FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Stuff

Get stuffed in Italy

I recently visited a small village in the north of Italy.


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

Eugenio, 53, does not want to be photographed, but he tells me that his collection of stuffed animals is made up of nearly 300 specimens, “Almost all of them were shot and stuffed by me and my father,” he says. “This was before certain species were red-listed and protected.” When I look around the house I realize that if people found out about this place, the police, according to the new laws, would be making several trips away with carloads of the deceased.

“But, why should I tell you this?" Eugenio says. "Young people are just interested in filling their stomachs with beer.” I manage to convince him that even though, yes, I most certainly am very interested in filling my stomach with beer, I’m still a big fan of eccentric home decoration. He sits me down to share some of his hunting stories with me.


“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

“Hunting accidents are very common. Hunting requires attention, concentration and much skill, all things that are important to me, but I’ve still managed to get shot. It was a November morning and I was hunting with my friend along the river. I was on one side, he was on the other: so that we wouldn’t miss any prey along the way. Mid-morning my friend’s dog startled a duck over on their side. The duck skimmed across the water towards me, and my friend shot at it from the hip. A few bullets ricocheted off some protruding branches and I was hit in four places in my chest and legs. One bullet still remains embedded in the handle of my rifle. Two were removed. One is still in my right leg--the doctors were unable to get it out of there.”

“I don’t believe that the dog is man’s best friend, unless the man is a hunter. My dad and his buddy spent all their free time together, hunting. They had repaired an old Vespa, and they’d ride it together, carrying two rifles, two pairs of boots, lunch and a change of clothes. The dogs ran eagerly behind the Vespa, hungry for blood. But one day my father’s dog suddenly got a bad limp on the way back from the hunt. My dad took the dog in his arms, holding it like a baby as they rode the Vespa back to the house. When they arrived, the dog jumped out of his arms and ran to his food bowl as if nothing happened. Smart dog.”

“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.”

“We used to have a lot of dogs. We had some English Setters, some Kurzhaar and a Pointer. The pointer was my favourite. She was called Dharma, like the tiger of Tremal-Naik: the Indian hunter of snakes and my literary hero. Once she got a litter of babies that we sold, the way you do with puppies. That same night Dharma ran away from the dog pad. She never came back.”


“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.”