Searching for clues

“Hunting is much more than sitting,” muses Catherina, known as Cathi, and her green eyes sparkle profoundly. She ponders her thoughts, searching for the right words on the difficult subject. Right at this moment, which is already drifting slightly into melancholy, her one-and-a-half-year-old son Josef roars like a rutting stag. Not a “capital” stag, but a clearly definable wild animal on the lookout for a bride. We laugh. I return to the subject of hunting and interject that it is a rather unusual hobby, and then as a woman ... Cathi thinks for a moment and parries with a counter-question: “Do you think so?”.

She then went to the forensic medicine department in Munich for six months. Somehow the minimum height requirement was then lifted, the missing centimeter was no longer relevant and Cathi was accepted at the police academy. During this time, she also started her hunting training. The exams for police and hunting were then two days apart. Another mammoth project. But the Walser also mastered and passed them with aplomb. Evil tongues can now claim that she has chosen two areas with a difficult image. Because, let's be honest, people tend to make bad jokes about police officers and are quick to question their work - it's less likely to happen to a chef, if something goes wrong, well, then the chef is just in love.

There aren't many female hunters in the valley, in fact only two at all. The rest are firmly in the hands of men. This makes me wonder who is sitting in the seminar room during the training. Well: lots of them! The seminars are always well booked. That puzzles me, I want to find out more. Cathi explains that many people are only interested in more in-depth information about game and the forest.

I feel like I'm on a platter here. I imagine a deer, stag, fox or hare lurking behind every tree, possibly flanked by black grouse and badgers. All eyes, I imagine, are on me. Wild TV, so to speak, except that instead of munching popcorn, the spectators are chewing a bit of moss and watching the goings-on of the two-legged friends with amusement. “No, that's not the case,” says Andi, they're too shy and wait a good way up for us to leave so they can nibble on their hay in peace. Cathi is also quite a woman and says that when it gets dark, she always has the feeling of being watched by the game. She is really relieved when she is back in the safety of her car. She says that she often falls asleep on the high seat anyway, so she doesn't want to know what has been walking past and wonders whether some of the animals have been amused by the sleeping hunter. 

She doesn't respond to the praise. I ask if she can still remember the first animal she shot. Of course she remembers. It was a doe. She had the animal in her sights again and again over a long period of time, waiting until she was in the perfect line of fire. The goat was killed instantly. Cathi was crying. She still does sometimes after killing an animal. Because she is aware that she has just breathed her last. And because the animal is still warm and looks alive. She shows everyone the necessary respect and never simply steps over a dead animal. She walks around it. She also gives death the time it needs to spread through the animal, letting the life and its soul escape. I understand what she means. It is an act of respect for a living being that has so often been lost in our time and that is marginalized as a taboo subject. Nor would she carelessly drag the hunted animal along the ground towards the valley. It is shouldered. If she can't manage it on her own, her husband Martin helps. This is often a physical feat that requires a lot of surefootedness, especially as Cathi's and Martin's hunting grounds are partly in the high alpine region. Just at the right moment, before the melancholy can drag us down with it, Josef roars. He stands in front of an antler at the hunting lodge and marks the love-struck stag. Josef is going to be a fantastic hunter and if he carries on like this, he won't need a hunting horn to produce the sound. We grab the little deer and set off on our retreat. So that the deer can enjoy its fragrant hay in peace.