September 27, 2021

"In Italy’s rural areas, hunting wild boar is a popular sport and most Italians can offer a long list of their favorite wild boar dishes, including pappardelle pasta with boar sauce..."

"... and wild boar stew. But animal rights groups have been adamantly opposed to mass culling. Those beliefs are not shared by some urban residents. 'I am afraid of walking on the sidewalk, because on one side there are the dumpsters for the rubbish and they (the boars) jump on me,' said Grazia, a 79-year-old grandmother.... 'We have been invaded here,' lamented Pino Consolati, who runs a restaurant on a busy street corner in Rome's Monte Mario neighborhood.... One day this week, he said, his sister found 30 boars outside her shoe store when she left at 8 p.m."

27 comments:

gilbar said...

i'm not sure this story is very interesting; it seems to be a real boar

YoungHegelian said...

"Goths, Visigoths and vandals"

Oh, Good Lord, does anyone among the chattering classes know any history anymore?

"Vandals" should be capitalized, since they were, like the Goths & Visigoths, a Germanic tribe. They were not youths misbehaving in public, just like the Goths were not youngsters who wore black clothes & dark makeup, had lots of piercings, and listened to punk rock.

Boy, these people have got a lot of Gaul, lemme tell ya!

MikeD said...

Well, you know what they say in Rome: What happens if you don't pay your garbage bill? They stop delivery!

Geoff M said...

Reminds of the Children of Men, where the population dropped so low (Because no one could have children) that animals started invading human spaces.
The difference is, the Italians (and many others) chose not to have children.

BG said...

Freakin' animal rights groups (ARG). Wild boars cause extensive damage to agricultural crops, habitat of native species, and spread diseases. Pen them up in the ARG's neighborhood and then get back to me. Let people shoot the frickin' wild hogs and eat all they want or donate to food pantries.

Dave Begley said...

There is a giant - and I do mean giant - wild pig problem in TX, OK, KS, NE and, of course, Arkansas. I read about it in the New Yorker about 20 years ago. I also saw something in the WSJ about how wild pigs run wild in Berlin and the Germans have licensed special people to kill them.

The wild pigs tear up crops. In fact, one got into my sister's neighborhood in San Antonio and tore up a yard. This happens all the time. My Jewish ex-brother-in-law took me on a wild pig hunt.

There might even be a reality show about it.

JaimeRoberto said...

Porca miseria!

Tom T. said...

Dave Begley, I don't know about a reality show, but Nicolas Cage just released a movie called "Pig" in which he plays a truffle hunter whose pig gets stolen.

DUSTER said...

They are thick skulled and mean spirited, they will not think twice of taking over your property and lay it to waste, but enough about Democrats, those pigs are delish.

Big Mike said...

Wild boar are dangerous, and animal rights groups be damned. The safety of the citizens needs to come first.

Temujin said...

And in Tuscany they run wild through the vineyards ripping up sections of growth, as well as all the other assorted farmed produce. Boar hunting has been going on in Italy since Roman times (and before). It is both traditional and necessary. And...they make good eating.

Really, we have an entire generation coming up who think food in grocery stores just comes in from some warehouse somewhere.

Fritz said...

On our last trip to Italy, we were out in a town in Southern Italy, whose name I can't remember (it wasn't one you often hear about) and we were at loose ends for dinner. We walked down the main drag, looking for restaurant that was open that early (Italian restaurants tend to open around 9 PM). At a side street a sign "Cinghiale" pointed down a long, dark side street. Feeling adventurous, we went down, and eventually found the place. A big guy, who looked like he could be a Hells Angel ushered us inside in pantomime (he spoke no English, and our Italian was minimal). It turns out cinghiale is the word for boar, which we discovered by pointing to things on the menu and him making animal sounds. It was a small place, maybe 6 tables and his wife? was in the kitchen. Aperitifs and dessert came with the meals for a reasonable rate. I had the boar, and it was great. A wonderful choice.

Bob said...

Where's Asterix and Obelix when you need them?

Narayanan said...

what is difference between wild boar and feral pigs?

JAORE said...

There is a giant - and I do mean giant - wild pig problem in TX, OK, KS, NE and, of course, Arkansas.

Plus a bunch more like Alabama.

FWIW lot of people use an AR-15 platform for their wild hog hunting rifle...

jaydub said...

The problem is less about wild boars than it is about garbage collection, or the lack of and it draws the boars like rats. Almost everywhere in Southern Italy garbage collection is controlled by the Mafia. Of course, the Mafia are not known for environmental responsibility or proper disposal practices but make their money in anyway possible, often through corruption of local officials. Think of it as NYC on steroids. Naples, for example, after decades of Mafia garbage collection and improper disposal usually by surreptitiously burying it anywhere they could, has no uncontaminated ground water within 25 miles or so. It's so bad that tap water is undrinkable and landlords in Naples are required to provide renters with a monthly supply of bottled drinking water. Similar issues exist with the disposal of other waste. For example, a chemical processing plant my company bought in Italy had a synthetic rubber process we wanted to clone and bring to the US. Since the plant was going to be in my group, I went to Italy and studied their operations. One process I could not understand involved their waste water treatment which was high in pH and contaminants. After leaning on the plant manager for a while, he finally admitted that the local water treatment authority ran their waste water treatment and weren't really concerned about what they were dumping in the Alba River so long as they were properly compensated. Italy, like a few other European countries, is a hazardous waste dump in many areas.

