26 MODERN PIG-STICKING 



The usual way to extract tushes is by boihng. 

 I prefer the method of the Meerut shikaries. They 

 cut with a knife the flesh round the jaws in a circle 

 about two inches above the tushes. They then 

 cut through both jaws with a few blows from a little 

 axe. They lay the two jaws, insides up, on the 

 ground, and, with two deft strokes in the direction 

 of the length of the snout, subdivide them into four 

 pieces, each with a tush. The fragments of bone 

 adhering can be removed by hand, and the tush 

 is free in a couple of minutes. The insides of the 

 tushes remain to be cleared either by boiling or, 

 preferably, by ants. The less the natural oil is 

 taken out of the tush the better. Tushes are very 

 liable to split in India, simply from being too dry, 

 especially in the hot weather. I keep my own spear 

 tushes in old French plum bottles filled with cocoa- 

 nut oil. All mounted tushes and teeth in India 

 should have a thin smearing of some transparent 

 grease applied occasionally. 



Tracks, — Regarding boars' tracks, I cannot do 

 better than again quote Baden-Powell : 



The deer shows two long narrow sharp-pointed toes. 

 The goat has a square pug with blunt points to his toes, 

 which are always held apart. The sheep's pug is more 

 like that of a boar, being longer than the goat's. The boar's 

 pug is distinguished from that of the sow by being much 

 wider in the heel and having the toes more open, and the 

 rudimentary toes marking the ground wider apart. 



It is these rudimentary toe-marks that will tell 

 you more about a boar than anything else. Three 

 fingers' breadth across the broadest part of the toe 

 track mean a very good boar. In wet soil beware 

 of mistaking the pugs of a little pig for those of a 

 mammoth. 



