Wild boar hunting in Italy
Wild boar hunting in Italy – the call of the wild Italian law
Wild boar hunting in Italy is generally allowed and ruled by regional laws that most of time put at risk people safety.
Wild boar hunting in Italy reminds a little bit of fox hunting – dogs running in the bush searching and chasing wild boars who are forced to run towards squads of hunters who have being waiting for them all morning – seated on portable chairs eating paninis and drinking grappa to warm up in the cold winter mornings.
Wild boars are hunted both for their meat, considered a delicacy, and to mitigate the damage they cause to crops and forests.
Wild boars are very charismatic and steeped in history, legends and folklore – one of the Twelve Labours of Hercules was hunting a wild boar. However they have an unfounded fearsome reputation. They’re very shy, retiring animals and they’ll run away from human contact before we know they’re about.
More dangerous than the wild boars are the Italian hunters. In last winter hunting season 2004-2005 they have shot dead more than 50 people and injured 94. This year season figures says 21 people dead and 54 injured – and it is not finished yet.
More than 800.000 registered Italian hunters shot 700 million bullets (25.000 tons of lead a year). Hunting in Italy is a business of three billion euros and for companies like Beretta (rifles) and Fiocchi (bullets), the less are the restrictions, the more are the hunters and the bigger is the business.
In Italy the lobby of the shotgun companies are quite strong and Italian hunters have more rights on private lands than the actual landowners. By Italian law people are forced to fence their properties to defend themselves of their beloved – family cats and dogs included – from squads of armed fanatic hunters who are in the right while shooting 50-150 meters away from someone house – because for the Italian law – the right of shutting a pray is more important than people safety.
Nearly every weekend this winter I have been surrounded by over excided over 65 hunters dressed like Rambo who have shot down even wild boars in my vegetable garden only 150 meters from my house without caring of my presence and with guns and bullets that can kill a man at nearly 1 km of distance. And why can they do that? Because I haven’t fenced my garden.
But wild boars don’t attack men if not in danger. Hunters can instead kill other men – by mistake. And they do it in Italy.