Dear nature lovers,

Greetings from oikos !

Hunting and Fishing is one of the favorite activities of all tribal and rural people. Not only it gets them protein rich food but also has inbuilt pleasure and adventure.

Smaller animals like Hare, birds, local fishes are hunted or caught individually by using snares (anchored cable or wire nooses), bow and arrow, glue traps (sticks daubed in sticky latex of certain plants) , fishing rods, net etc.

Communal hunting and fishing is done by a big group of individuals including men and also women and children in some parts of Maharashtra. Various kinds of tools are used in this hunt like net, spears, bow and arrow. Special tactics are used to drive animal to a certain place where it is easy to catch or kill. Communal fishing is very common in seas and oceans with the help of bigger nets. Traps like Teli (तेली), kapadi tondya (कपडी तोंड्या) are installed within stream channel to catch fishes. Here arrangement is such that water is channelized into a funnel shaped vessel and fishes get caught as seen in the image.

It would be interesting to note that these tribal and rural people have been using various local materials for these traps and tools, like bamboo, stones, net knitted by using local fibrous plants (Taag, Ambadi, Ghaypat, Dabhat etc.), poisonous plant parts and many others. Also there is no external energy source like fossil fuels used to operate this trap. So obviously the scale is low.

In some cases, hunting has threatened population of species. But on a broader scale it can be said that traditional methods are quite sustainable as compared to modern hunting or fishing tools and practices. For example, modern fishing in oceans using trawlers literally catches every bit of sea world and scrapes sea bottom, which is important habitat, thus threatening the future of fishing.

Though now days, there is ban on hunting and fishing certain animals, it is worthwhile to know traditional methods for permitted hunting.

Regards,

Ketaki & Manasi

With Team oikos !