Truffle Hunting in Portico di Romagna: the secrets of a real hunter

“Ehi Matteo, what have you found this morning? Nothing, the ground was poor”. This may be the typical conversation you can hear in any the bar of one of the small villages in the Tuscan Romagna, like Portico di Romagna.

Being a truffle hunter is a serious matter. You must know the places, the right times of the day, the paths, and your dogs. Ask a truffle hunter and he will never say he got something. And also, try to ask him to take you for a hunting truffle session and he will invent the most fantastic excuses just to put you aside.

Hunting with Otto and Rex

Truffle hunting is actually a dogs’ matter. Dogs are the leaders, they know how to do it, they remember the places and they smell what a normal standing human being cannot do! Let’s go.

It’s early in the morning, well not so early as you can imagine, but the dogs are thrilled, they take it as a game, sometime free in the country with the only task to find something. Yuppi! And we are thrilled, too. Not sure about the all thing will go, but sure enough it will be an adventure.

Otto and Rex are Lagotto dogs, a special kind of dogs used for people rescue and also for truffle hunting! The lagotto romagnolo is a typical local dog, also very useful in people rescue, because of its special and strong “nose”.

While we follow Matteo’s car to reach the place, we are wondering what this trip can bring us. Will we find truffles? How can we lead the dogs? Will it be dangerous to be into the wood?

The truffles reserve is an area where only who’s paying a fee can enter. And this is the area where six lucky hunters (Matteo is one of those) can go.

Matteo explains us that the training of a good truffles hunter dog is very long and begins when they are puppies, in a very slow way so that they understand what they must search for and especially that they must not eat what they find. Matteo, as every other truffles hunter, has a special relationship with the two dogs and it was a real joy to see him playing with them. Until this stays, the dogs will keep on “working” for him. It’s a question of give and take.

The truffles of the day!

Otto and Rex are free, their nose on the ground, God know what they are smelling, but it takes just 1 minute and suddenly the started to get excited. They have found something. Matteo rushes with his special stick and here we go. The miracle has happened; he has one big white truffle in his hand. So quick that we didn’t even caught the moment.

These dogs are our heroes, also because the final result of their job was this!