Powder and shot were too valuable to waste on the birds of the forest in those days. One of the Maori snaring methods, as practised by "Ringiringi" and his companions, was to cut out wooden _waka_, or miniature canoes or troughs, fill them with water, and place them in some dry spot in the forest where pigeons and _tui_ were plentiful. Just over these troughs flax-snares were arranged, so that when the birds, thirsting for water after feasting on the bush-berries, flew down to drink, and stretched their heads through the running loops, they were tightly noosed. Other snares were set on the _miro_-trees, of whose sweet berries the pigeons and _tui_ were particularly fond. "Ringiringi" quickly learned the art of setting snares of flax or cabbage-tree leaf with cunning slip-loops in the branches of the fruit-laden _miro_; in a clump of these pines he sometimes caught in a single day as many as three hundred or four hundred birds--_kaka_ parrots, _tui_, and pigeon--for the forests were alive with feathered creatures, and in the autumn time, when the wild fruits were ripe and abundant, they were to be taken with little trouble; the noisy _kaka_ parrot was the most easily lured of all. The only forest bird that was not welcomed by the hunters was the owl, or _ruru_; should one happen to be killed it was never eaten, because in Maori eyes it was an _atua_, a spirit or the incarnation of a tribal deity. Bird-spearing was another forest art widely practised in those times. Long slender limber spears of _tawa_ wood, twelve feet long and more, were used. In making the bird-spears, the pole from which each was cut was scorched with fire till very dry, then it was scraped and scraped down with _pawa_-shells and scorched again, and once more scraped and shaped with great care and industry, until it had been reduced to the size desired and was perfectly smooth. These spears were armed with barbed tips, often of bone, sometimes of iron. The villagers trailed the weapons after them as they travelled through the forest, until they came to some tree where _tui_ and pigeon perched in numbers; then the spear was slowly and cautiously pushed upwards until close to the unsuspecting bird, and a sudden, sharp thrust impaled it on the barbed point. The _pakeha_ was carefully schooled in the art of using the spear, and was enjoined, above all, never to strike the pigeon full in the breast, because the bone would often snap the barb-tip off; it must be speared in the side. In the late autumn the pigeons were "rolling fat"; and many hundreds of them were preserved or potted in Maori fashion by the birding-parties in _taha_, or calabashes (the _hué_ gourd), which were hermetically sealed with the fat of the cooked birds.