Hunting Tales. Vol I. A Compilation of Big Game Hunting stories from Peru Luis

Hunting Tales

Volume I

A Compilation of Big Game Hunting

stories from Peru

Luis Gerardo Castillo Vargas

Translation into English:

Moisés G. Fernández Góngora

Lima, Peru, May 2021

Original Title:

Cuentos Cinegéticos

© Luis G. Castillo Vargas, 2019

Reviewers:

Teresa Solis, Houston, Texas

J.Thomas Saldias, Trujillo, Perú

For my mentors Nicola P., LuisY,

and Lila, my dear wife

ÍNDICE

FOREWORD

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

WHY DO I HUNT?

CONFESSION

HE´S SAYING GODBYE...

HE DIED IN HIS LAW

I OWE YOU ONE

AIN´T HUNTING NO MORE

AN UGLY PLACE TO DIE

THE LION´S PORTRAIT (Acotama, 1988)

MY FIRST DEER

THE DEER OF CHUICHÍN

A PRETTY DOUBLE

14 – 0

THREE DEER, THREE RIFLES

A FROZEN NIGHT

DEER OR ELK  MR. PRESIDENT?

LAPRA AND SOLIVÍN

SAND DEER

HOLY WEEK WITH PEPE

THE LION OF PEPE

6 MULES AND  ONE TUCO

DEVIL TARUKA

TARUKA AND TROUT

BULL TARUKA

RONDEROS OR TERRUCOS

THE DEER OF LA MINA

GIVE ME A SIGNAL!

MONSTER TARUKA

LUYCHUPUKIO

THE CARBUNCLO

MIGUEL MUJICA GALLO

GUSTAVO DEL SOLAR ROJAS

FOREWORD

I met Luis Castillo through a mutual friend. From that faraway moment, I think fifteen years ago, a day hardly goes by when we don´t talk, exchange emails or just say hello.

From my first visit to Peru, Luis or Lucho became for me not only a solid friend (and not because of his height), but because Lucho has a virtue by giving his friendship sincerely and affectively. Lucho is my mentor and protector in all my ventures.

As we shared our dedication to establishing the legal framework for the development of sport hunting in Peru, we maintained a daily communication, often for hours. At that time, there wasn´t a single day when we didn´t argue angrily.

Later Lila, his wife, would tell me that she was surprised at my ability to bear him; rather I think his patience was endless with me. I had become by force of insistence his protégé and pupil. This is how he incorporated me into his hunting party. Under his direct guidance I hunted my first duck, my first partridge, I also had my first mountain experiences ... only so when it is your turn to legislate you don´t screw it, as he told me.

Our friendship grew over the days. When he fell ill, I think I was one of the few to whom he always answered the phone. He phoned me to tell me how his progress was going, even if it wasn´t visible at all. We never lost the chance to have a regular communication.

During my trip to Europe, we never stopped asking for his health and recovery in all the shrines we visited with my mother. We made a special request in Lourdes and Fatima.

That experience should have been so close to death, as all signs were that he would die, that today recovered from all his ills allows us to discover another facet of his life. Apart from the already known fondness for hunting, history, archeology, agriculture, business, and whatever intelligent issue is available. Lucho is reborn as a phoenix in this writing facet presenting this first Hunting Tales, a series of hunting adventures throughout Peru, through several decades and companions. His stories are highly entertaining descriptions which takes us back to those times allowing us to live alongside him and his characters - some of them unlikely - these hunting adventures presented by Luis as a fair tribute to his parents and immediate family.

I consider a tremendous honor and special consideration that this dear friend offers me to prepare this manuscript, which today he finally shares with the rest of his hunter friends at the Latin American and now the Anglo International level.

A bad weed never dies, he told me after feeling much more recovered for the happiness of Lila, his children, parents, and all of us who love him sincerely. If this weed is one of the best, so it must be very good because there is no doubt that Lucho now writes with an inspiration that only the enlightened possess.

We present to you the first volume of Hunting Stories by Luis Gerardo Castillo Vargas. I hope by reading the book you enjoy it and will be transported imaginatively along with him, traveling through the most remote and wild places of our Peru.

Greetings and good hunting!

J. Thomas Saldias

Houston, Texas, USA

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My father always took us to spend the summer in Ancón, a beach north of Lima (the capital of Peru), and although I practiced fishing with him and my siblings from a very young age, whether from the dock base, the shore or on board, most of the time I spent surfing. We began surfing by putting our chest on the kickboard first, and then with an inflatable mat and a pititabla (kickboard) which was made of styrofoam. Later we will get our first longboard or family surfboard, so my siblings and I began simultaneously to surf. There was also the biking, mainly in the afternoons, and some soccer games.

I think it was around the summer of '69 when my father bought a house in Miramar, nearby to the beach where we rode waves, and I met some people who were decisive in my fondness for hunting. One of them and the most important was Nicola, a very loved character on the beach, owner of a longboard with which many of us learned to surf, and who lent it to everyone without any problem. It was also a routine for us to pick up the net and the posts at his home for the daily volleyball game. Nicola was especially popular with boys around my age because he gave us the confidence not to sneak smoke or say a few swear words with an older guy. He also allowed us to have a drink with the older guys and was an organizer of activities such as going fishing with Don Domingo, his father, at the Naval Ammunition Dump or Santa Rosa or just go hunting. He was also fond of underwater hunting, but regarding hunting, it was Nicola who introduced me to this.

Like some of the boys around my age or the age of my brother Fernando, he invited us to accompany him to hunt for fetching the pigeons for him; and from time to time, he lent us the shotgun to take a shot at the stops or practice target shooting on the beach. The outings were generally twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays. I enjoyed accompanying him and must have been a good bird boy because I want to believe that he also preferred to go with me.

