4 Italians, 2 Shorthairs, a Ukrainian, a Setter, and a Munster walk into a Bed and Breakfast…
This piece is generously supported by Ugly Dog Hunting
The white-tailed jackrabbit took off through the sage, disappearing into the sandhills of southern Saskatchewan with no shots fired. After a week of truck camping out on the prairie, it was vegetables I was low on and not protein. Two Huns and a Sharptail sat in the cooler and with a day of windshield time ahead of me tomorrow it would have been foolish to pull the trigger.
And yet doubts lingered as I walked back through the buckbrush and released the dog from an awkward back foot raised point on the other side of the scrub willow. It had been a slow day and the few coveys we did locate had been busted by a combination of an over-eager dog and poor handling on my part. Maybe I should have rewarded the dog for the steady work on the rabbit? Then again, the last thing I wanted was his mind distracted away from birds? However, Rossano, whom I was meeting tomorrow, might have a nice recipe for Hare? I took the phone out of my back pocket to ask and there was already a message waiting from him.
An image of an older gentleman clad in blaze orange, proudly displaying the largest Jackrabbit I had ever seen with the attached message "No birds yet. But on the board."
"You got a recipe for those?" I replied, chuckling at the convergence of these two occurrences.
"Cacciatore style. You can do anything Cacciatore. Ragu with hare is better though."
The author, Blaine Peetso, and Rossano. Photo Rossano Russo
Bonding over a love of food and photography and long-tailed bird dogs I met Rossano, like most folks do nowadays, on the internet. He informed me he was going to be out west in the fall and told me that if I happened to be in the area I should stop in for a beer at the very least. My route back home passed through the town in which they were staying and I had no good excuse not to, though I mightily tried to find a few. For the most part I'm a solitary creature preferring the company of my dog to most others, save maybe for my wife, so it was with more than a touch of trepidation that I got out of the truck at a small-town prairie bed and breakfast to make introductions with the four strangers sitting on the deck.
Rossano and I shook hands for the first time and I was introduced to his hunting companions. Dino, Rino, and Dino. Instantly realizing that I should have substituted all the French and Okanagan bottles for a few more Italian varieties in the case of wine I had procured as an offering. They were all curious and kind and generous and insisted that I stay for supper and hunt with them the next day.
We let the dogs meet briefly, then I was handed a cold beer, and a dead Hun. We got to know each other better hunched over a bucket plucking birds, talking of birddogs and shotguns and family and food and weather and work. They were all tradesmen: Drywallers and electricians and machinists, and except for Rossano this was their first trip out west. Electrician Dino was a prototypical Italian, gruff and gregarious at the same time and a born storyteller, with all the right amounts of profanity and humour interjected throughout each anecdote to keep you laughing and listening. Drywall Dino and Rino were brothers whose father had instilled in them a love of hunting at an early age. Rino was the older brother, an old school gentleman in all the best ways and by all accounts as deadly with a 28 gauge as most folks are with a punt gun, who had a vendetta on porcupines that bordered on zealotry. The "dispatching" of porcupines isn't something I practice or condone, but you don't argue with a 60-year-old man who still tears up when he talks about the loss of a beloved dog to a porcupine encounter some 25 years earlier. It reminded me of Jim Harrison's unwavering war on rattlers after he lost his setter Tess to one. Drywall Dino was like a bird dog Big Lebowski giving little thought to much else other than good times and good vibes and good dogs. His impeccably mannered dog Zoey, a testament to the only thing he might take seriously. Rossano himself, immediately puts you at ease with his simple confidence. Warm and welcoming, he had very recently lost his mother to cancer and seemed intent on carrying on her legacy of hospitality, ensuring everyone was well fed and well beveraged.
Rino, Dino, and Dino. Photo Rossano Russo
That night he prepared a four-course meal for us. Salame al tartufo, aged pecorino and sourdough to start. Followed by a bowl of pasta al tonno with dry cured olives. For a main we were served prosciutto wrapped sharptail breast dusted in wild rice flour, seared to a perfectly medium rare and served alongside sauteed rapini. Then a simple salad dressed in olive oil and balsamic vinegar came last, which is customary in Italy apparently. The merit of which I instantly understood, served at the end, the salad is a palate cleanser and leaves the eater both satisfyingly full, yet light and refreshed. We drank bottles of red wine from small highball glasses and they recounted the day's triumphs: beautiful points and impossible shots, as well as small tragedies: a downed bird never recovered and a dog that took a tumble in a badger hole, now sidelined for a few days.
