Today we have found, by chance, this article by the great Carlos de Hita: “The sadness in the look of a hunting dog.” Little more to say, than what he himself expresses in the article. From here we want to pay a sincere tribute to all hunting dogs.
“Sadness in the look of a hunting dog”
Posted on December 3, 2019
DOGS OF REHALA
Rarely the starting point for these sonic narratives is an image. In general, the photograph and the text accompany the editing. But this time all part of the sad and at the same time furious expression of the dogs in the photography. They belong to one of the rehalas that participated in a mounting in Sierra Morena on Sunday the 7th 2019, to put an end to that area to the hunting season.
They spend most of their lives locked in fences, in large cages where fights are common. The baldness and scars on their faces denounce the violence that is going on in their existence. When they come out of the cage in which they are locked, they will beat the mountain with fury, lifting and chasing their prey, wild boars and deer, who will flee in despair before them.
And yet, in the expression of each of these wretched are still remnants of that noble background, the frank and deep gaze of any dog. One cannot approach the hunting world with sentimentality. But it’s hard not to feel sorry for the cruel fate that has marked the existence of these animals.
A few minutes after the photo was taken, the mounting begins. Dozens of armed rifles, firing lines that leave no dead angles to escape; frightened deer and boars, looking for escapes that don’t exist; voices, whistles, barking, an intense shooting… all amplified and repeated by echo of the valley. Mounting is an operation designed to take down as many animals with as little effort possible; nothing to do with the long walks of hunting, chasing a hooty prey. Here wild animals are clearly broken with the condition of victims. During the two or three hours the operation lasts, the noise and tension desecrate the soundscape. Next comes the strutting of the slaughtered animals, the handing out of trophies and the blood stain. And the silence that returns to tuck in the last moments of the animals who have been badly injured.
Everything has been said about hunting, for and against. But from the day of the other day I am left with the deep sadness of these furious, thirsty dogs, in which there is still a rumble of nobility.
Sierra Morena, February 7, 2010.
August 2025 Lately there is talk of the declaration of the rehalas as Good of Cultural Interest in Extremadura and Andalusia. That’s why I decided to recover this old text that, together with a montage with the sounds recorded from the inside, in a mount, was published in the audioblog The Sound of Nature, in elmundo.es.