The Next Best Things

Vito and his new setter Artur

This weekend while on a business trip to Europe I was able to visit my friend Vito Benevelli in San Mauro Torinese, just outside of Torino in the Italian Piemonte, where Vito has his excellent restaurant Frandin "da Vito", almost at the shadow of the Superga.

Initially we had planned to hunt, but we were cheated by weather and the ever changing local hunting laws that no long allow hunting with snow on the ground, and you can bet there was snow!

So we did the next best things, we ate game and talked a lot about hunting.

Vito served me over the course of a couple fantastic dinners his wonderful "patè di selvagina", "terrina di coniglio", and "cappriolo al Barollo" along a couple bottles of excellent Nebbiolo wine, including a new to me Chiesa San Carlo from Monforte D'Alba.

Of course that in order to o along with the food and the libations over a complete weekend we need to bring stories from times gone by and sometimes stretch the truth a little bit...or a lot, depending on the point of view.

Being an experienced hunter and fisherman, Vito knows well the behavior of our class of people, and told me that there is a Piemontese proverb that says that in any place there is a congregation of seven hunters and seven fishermen the result is a total of twenty eight liars. While I don't know the intricacies of Piemontese mathematics, I am sure that he is probably right.

Along the same lines he told me a story that he assured me was completely true. While hunting "La Regina del Bosco", the beccacia or woodcock, Vito was surprise by a sudden flush that had escaped the sensitive nose of his trusted setters, and with lightening reflexes he shot at the departing bird and hit it.

We all know that the woodcock has a very long beak and this particular one when falling from the late afternoon skies came down beak first, and like an arrow it trespassed the head of a big hare, mortally wounding it.

The agonizing hare kicked spasmodically with its powerful hind legs and in doing so it uncovered an enormous and valuable truffle (Tartuffo) from the forest ground.

While I was not present at that occasions must tell you that it is not but the truth for I have seen the beccacia and ate the hare and the truffles at Vito's restaurant.

A similar but perhaps less fantastic story also happened to me many years ago. I was fishing at a small stream in Brazil and had already landed landed seven dourados, the fantastic Salminus maxilosus, none less than seven kilograms in weight.

Suddenly across the stream I saw a fantastic buck and counted twenty eight points in its antlers. Very stealthily I raised the 458 Winchester Magnum that I kept at hand just in case some pink elephant decided to come out of the woods and holding it in only one hand I shot the buck through the heart.

The brutal recoil jarred the rifle from my hand and its stock embedded in the bank behind me and when I recovered it I saw that it had shattered the head of a water moccasin that was about to strike me.

I raised my hands to the skies to thank The Lord for saving me and grabbed a mallard in each hand. This is nothing but the truth!

Let's say that a Vito and I agreed to continue our conversation at another time, maybe in a bear camp in Canada.

Nature Wars

Beaver continue to impact the landscape

I just finished reading the excellent book "Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards Into Battlegrounds" (eISBN: 978-0-307-98566-8) by Jim Sterba.

In this very well researched and well written book Mr. Sterba analysis several "cases" of how radical nature changes that range from an incredible reforestation process in her Eastern United States, to wildlife population explosion that goes from beavers, Canada geese and whitetail deer to feral domestic cats, as well as the explosive human spraw through suburbs and exurbs, and the resulting mutual encroachment and conflicts between human and wild life.

Sterba study spans beyond the standard evaluation of habitat carrying capacity and considers the social carrying capacity as a threshold for human tolerance of the close presence of wildlife, different aspects of human-wildlife interface, the fact that Man has been an integral and active participant of the natural world, and discuss in good depth the process of denaturalization that is taking place in the United States today, where people no longer have an active role in interacting with nature, but take the position of a simple and sometimes irrelevant observer, as a key element in the balance or lack of it between humans and wildlife.

I almost every chapter there is a discussion of how to restore some semblance of balance in an effective way, and how the denaturalization mentioned above may deeply endanger the long sustainability of our constantly evolving backyard environment.

The book is not at all partisan, but if there is a conclusion is that too much passion and misunderstanding are a true barrier to fact based scientific management of the environment and the relationships within it, and that a dwindling hunter population and ever mounting restriction on where and how to hunt are clearly an aggravating factor in the current lack of balance.

"Nature Wars" is a great reading for us hunters in order to provide solid argumentation to defend our passion in face an ever mo uneducated, passional and partisan opposition.

The Haversack

Your haversack can take you here and beyond
(Illustration from "Caçadas de Pedrinho" - book by Monteiro Lobato)

When I was a child a haversack (the name in Portuguese is "embornal") was a very common household possession, especially in the rural environment where I grew up.

Every one of the farm employees had one, almost always white made from discarded and reclaimed flour or sugar cotton sacs and with their initials embroiled by hand, with greater of lesser skill. Every morning around 9:30 the wives or daughters would bring the haversacks with the just cooked lunch and rang them in hooks outside the farm workshop from where they would be taken to fields.

That pretty much defined the standard dimension of the haversacks, since they had to have enough room for a caldron about six inches in diameter, which contained he inevitable rice and beans filling about three quarters of the volume and some sort of meat, pork or chicken being the most common, since almost every family kept at least one capon and several piglets plus a number of chickens, hens, and at least one nice looking rooster.

The lid was kept in place by an elastic band, and together with it would go a former soft drink glass bottle filled with very sweet, and soon to be cold, coffee. Those haversacks had a very practical use, but almost every one of those men also liked to fish, and some to hunt, even if only to provide some free protein for their families, but none had fishing boxes, all they need would fit in another haversack. And why not, since their wives could make them for almost free?

