The air reeks of wet dogs, and the fog makes them even damper, therefore even smellier. The stench intensifies when some of the dogs, in the back of the pickup truck, relieve themselves, perhaps because they are cold. A hunter tells me in Sardinian: In dies’ proanas istan gai, “on rainy days they are always like this”.
The dogs are restless, so agitated they cannot stand still. They seem almost mad, running back and forth inside the small trailers used to transport them to the hunt. They sense that today they will be put to the test.
Tigre, Lola, Conte, Diana, Luna: each dog has a name, and they are spoken of as one would speak of close relatives one is proud of. “He’s brave, alert, strong,” the hunters say, as if they were talking about people. Because the dogs are the most important participants in the hunt; without them, there is no hunting. I get the impression that the owner of a good hunting dog might feel half a step above the others, as if the dog’s skill were a personal merit, a contribution to the hunting company.
But if a dog fails to do its job, then it is useless. Non serviti, says Mario, a hunter in his fifties. And when a dog is worthless, it becomes bad luck, a misfortune, the object of jokes. A useless hunting dog is publicly labeled in mocking ways: cane pasteri, cane ’e zottola, cane ’e ballizzu, pasta-eating dog, bowl dog, veranda dog. In short, good only for eating and shitting.
Like Pippo, the only one who stays behind when the others are released to search for game. He is small, tail tucked between his legs, too timid to face a fierce and ruthless wild boar. While the other twenty dogs follow their scent and rush impatiently into the woods, Pippo remains on the road with me.
I look at him with the eyes of someone from the city, I talk to him, stroke him, and feel compassion. But here that gaze is completely out of place. It comes from a world that has nothing to do with hunting.
During the first drive, I am part of the canaglios, the beaters. They are called that because they guide the dogs into the woods and push the boars toward the postas, the shooters’ positions. As canaglios we must shout, make all kinds of noise to flush the boar out. The more organized ones carry whistles and horns. I do not have any, so I have to scream the whole time, and by the end of the drive my voice is gone.
Marco, the su capu canaglios, the one who coordinates the beaters, tells me: “Listen, you have to cover from here to there and make noise. And make sure the dogs don’t turn back on the other side.”
The dogs must find the boars and drive them uphill, where the armed hunters are waiting.
“When you hear the dogs ganninde, then shout as loud as you can.”
Gannire is one of those Sardinian words used only in the context of hunting. It describes a particular sound the dogs make only when they have found game: a muffled, impatient bark.
I do what Marco tells me, and Pippo is frightened by my shouting. Every now and then I bend down to pet him.
After a while I hear the dogs ganninde, so I shout even louder. Then they stop. Shortly after, they start again.
“Damn foxes!” a hunter says when we meet again, after one of them has shot one.
“Foxes make fools of the dogs. They run in circles while the fox laughs,” Marco explains. “You can tell it’s not a boar because the dogs’ gannire sounds different, broken. With a boar, they gannini without pause.”
“That’s why foxes have to be shot,” Juanne says, laughing as he unloads his rifle. “They mock us and ruin the hunt.”
On the way back to the cars, the hunters tease Pippo: “Well done, Pippo, you did a great job”, “Look at him, still with lipstick and a hairstyle.”
I laugh with them, then stroke Pippo. He wags his tail; he is no longer afraid. The first drive is over.
I notice that one of the dogs has blood near its throat. The owner checks him and finds a small, almost invisible wound. They explain that he must have fought with the boar and been struck by its tusks: est puntu, “he has been “stabbed” by the boar”.
I feel pity for the dog; the others do not. Since I arrived, the hunters treat me with cautious concern. “Be careful” they tell me. They are unsure how to behave with me: I move in a space that traditionally belongs to them.
I grew up in the same village as these men, yet this world has always remained closed to me. In Sardinia, hunting is not just a pastime. It is part of an old social system that relies more on community and internal rules than on the state. And although in many parts of the island women hunt today, in my village it remains an exclusively male tradition: a closed social space where old forms of solidarity, hierarchy and masculine identity survive.
