I recently visited a small village in the north of Italy. There are only about two hundred people living there and hunting is still cause for pride. While I was there I met a really nice Italian gentleman who’s filled his home with stacks and stacks of dead animals. Like we’ve reported before, taxidermists have a tendency to exaggerate, but this was beyond anything I’ve seen before. Mind you, it was still a beautiful house, a little bit like an Italian version of A Nightmare Before Christmas meets the YSL Christie’s auction catalogue.
Advertisement
"There were no schools in my village, so I was sent to boarding school as a kid, and that’s where I grew up. I visited my parents at the weekends, and every time my father would show me a new animal that he’d stuffed. He used to play guessing games with me, asking me to name the new animals. Back at boarding school I passed the lonely weekdays by studying a picture book of birds that I got one year for Christmas. It was only one time that I failed at guessing the right name of a bird. It turned out that my father had butchered three different birds and then stitched them back together. We called it Frankenstein."
Advertisement
"It was Christmas Eve, and it was snowing heavily. I was out duck hunting, and the two ducks I shot fell into the river, ending up stuck in a dam. I put on my wading boots and went to retrieve the prey. The water was so cold it felt like my bones were disintegrating, and the boots and socks seemed to do nothing to prevent it. When I was no more than a taunting half-meter away from the ducks, I realized the riverbed was sinking away under my feet, and I wouldn’t be able to wade all the way to them. I’ve never let a duck get away in my life, and I wasn’t going to start now, so without thinking, I jumped into the water and recovered the ducks by swimming. It was the worst cold I’ve ever felt. I walked back home, it's almost two kilometers, and the only thing I was able to think about was what kind of excuse I’d make up for my mum. She did get really pissed, but the following morning we ate a Christmas duck."
Advertisement
"I was six when I first shot a rifle. My father gave me his Flobert cal. 9, a small sparrows gun. When I killed my first prey, my father stuffed it and made a trophy to put by the others."LUCA DEASTI