Lucien said...

Apparently AR-15s are the weapon of choice for going after wild boar, which is a problem for the MSM because those rifles are scary “weapons of war” (just ask Mayor Pete) that are good for nothing except killing people.

Heartless Aztec said...

Helicopter boar hunting at night. It's fun and good for civilization. Plus, tasty pork dishes too.

DLH said...

The boars will be killed regardless so sell licenses to the public for a win/win scenario or pay sharpshooters so the animal rights groups don’t hear about it....

Dr Weevil said...

YH (second comment):
I think there's at least one more problem with "Goths, Visigoths and vandals". Weren't the Visigoths a subset of Goths in general? I would have written "Ostrogoths, Visigoths, and Vandals", giving the two subgroups of Goths and adding an Oxford comma.

Critter said...

I believe that the wild boar hunting season is very long in Texas with no limits on how many you kill due to the excessive population of wild boars.

It has been the same for deer in Pennsylvania and wolves in Wyoming. When people eliminate the predators we get too many of the animals.

One of the least reported and discussed environmental crimes of humans has been to disrupt the ecosystem that controls animals like boars, wolves, and deer, etc. States are trying to adjust by increasing hunting rights.

Douglas B. Levene said...

There are wild boars living in the hills of Hong Kong, and occasionally they come down looking for food - I once spotted a couple eating the sacrificial fruits that had been left on ancestral graves on Tomb Sweeping Day. They’re pretty big and ill-tempered and it’s wise to give them a wide berth if you come across them hiking in the hills or down in the city.

Anonymous said...

what is difference between wild boar and feral pigs?

wild boar were always wild and were introduced to America in the 16th and 17th centuries from those European locations. bigger, nastier.

feral pigs are domestic varieties, escaped from local farms

they interbreed

TheOne Who Is Not Obeyed said...

If you're ever in Florence, Osteria del Cinghiale Bianco on Borgo S. Jacopo is a fantastic eatery, presuming it survived the plague. Highly recommended, their version of the papardelle with wild board and mushrooms was amazing. Washed down with the house red it was a delightful dinner after a long day of seeing too many amazing art works.

And while we're on the topic of Italy and wild boar, let's not forget Pope Leo X's excommunication of Martin Luther, opening with "Arise of Lord and judge thy cause. A wild boar has invaded thy vineyard." Now that was a real problem, far above anyone's power to eradicate.

veni vidi vici said...

Relatives over there were telling my mum a few months ago about how the wild boar population in Germany has exploded because the greenies don't like hunting - it's so icky!!! - and thus it's no longer the carefree thing to go for lovely hikes in the forests, as one must beware of potential ambush by angry swine.

Someday, assuming civilization outlasts our present bout of St. Vitus' Dance, someone will tell the story and explain why we've allowed the most idiotic numbskulls among us to run things for long enough to ruin it all. I hope I live long enough to learn the reasons why we've done so.

Bunkypotatohead said...

You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it. There's uh, boar kabobs, boar creole, boar gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. There's pineapple boar, lemon boar, coconut boar, pepper boar, boar soup, boar stew, boar salad, boar and potatoes, boar burger, boar sandwich. That- that's about it.

Bruce Hayden said...

“Apparently AR-15s are the weapon of choice for going after wild boar, which is a problem for the MSM because those rifles are scary “weapons of war” (just ask Mayor Pete) that are good for nothing except killing people”

Standard capacity (30 round) magazines are also helpful. Though, I might go with a heavier slug, such as .300 Blackout, over .223/5.56, depending on the distances. Don’t think that you need upgrade to an AR-10 though. An AK variant might also be good. I like ARs, because they are easy and fun to build. Also easy to shoot with low recoil and less pull (since the barrel is in line, through the buffer tube, to your shoulder). Keep that in mind - the AR-15 was designed over 60 years ago, and that arrangement was fairly novel. In older designs (which gun grabbers want to limit us to), the stock is essentially curved, in order to bring the sights up to eye level. But that creates a lever that forces the gun to rotate up when it is fired. Eugene Stoner fixed that problem by putting those critical components in a straight line, and raising the sights. And much easier to implement using modern synthetic materials, instead of wood, for the stock.

One of the interesting problems in TX, in particular, appears to be that there is a clash between farmers and hunters. Farmers see a revenue stream, for allowing hunters onto their property. And the hunters often don’t want to pay to eradicate something that they feel the farmers should want them to remove. It may be worse in TX, because most hunting traditionally is on private land, because the state lacks the extent of federal lands that are so prevalent in the west (due to their brief period of independence). The farmers are used to getting paid to hunt on their lands, as contrasted to much of the rest of the west, in particular.

In any case, compounding this, pigs and boars are much smarter than most prey on this continent, so quickly avoid areas where they are hunted. The big sows send their youngest weaned offspring into an area to check it out, then the next older contingent, etc, until they finally come out, last. This allows them to thrive, and get bigger and stronger, smarter and wilier, meaner, and able to mother larger litters. And if you can’t get the matriarchs, they breed very quickly.