hunting endangered species that I take issue with. Ultimately, I see hunting as being no different than raising animals for meat on a farm. That being said, I am not a hunter, though I could be one if I had to.
Im thinking the world is a
safer place if Im not the one pulling the trigger!
A comment from Steve on the Culinate website: SOUNDS LIKE YOU ARE CLOSE TO A TRUE APPRECIATION FOR NATURE AND HER BOUNTY…..PULL THE TRIGGER AND THE PREPARATION AND FEAST WILL BE THAT MUCH MORE ENHANCED…GOOD LUCK
STEVE
Here’s my worry Steve…. I’m a rank novice and the last thing I would want to do is harm rather than a clean kill, so it’s not so much that I’m not willing but that I would need to train for this before I’d think of going out in the woods.