 Eventually, we made a trip with camping included and asleep in a tent to places such as Huarmey or Sayán, and I am sure the first time I didn´t sleep at home, it was to accompany him to hunt. Usually we went to the Santa Rosa irrigation, Huaral and surroundings.

Therefore, my first hunting experiences were in summer because during the winter we had no contact with friends on the beach. But, after the first bird boy season, I waited for the summer with the expectation of accompanying him again. The fun was guaranteed with the surfboard, volleyball and girls. However, going hunting became something totally special and motivating to me since that summer.

Nicola was also very funny and told us about his hunting and fishing adventures or affairs with women, some of them probably exaggerated. For example, he did mischief like paying the turnpike with a ticket cut in half or stuff like that. Our first hunting dog, Trini, was sold to us by him.

I have seen him from time to time because of the sale of a rifle or because it happens that now I am a hunter, so we have mutual friends. I once saw a photo of him in a hotel in Chiuchín, a town near Churín where I hunted some deer, in which Nicola appeared with a red elk or some deer from Sunchubamba. Asking, I found his guides and even once we bumped into each other hunting in that place. It felt like a betrayal to my mentor and guide, and I was embarrassed then to approach and thank him infinitely to whom really instilled in me the fondness for hunting. I think it was also that day when he already saw me as the competition. Thanks Nicola and forgive me!

Someone else who I consider important in my fondness for hunting is my brother Fernando, who although he rarely goes hunting now let alone with a shotgun or rifle, who was from the beginning my companion in all hunting parties, and we did together in our beginnings as falconers. He persevered on this issue, and I eventually accompanied him to hunt with raptor perches sometimes.

He shared with me his first gun. It was a compressed air carbine that was given to him by his friend Ducho, a neighbor of the beach. It was a Bavarian 30 that was delivered to him with the barrel obstructed and all disarmed, which my uncle Lucho (the brother of my father) left as new in the War Material Service of the Peruvian Air Force. I got my first prey and we hunted a lot with it, specially to feed our falcons and kestrels. Though it was given to him, he always shared the gun with me. One summer, when a burglar broke into our house on the beach, the carbine was used as a lever leaving it useless.

We bought our first firearm together. In order to promote the sport, my father got us to collect 50% of the cost of what we wanted to buy, but then when we got the money for a 22 rifle, he refused to buy it. As the money was enough for a new one but of a lower quality, we looked for uncle Willy, my father´s younger brother, to buy it in his name. (Photo 1).

We went to Sears in San Isidro, and we bought a Gecado single shot. Then the uncle convinced the old man that it was a trifle, so we returned it. That is how we went to the Reducto building in Miraflores and bought a Krico carbine, very nice and precise, which my brother keeps until now, and that was the gun we had chosen one. We test it for the first time on a vacation in Cusco and enjoying the gun ever since.

Then we bought a very nice .16 side by side Sauer shotgun that we shared for years and bought little by little from a widow lady who surely felt sorry for us, since she accepted the weekly payment we received from our tips and car washings. Later we got our first rifle, a short 35, made in Belgium and in the original 7.65 caliber, with which I hunted my first deer. Thanks brother!

Here I want to highlight something really important and for which I am also so grateful. While we didn´t have our own guns, my uncle Lucho always lent them to us when he was a young officer of the Peruvian Air Force. He was assigned to Piura (north of Lima) as a pilot, and I think it was there where he got his first hunting experiences. He always returned to Camaná (in Arequipa, south of Lima) on vacation, his native land, where he did great ducks, bandurrias¹ and mud hens or coots hunts. Even I got to know some boats that he prepared from the floats of a hydroplane which he used to enter onto the ponds. He had a .22 and a 16 pump action rifles, both I think were Winchester. My brother and I use them many times on winter break. Thanks uncle!

At school, I went out with some friends, also amateurs or with their parents and with whom I shared some hunts from an early age. I keep meeting them and often go hunting with some of them who are characters in some of the book´s anecdotes, such as Fito, Manolo, Roberto, Eduardo, Orlando, Mario, etc. Thanks to all of them!

However, the one who really led me to hunt and taught me everything was Don Lucho.  Always and even before I met him, I was an autodidact, but he taught me the wing shooting, to correct my defects, to tracking. Even walking in the field and settling in a pasture has its reasons. Hunting partridges and deer was something we did very frequently, but most of the time we went hunting for pigeons.

I met Don Lucho when I became a member of The Falcon Club of the Callao League, to where I believe that chino² Masa introduced me. However, I already knew about his writings published on the page Al Aire Libre (At the Outdoors) of El Comercio (a very famous newspaper in Peru), where he touched on topics such as trout fishing, types of partridges, how to hunt pheasants, and many others. He was also a very good fisherman, both sea and river or lake. He was a joker and good at giving nicknames for everyone including guides, friends, and even animals. I don´t remember exactly how we started to go hunting together, but we did it and very often. I think he was one of the few people who could held me at the pace of going hunting every week, and we especially went hunting variously and all kinds of species. He knew all the hunting holes and also many hunters. Don Lucho is already where the great ones are (RIP), waiting for me to give me the data. Currently, I go hunting with his youngest son Italo who turned out to be a very good hunter. Thanks Don Lucho!

²It would be selfish not to dedicate a few lines to my parents to whom I owe my life, health and education in the first place, which are among the most precious things I have. Thanks to their tolerance, his many and deserved groundings and so many awards. Thanks to their patience with this black sheep who, thanks to the hunting, led his life and left the wrong path. Thank you, cute folks!

I can´t stop thanking my family either for bearing all my absences and escapes with my lovers.

Photo 1 With Fernando Castillo Vargas in a

vizcacha´s hunting with the Krico.