Ex-pats: Graham Denby on the start of the Portuguese hunting season

Nov 18 2009 by Graham Denby

MAC, one of our horses, broke a section of the paddock’s electric fence when he fled from nearby gunfire. On this very misty November morning I’m mending it with some trepidation.

I know this sounds a touch violent, but that’s the Portuguese hunting season for you.

The horses are very skittish because of the closeness of the shots.

The ‘rule’ is that no shooting is to take place within 200 metres or so of any casa (house). Given that our casa is maybe 25 metres away yet it’s so foggy that I can’t see it or the hunters, you wouldn’t think it was a proper and safe environment to be shooting, would you?

The hunters we see are armed with some of the largest shotguns I’ve ever seen. Areas of the campo are scrubland with little visibility through the thickets and we don’t have much in the way of ‘big game’ such as wild boar, deer or elephants, just a number of tiny, agile and speedy birds, so the big guns are literally overkill.

A couple of years ago my brother Adrian was over for a working break with his wife Anne which coincided with the hunting season.

Adrian was a police sergeant in Bradford and had done all the relevant firearms courses. He was amazed and horrified when he saw the, shall we say, over-enthusiastic approach of the hunters.

They strolled with loaded, unbroken guns and had no pattern or line of safety in their approach. Add to this their favourite drink is bottled beer and you can maybe appreciate the scope for accidents.

There is a gun culture in Portugal (if the two words go together) and arguments have been known to have been settled a la Wild West. In early October the husband of a local council (junta) candidate was, allegedly, shot dead by another candidate, the ultimate political veto, I guess.