The dogs are dry now and no longer smell. They are loaded back onto the trucks and we move to another part of the woods, a place called Chilisi, a bit farther away. From the window I look at the Mediterranean scrub covering the hills, and at the sun that has returned.
In Chilisi the landscape is striking, and this time I go with the shooters. We walk along the dry bed of a river; it is warm and I take off my jacket.
Unlike the beaters, we must remain silent and wait for the animals. But the same thing happens again: the dogs ganninde, yet no boar appears. I think of Pippo on the other side with the beaters, surely frightened again.
We move once more, this time closer to the village. The place is called su e Ovaleddu. As the hunters decide where to stand, Marco says to a shooter after indicating his position: Mi chi ti vriccat’ Sirvone, “that way the boar will make a fool of you”.
The hunters speak of the boar without an article, as if referring to a person. Later, when I ask Tore, who has hunted for decades, why they speak of it that way, he replies: “He’s clever. You have to be careful he doesn’t trick you and escape.”
For the hunters, the boar and the fox are more than animals. Both are seen as cunning adversaries, capable of confusing the dogs, mocking the men, slipping away from control. Like the boar, the fox has many nicknames. Both are spoken of as if they had intentions and character, two untamable figures constantly challenging the men.
The hunters explain that the high number of wild boars damages fields and pastures, and that hunting is necessary to maintain balance. Someone has to take care of it. It also sounds a little like a justification.
We are back in open countryside and I am with a shooter. Reaching the spot was difficult; we had to cross dense scrub without a proper path. My hands are scratched.
From afar I hear the beaters shouting. The echo electrifies me, together with the bells around the dogs’ necks. They search, search, search, and as we wait, I feel a surge of adrenaline.
Now the dogs are ganninde and the shooter signals me to stand even stiller and quieter. The dogs approach, out of themselves, their muffled, impatient barking never stopping.
I hear a heavy breath, deeper than the dogs’, a strange sound moving through the scrub. I immediately understand it is not the dogs. It is heavier, more cautious, as if someone did not want to be discovered.
It is him. Sirvone. The boar, the cunning one.
He stops behind the bushes; we cannot see him. The shooter raises his rifle. I stand behind him, throat dry, holding my breath. One-two-three-four-five-six-seven seconds. We are all still. Even the boar behind the bushes is still.
A shot. BOOM.
“Did you hit him?” I ask.
He does not answer.
Suddenly the boar bursts out of the bush. He has been hit. His legs still move, for the last time. I feel deep pity. Blood flows, and slowly the animal stops moving.
The cunning one is dead.
The road slopes downward and the boar begins to slide. “Help me,” the shooter says. “If he slides down, it will be hard to pull him up.”
We drag him up together. He is heavy, about fifty kilos, and we risk slipping ourselves.
Now he lies at my feet, covered in blood. One eye is outside its socket, held only by bloodied strands of flesh. Semen leaks out, and the hunter presses his hand to force the rest out. “Otherwise the meat smells and you can’t eat it,” he tells me.
As my pity slowly fades and I grow accustomed to the sight of death, we carry the animal to the road, where it is loaded onto the trailer together with the dogs. The dogs tug at it and bite it as if it were still alive, as if they were still fighting.
They explain that the boar is loaded together with the dogs so they get used to the smell. “Next time they work even better”, says Mario.
Everyone congratulates the shooter.
At the hunting lodge, the boar’s bristles are burned off with a blowtorch. I notice an old official hunting calendar, dusty and thrown into a corner. It indicates when which animals may be hunted. I doubt anyone has ever really read it.
Then the animal is skinned and gutted. Finally the meat is divided into exactly equal portions, as required by Sardinian communal logic and its idea of justice. I receive my share as well: for today, I am part of the hunting company.
The smell of blood and game does not disturb me. It feels as if I have stepped into the past: raw meat and still-warm entrails are touched with bare hands, as was once done.
I have the feeling of having come into real contact with reality. It is easy to perceive it as something alien or disturbing when one does not know it, when one has lost direct contact with the origin of meat. But here nothing happens that does not happen elsewhere. The difference is that here, it is visible.
