They were great stalkers of game and frequently employed the use of animal mask decoys, driving, game calls, and the running down or wearing out of game. They smoked or flooded rodents from their dens, set snares of rope for game, and hunted from blinds or pits. Communal hunting was supervised by a hunt master; and game, such as rabbits, peccary, and buffalo were surrounded by people in a circle and clubbed, shot or driven to hidden hunters, lassoed or run over a cliff or bank. Dogs were used for hunting as well as for watch dogs and pets. Religious ceremony was practiced before, during, and after the hunt. Prayers, songs, tobacco, pollen, and meat were offered to the hunt deity; and an amulet for good hunting was worn. The Mescalero did not, as a rule, eat wildcat, wolf, coyote or turkey vultures. Dogs, hawks, turkeys and eagles were kept as pets. They were never eaten and were buried at death. Sometimes plucked eagles were released alive. Tortoise, turtles, and fish were eaten. Hardwood digging sticks were used for gathering bulbs, roots, etc., and a special stone knife was used for cutting mescal. Seeds were collected on a blanket and carried in a skin bag. Acorns were boiled like beans, parched (never leached), shelled and ground on a metate or stone mortar and stored in a skin bag. The meal was eaten with meat stew. Mesquite and screwbean mesquite pods were pounded either in stone or hide mortars; and the seeds were thrown away, and the pod flour was soaked or boiled and the juice drunk, eaten as mush, or stored in cake form. Mescal heads were pit-roasted as mentioned; a buffalo shoulder-blade was used as a shovel to scoop coals over the pit. The fire was usually lit by a lucky person. The cooked head and leaf bases were pounded and dried on frames and stored dry. Syrup was made from the flowers and the stalk above the head was eaten. Yucca fruit was eaten either cooked on coals or dried, and the root stalk was used for soap. This pertained to practically all of the yucca family. Most cacti fruit and some of the pulp was eaten. Pinon seeds were gathered and eaten raw, roasted or mashed into a butter. Pinon pitch was chewed as gum. Walnuts, wild plums, cherries, grass seeds, etc., tule and some greens (cooked) were used. Fruit juices, mescal, mesquite, and sotol juices were drunk either fresh, or boiled and fermented. In later years a maize wine was made. Salt and honey were gathered and used. Meat was sliced, dried and made into pemmican; bone marrow extracted; blood boiled in paunch and sausages were made in gut. Meat food was stored either in skin bag, parfleche or pot.