How to truck wild boars? It’s a simple question able to excite any hunter who participates in this fascinating practice.
Wild, tough and very aware, thanks to a very high reproductive rate, the king of the scrub is taken on in numerous Central Europe countries.
Given its long hunting tradition, there are many techniques to hunt wild boar, each with its own peculiarities and so-called “tricks of the trade”.
There are individual techniques, such as stalking and still hunting, and collective, such as battue, driven and the so-called girata.
In these latter, as in the best teams, from the leader to the beaters, each member of the group has a specific, crucial role so that hunting operations end in perfect safety and with the utmost satisfaction.
Within driven wild boar hunts, there exists a role usually entrusted to the most experienced; that hunter transforms themselves into a neo-Sherlock Holmes and, “magnifying glass in hand”, identifies, selects and analyses the tracks.
It is the tracker or tracer who from a simple footprint can understand which animal it belongs to, whether it is male or female, its weight and approximately how fresh the track is.
While for some it is nothing short of sorcery, it is most definitely true artistry!
Absolutely with experience. Having the opportunity to join a skilled hunter on this kind of hunt is the best way to learn as many secrets as possible, and solve the riddles nature sets before us.
The scouting of hunt sites usually takes place from the days before, to the morning of, the hunt in order to continuously update the tracks and erase older ones.
Nocturnal animals, wild boar love to roam around to obtain food and can go miles and miles from their shelters.
For this reason, reconstructing the interplay of the signs that the game leave during the night allows the “drawing” of a real, ideal map, which then guides the hunters and the layout of the posts.
For driven hunting, how to track wild boars in UK is essential to successfully identify the “lestre”, or dens, where the boars take shelter.
Weather and environmental conditions can affect the reading of the tracks.
In fact, tracks may seem more or less recent depending on the humidity of the environment where they are found or, conversely, in the presence of dry winds.
Footprints showing cracks and signs of dryness will obviously be earlier than fresher footprints.
While the females leave pointed and spread front footprints, the adult males leave more rounded tracks and with minimally open hooves.
With the younger quarry, on the other hand, sex identification is more difficult but it is possible for more experienced hunters to recognize their age based on their capacity for moving away from their mother.
Depending on the time of year the hunt takes place, there are different areas to put first, because the climatic factors and the length of the days will change.
At the start of the hunting season, tracks will be found mostly in shady, ventilated and dry places, which are often located near tall woods, flush with quick escape routes.
On the other hand, on chilly winter days, finding tracks near low-stemmed vegetation, such as bramble or superbly yellow broom, is more likely – a natural shelter where the wild boar loves to take refuge.
Once the tracks have been identified, the tracker, like a true detective, will have to solve the first mystery: is what lies before them a real track or a mere “sign of presence”?
In the thorniest cases, the nose of a good boar-hunting hound is essential to understanding the importance of the track identified, and deciding whether it is worth following.
We need to investigate every possible clue and know how to read what nature is silently communicating to us.
Learning to observe the grass, puddles of water, and the bark of the trees near the footprints may all be elements that facilitate the tracker‘s task.
Indeed, in situations of wild boar passage into grassy terrain, the more the grass is crushed, the more recent the quarry’s transit along that route will have been.
Knowing the habits of the game you want to challenge is essential for interpreting the signs, which together slowly make up an increasingly detailed puzzle.
Trackers are able to rely on pools of muddy water, called insogli (or mudholes), that wild boars usually roll around in – to cool down from the summer heat but specially to fight external bacteria – even in winter.
Assessment of the water clarity is an important indicator of their presence, and the proximity of the wild boar shelter, which is usually not very far away.
Another element to observe is the bark of the trees, against which wild boars rub themselves clean.
Last but not least, the “grufolate“ are crucial – the excavations that wild boar make with their snouts to ground-forage.
And then, once this “investigation” is finished, all that remains is to pick up the Feeling Slug or the Horizon and… let the hunt begin!