My brothers and I had our lunches in haversacks many times, more out of wanting to be part of the environment than for need, but like most of the other children in the farm we used ours to help us in our adventures.

So I started to consider what a haversack should be stuffed with to make us feel like children again!

First and foremost it should have a pocket knife of any type imaginable. Of course a Swiss Army knife would be the most desirable and useful knife anyone could carry, but they were too expensive and rare for children, and probably we would have to rely on a single blade friction folder, almost certainly with a sheep's foot blade that was handled down by some salesman, most likely chemicals being used o fight a losing battle win the boll weevils that were destroying our cotton, and that my father to his grave would swear where parachuted in Brazil by the CIA, so the big American companies could sell us their chemicals.

Next we must have a slingshot, as no self-respecting boy at the time would go out in the bush unarmed. Many dangerous mangos and other less desirable fruits would still be haunting the country if we did not have our slingshots to bring them down from their towering heights. Of course we could also try our luck at the multiple doves and pigeons that populated our woods or some careless tinamou that decided to prove Darwin wrong.

Marbles would be third in line, for they provided both entertainment during long lazy days and also could use as ammunition to the slingshots in case a trophy of enough importance would present itself for such expensive and high performance ammunition.

Following these basic staples we have a long list of absolute must haves, at least in the opinion of a professional small boy like me, and I will present the in no particular order.

Fishing hooks, sinkers and line that could all be accommodated inside a match box allowed us to y our hands for the "lambaris" (Astyanax sp.) and "traíras" (Hoplias sp.) among other fish that hid themselves in the dark muddy waters of the Córrego do Rosário that bisected our property, and that would come out in the early evening, about the same time that the annoying mosquitos would wake up to make us company and render us misery. A small glass jar with a screw in top that formerly held medicine or food is always useful to carry earth worms, rotting corn or other bait.

It is hard to overstate the importance of twine or cord or even some steel wire. They are essential to make an "arapuca" a very effective trap to catch birds and other small animals.

There is no reason not to carry as small container of .177" air gun pellets, even if your father, like mine, did not allow you to have an air gun. You could always come across another kid that had one, but had no pellets, and the priceless gift of half a dozen pellets or so would surely grant you access to that coveted gun. But I can't complain about my father for as much as he was afraid of air guns, he would allow me to carry a small bore shotgun, so in my haversack I always had a small handful of .310" rimfire shotshell made by CBC. The older version had glass wads that let us see the No. 11 shot while the newer ammunition was crimped.

Matches or a Bic lighter are critical to start our fires so we can cook our fish or the rare birds we hunted with our mortal slingshots. The frying pans were made from discarded cooking oil cans and were generally good for a single meal. More cans could be found when necessary. Of course the pocket knife was used to make he fry pan and then become the cooking utensil.

The haversack should also carry a small and inexpensive flashlight. Nowadays we have reliable and bright LED hand torches that cost next to nothing, but to us professional small boys (and I freely steel once more the expression from Robert Ruark) nothing is better than and old and barely functional flashlight, with worn out batteries that barely light the old bulb, and that before the night is over will have to be boiled or frozen to give us a couple more lumens that reflected from the eyes of a timid alligator someplace win the lagoon.

Being the nerd that I always was my haversack was also home to a magnifying glass, mostly used to burn black holes in mango leaves, and a small notebook and pencil, that of course was sharpened by the inseparable pocket knife.

A whistle is very useful if you are lost, or even if you just like to annoy people and disturb their early afternoon nap and any child will soon find out how easy it is to lose it when overused or misused.

A very important item is a magnetic compass, especially if it is inexpensive and not too reliable, as it provides us a good reason to get lost for as long as we desire.

A good haversack can carry many other essentials, but it cannot transport or contain the most essential and necessary "items" for a us, professional small boys, adventure spirit and imagination.

Just get away from this computer screen and go explore your own backyard! You will discover a world that you thought was lost.

Bob-white Quail & Pasta

This is not a pizza!

This is a very simple but delicious recipe that was prepared by my friend Daniel Rodrigues from Caxias do Sul - Brasil - on Sunday, January 27, after I brought a nice bunch of Bob-white quail following a hunt at Bruce, Steve and Mike at Pine Wing Preserve (www.pinewingpreserve.org) in Wetumpka, Alabama.

I will tell about the hunting at a later time, but I would like to share the recipe that feeds ten very hungry people right now!

Ingredients

20 Bob-white quail

2.5 packs of Barilla spaghetti (1 1/4 Kg)

300 grams Bacon

5 cloves of garlic

1large onion

12 sage leaves

1 sprig basil

Olive oil

Salt

Black pepper (if you like it, I don't)

Cabernet wine

Parmesan cheese

Preparation

Marinate the quail in the wine, salt, pepper and sage

Cut the bacon in small cubes, fry it and set aside

Fry the onion & garlic and set aside

Seal the quail by frying it in olive oil. After this add the marinade, bacon, onion & garlic and let cook until tender

After the quail is ready, cook the pasta as directed in the pack

Add the pasta to the quail and before serving add the basil and some of the cheese

Serve immediately

In the photo above, we served the quail & pasta in the crust of a RAR Gran Formaggio Parmesan wheel that we rescued after a very special celebration. It adds a lot to the presentation, taste and ambiance. We did not have any RAR wine left, and had to make do with other drinks.

Enjoy it!