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 59 headless DHJanzen100513.jpg high resolution
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| The hunters explained that when they got an animal any distance from camp, they cut off the less valuable parts rather than carrying the whole thing many kilometers back through the forest. And the head is very definitely among the less valuable parts. I said that I did not believe them much, since I could see both a dog food and a fertilizer value to the head (and the internal organs). So, Papa Jean Marie led me off about 1 km away from camp, directly to where he had left a yellow-backed duiker head a few months before. There the skull sat on the forest floor, ghostly and in perfect condtion, cleaned of all its soft parts by flies and then rain and microbes, probably within 5 days of having been left there. So, yes the species in the ground below the cassava patch, and by inference in any other village refuse heap, are positive records of what was being taken, but they give no real indication of the total number taken by the hunters and if some species are missing, that does not mean that the hunters do not get them. | ||
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