22 MODERN PIG-STICKING 



The above are not General Baden-Powell's 

 actual words. He also speaks of two other varieties, 

 but they are not common. 



The sows have their litters once in the cold and 

 once in the hot weather ; at both seasons they 

 suffer much from human and animal poachers. 

 These poachers we discuss elsewhere ; but at the 

 risk of repetition I urge on you the necessity for 

 their extermination. Panthers, jackals, and hyaena 

 all live on pig, and must be ruthlessly destroyed. 



In the cold seasons the grass coverts and the 

 fields are so thick that game is much scattered, and 

 pig suffer less from poaching then than they do in 

 the hot weather, when their grounds are often 

 hunted and all their runs are known. 



It is, in my opinion, a great mistake to harry 

 coverts holding pig in June. If you do so, you 

 inevitably break up the litters. The old sows bolt 

 and you see the little striped squeakers, of all sizes 

 from that of a rat up, running in every direction. 

 I am sure many of these are lost and are never 

 collected by their mothers again. In June you 

 must hunt light outlying coverts and locate your 

 solitary boar. The old gentlemen are no more 

 fond of a squealing family than we are. 



I do not know how a sow collects her scattered 

 young. I have never heard a pig yelling unless 

 injured ; in such cases their voices carry well over 

 a mile. If a sow were to squeal she would soon 

 collect her family ; however, she does not, and I 

 misdoubt we cannot teach her her business. More 

 than once, when sitting up, I have seen a sow 

 collect her progeny and proceed on her way, giving 

 low grunts as signals. 



Pig are very prolific breeders, and there can be 



