Hunting wild boars

Hunting wild boars | Daily Tribune

(Author’s Note. Let us rest from the turmoil of the Middle East and the ICC trial in the Netherlands, and turn to something more edible.)

In Venezuela, in the hinterlands, farmers have an ingenious way of hunting wild boar. They plant in open fields succulent taro root (gabi in Filipino) which is an irresistible delicacy to wild boars. The farmers use fertilizer left over from growing rice. The bigger the roots, the fatter the boars.

They then dig a ditch around the taro garden, wide and deep enough to prevent the entry of the boars while the taro is growing and not yet harvest size.

At harvest time, they put a wooden slab across the ditch as a bridge for the boars — normally one or two families — to enter and consume the taro. They dig for the roots with their powerful snouts.

The farmers then pull the rope attached to the bridge, leaving the boars trapped in the garden. They do not kill all the boars outright, only one or two at a time, as needed to feed the community. They use a rifle to kill one and drag it to fall into the ditch, then pull it up to the outside of the taro garden.

The strategy hits two birds with one stone. First is fattening the boars, which may take a few weeks; second is consuming them slowly as needed, which may take one to three months. The meat is always fresh because they kill only as needed, no refrigeration necessary. If the boars consume all the taro, they throw pig food to them to continue the fattening. It would take the community or clan one to three months to finish the boars. Ingenious, right?

In the Philippines, wild boar hunting is very different. Farmers invest in rifles and bullets and lend them to the Aetas, or Agtas, small black aborigines with kinky hair, who do the hunting. Then they split the catch 50-50 or 60-40, depending on how difficult it is to hunt.

Wild Boar Tourism

(Author’s Note. Over bottles of gin (bilog) in Lubang, Mindoro, farmers told me this cautionary true story.)

Japanese soldiers of World War II came back as tourists and discovered that there were plenty of wild boars in the nearby jungles. So it became their hunting ground. The news spread and the veterans came pouring in. When the volume of tourists soared, one enterprising Japanese veteran built a five-star hotel in the middle of the jungle.

After a year or so, the boars’ numbers started to dwindle. To keep the business going, the Filipinos bought some fast-growing white hybrid pigs and painted them black. They would text their comrades to let loose one or two “wild boars” in a targeted hunt area. When the veterans made a kill, led by their Filipino guides, they never found out that they were fake wild boars. They would take a glance and the veterans would tell the Filipino guides to bring it to the hotel to be cooked.

But then disaster struck like a lightning bolt. A visiting Japanese Catholic nun, perhaps wanting to put up a small mission house there, quickly discovered the trick with her keen eyes. She reported it to a newspaper in Tokyo. The article went viral instantly. The hotel was closed down at once. It was the end of a friendship between ingenious Filipino farmers and adventurous Japanese WW2 veterans.