Love for hunting is a love which is difficult to define in words: it must be lived.

Those who do not know hunting do not know how deep and innate the love for it is and do not know how it triggers a mysterious attraction in all those who practice it.

In the month of love, we asked the Montefeltro staff what they love most about hunting.

Here’s what they replied:

Carlo loves to observe the behavior of animals.

Why do I love hunting?

The answers are many, but the aspect that I like most and fascinates is the opportunity to learn about the behavior of animals (even those that cannot be hunted) in all its completeness. I hunt with both pointing dogs and big game hunting.

The dog acts as an intermediary between the hunter and the animals and thanks to the dog you can know and understand the movements, the areas of pasture, how they defend themselves, and what and where they eat.

While hunting ungulates, on the other hand, you have the opportunity to observe all types of animals that populate the woods and fields and their behavior (perhaps better than with the dog, which in spite of itself still creates disturbance in the area we go hunting).

If we try to approach the environment around us not as mere predators, but as observers, we will discover a world that hides many things to observe, discover and love.

That’s why I love hunting.

Enrico loves his dogs

amore per la cacciaTo love is an important word with a profound meaning.

As a good dog lover, for me, loving hunting goes hand in hand with loving dogs, especially hunting ones and specifically English setters.

My 6 English setters (Sestri, Demon, Dino, Eto, Fauniera, and Kester) each have their own character and personality.

I love interacting with them, and growing them since they are puppies I establish an indissoluble bond with them.

A glance is enough for me to understand if everything is okay and if they are healthy, and from their behavior I understand everything.

With each of them, I have lived unique moments around the world, the one with Farin is unforgettable.

Farin del Meschio, a great “hunter”, loved hunting deeply and was born to hunt! And luckily for me, Farin became a great woodcock dog.

In Crimea, in MontagnaFredda, I lost the satellite connection with Farin.

I knew I would not lose him because Farin was connected and morbidly attached to me! But not knowing where he was consumed me inside.

I stopped for a snack but the thought was fixed on him: where will it go?

I decide to move to intercept the dog. With me, there are 2 hunting clients who, given my apprehension, join in Farin’s research.

I went right to where I last saw Farin, pressing the GPS search button again, and by magic reconnected with the Fari collar: it was stuck at 350 meters.

I went back to the jeep, took the shotgun, and headed following the GPS directions.

A few moments later I was next to Farin who was standing in a wonderful posture. I noticed the white tail feathers of a woodcock, which opened and closed as if drawing a crown.

caccia col cane

It was she, her majesty the queen who had kept Farin in total trance for so long.

It flew up after a while, I waited for the most right moment and the first shot took that woodcock that Farin promptly brought back into my hand.

This is why I love hunting.

I love hunting because it amplifies the emotions I experience with my dogs.

Andrea loves contact with nature

love for huntingWhen a hunter states that the desire to be in contact with nature is the reason that drives him to hunt, he is supporting an absolute truth, most of the time perceived as a foregone answer and repeated in the absence of other arguments.

In fact, it may seem so if we limited ourselves to the concept of physical contact: it is clear that the forest, as well as the mountain meadows and the stretches of water, are popular places to be able to carry out hunting activities.

But this contact is the same that each of us establishes, hunter or not when he decides to leave the house for a walk: he immerses himself in the environment, in nature, enjoys its benefits, and admires its beauties.

But let’s go further, I like to think that in the concise answer of a hunter there is something greater than a simple “state in place”: a quirk that transforms us from passive spectators into active users.

At this point “being in contact with nature” becomes a question of empathy, relationship, and responsibility. What is created is a real relationship made of knowledge and respect that goes far beyond the physicality of “stopping for a few hours”.

Seasonality and the study of life cycles, for example, are almost ridiculed concepts in a world where it is possible to eat strawberries at Christmas and grow a chicken whit estrogens in two months: “being in contact with nature” means first of all respect the times, methods and balances.

The hunting laws themselves are built for this purpose and every hunter is therefore obliged to act according to these rules more than anyone else.

Knowing places and periods of nesting, reproduction, and wintering makes a hunter in true “contact with nature”.

Being aware of being part of this great ecosystem is finally the essential premise to be able to “get in touch”. In fact, every human action corresponds to a reaction from the environment and it becomes essential to know it.

Just as it is essential to know that high densities of animals correspond to a high probability of epidemics.

In the end: getting in touch with nature becomes synonymous with study and knowledge.

The hunt lasts three months a year but forces anyone who wants to practice it to stay “in nature” for the remaining nine. That’s why I love hunting 365 days a year.

Luca loves to travel

I love hunting and nature, living them both in an all-encompassing way and combining this with a passion for travel, over the years I went to discover places, people, and fauna around the world.

I travel for the same reason as travel: to travel. But my dromomania, the unstoppable impulse that pushes me to move from one place to another, the typical “disease” of nomads, becomes the desire for a hunting experience to sublimate my two souls, that of a traveler, and that of a hunter.

The effort of long hours in a plane, train, or car disappears facing the scenarios that the journey shows you: the highest mountain ranges in the world, the intricate rainforests, the African bush, the rocky deserts, and the humid woods birch of the great North.

The comparison with different cultures, also from the hunting point of view, becomes the incentive to leave, deepen knowledge and absorb distant customs and traditions, transforming itself into a subject on which to reflect and enrich one’s cultural background.

Thus, the track on the elephant, the pursuit of a Dagga Boy, and the approach to an ibex or a Marco polo become a school of life, broadening the horizons of a passion that otherwise would only remain closed between the walls of the house.

I travel to feel the mist on the Rufiji River as mine as I feel that on the plains of my home, to wade with the same pace with which through our ditches the Save river and to smell as my heritage also the scent of mango trees or milk of yak.

“And I will have a dream of the sea and tomorrow a wood fire so that the blue air becomes home.”

Whatever the reason why you love hunting and if you want to experience the emotions it gives you together with Montefeltro, discover our programs!

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