Algeria from withinBodley, R. V. C. (Ronald Victor Courtenay)
History
Algeria from within
Bodley, R. V. C. (Ronald Victor Courtenay)
Algeria -- Description and travel
Game of all kinds abounds in Algeria—partridge, hares, woodcock,
bustard, pigeons, quail, wild boar, gazelle, moufflon, and occasional
panthers in the mountains. I will discuss the various methods
of shooting the animals as employed by the Arabs, as, with rare
exceptions, sport in the country is organized by them. Small game
is either walked up or driven; usually driven, as the areas are
so wide and open that it is difficult to approach within range of
the birds. Hares can be walked, and they make very pretty shots as
they dart round the tufts of alfa; the bustard seems to be a bulky
target and does not appear to fly very fast, but is not too easy
to hit. Dogs are taken out, but they are badly trained, and it is
preferable to leave them at home and rely on native boys to pick
up the game.
The most interesting way of hunting the small game in the south is
mounted, with hawks. The breed is a kind of small falcon, and unlike
those trained in India and other countries, which once captured
are kept as long as they can fly, these hawks of North Africa are
caught in the autumn and are released again in the spring as soon
as the molting season begins. What is still more curious is that
the same birds are found again the following year by the falconers,
with their young, to be trained for the first time. A hawk is an
expensive luxury, and costs four or five hundred francs to buy, while
a falconer must be mounted, clothed, fed, and paid a salary. But
it is a noble sport, and perhaps one of the most picturesque in
the world.
A meeting-place is fixed, and the party rides out in twos and threes,
or, in the case of the rich, send on their horses, and motor there in
comfort. When every one is assembled a long line is made, converging
at the two extremities so as almost to make three sides of a square;
the falconers, with the birds, capped, perching on their turbans or
shoulders, ride in the center. The horsemen slowly advance. Suddenly
there is a shout—a hare has got up; the line steadies its pace,
for it is against all rules in any way to hunt the hare until the
falcon has got to work. This does not take long, however, for in a
second a bird is uncapped and is soaring rapidly up into the air,
a second bird has followed it, perhaps a third.
Up they go, flying swiftly above the hunted beast. Suddenly the
first falcon swoops down toward the earth, then up again. He has
missed, but before the hare has got over this first escape the
second falcon comes down; if he misses, the third is there; and,
with cries of delight, the Arabs ride up to see the prey held firmly
in the falcon’s talons as he pecks savagely at the head.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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