We got out of the truck at an old abandoned farmstead with the Sweetgrass Hills of Montana as a backdrop. It was a small piece to work, so I decided to sit this one out. This was their trip out west, besides everyone had watched me whiff on the two coveys of Huns my dog Fitz had pinned that morning. Not wanting to out myself any further as a terrible shot, I was content to watch the show. Rino pulled out an old side by side 12 gauge with 30 inch barrels and informed me that it was his father's gun. The first shotgun he had bought when he arrived in Canada from San Vito in 1953. The inclusion of the side by side on this trip a tribute to the father they recently lost. They put two dogs on the ground, Dino's shorthair Zoey and Rossano's setter Jessie and it was not long before the caragana hedges erupted in birds and gunfire. An implausible number of birds were holding on this small plot of land, Sharpies and Huns seemed to pour out in all directions, men shouting to locate each other, making sure everyone stayed out of harm's way in the chaos. I stood amazed watching it all and listening to the second stringers whining loudly from the truck at the sound of shotguns being fired. At one point I watched Zoey have her retrieve interrupted by bird scent, standing stock still on point with a bird in her mouth, unsure of what the priority was. The boys all came back with full gamebags and beaming smiles, shaking their heads in disbelief at what they had just witnessed and Rossano declared that it was lunch time.
One truck tailgate was a mess of birds and feathers and the other tailgate covered in lunch. Slices of bresola and coppa, ragusano and parmigiano cheeses, fresh mozza with tomatoes and basil, marinated mushrooms, a jar of squid, a can of tuna and two loaves of crusty bread. Plus, fresh ground coffee, brewed up on a Jetboil, and served with cantucci biscotti. All of it eaten leisurely and accompanied with plenty of laughter. A far cry from my usual liver sausage and hot mustard smeared on a few saltines consumed in a rush and washed down with a light beer. A spread like this for a solitary hunter might border on ridiculous, but with a group it took on a touch of the sacred. A pause and respite, a reminder that this all consists of more than bag limits.
Rino looked down at his father's old gun laid out amongst the birds and then peered out over the sweeping prairie toward the Sweetgrass hills. It was a long moment before he turned around and said to his brother "He was with us today."
We called it a day and went back to begin the task of cleaning all the birds.
That night over a meal of braised Hun and Sharptail legs I looked around the table and mentioned that it was like a setup to a joke "Four Italians, two Shorthairs, a Setter, a Ukrainian and a Munster walk into a bed and breakfast . . ."
"Yeah. But what's the punchline?"
"Who eats the cat?" I quipped in reference to the run-in my dog had with the resident cat, nose to nose and seemingly fine until the cat bolted and I wondered if I would be asked to leave after the ensuing commotion.
Rossano quickly replied from the kitchen "One of the Italians for sure. Cacciatore style. You can do anything cacciatore style."
We all laughed and Electrician Dino then went into a lengthy and hilarious description of his great uncles hunting cats during the Second World War in order to, as he put it, "have a little fun, put together a little meal." I'm still not sure exactly how much truth there was in this story, only that I wished I could tell a story as well as him.
When it's just you and your dog, you’ll hunt where, when and how you want. For me hunting is a nearly perfect solitary endeavor and the addition of others can invite unwanted variables. The possibility exists of incompatible dogs or hunting styles at best, and the risk that you or your dog peppered with pellets at worst. Hunting with people you don't really know causes an even greater amount of apprehension. But sharing a field and a table and a bottle with like-minded people, as you toast the dogs and the birds and tell tall tales with touches of truth from the day's hunt, there is something intrinsically pleasing in that. A sense of being part of a broader community, of being seen and bearing witness to all the magic and melancholy inherent in chasing wild birds behind hunting dogs.
An emergency trip to the vet cut my last day with them short. A gorgeous piece of public land consisting of deep chokecherry filled coulees and rosehip covered grasslands hid some old five strand barbed wire fence amongst the usual four. I inattentively pulled up four strands and let the dog under. The fifth strand hiding in the grass rode up the dog's leg severely lacerating his left armpit. Rino carried my gun back to the truck as I carried the dog. Then Drywall Dino and I did our best to get the wound cleaned and wrapped before I took off to the vet some two hours away. The next few hours and days I fielded messages from the boys about the dog's prognosis and recovery.
In my time with these gentlemen, I didn't see a single bird taken off the ground, land access permission was always asked for, and dogs and birds and guns were all treated both respectfully and responsibly. They were generous with their food and wine, forgiving of both missed birds on my part and the ones my dog busted. In addition to that, they all genuinely seemed to flat out enjoy themselves out there, an infectious feeling for a hermetical hunter who might sometimes treat this whole thing with maybe a touch too much reverence.
So when, near Christmastime, I received a pic of the four of them at a table, bowls of pasta in front of them, the hare Rino had shot had gone back east and into this pappardelle ragu, with a message underneath that read . . .
"You should taste this!!! Meet up. Same time next year?”
I immediately checked my schedule and booked the time off.
Make your own
