Caccabis Chakor 97 



objection to flying downhill, or even on the level 

 along the contours of the hills, and after he has 

 got under way, the pace he acquires is an eye- 

 opener, especially when he is on the downward 

 slope. 



In Chitral, which is a great country for falconry, 

 the art of driving chakor has been reduced to a 

 science. Chakor remain high up in the mountains 

 during the summer, where the markhor or ibex 

 stalker sometimes puts them up in great packs, 

 or meets them coming round the corners like a 

 whirlwind, uttering their peculiar cry, " Whichoo- 

 whichoo-whichoo !" which is quite different from 

 their call or cackle. But in winter, when the 

 upper country is deep under snow, they are 

 driven into the lower valleys, and are attracted 

 to the neighbourhood of the villages by the seed 

 in the ground. There are few places in Chitral 

 where there are not the well-known cut-and-dried 

 drives, which are managed now in precisely the 

 same way they have been for hundreds of years 

 past, and in which every man and boy knows his 

 own place. Of course in this country none of it 

 is done on the level as it is at home, for though 

 some slopes are steeper than others, such a thing 

 as a level space much bigger than a tennis-court 

 scarcely exists. So chakor-driving usually means 

 sweeping the birds along the side of a valley in 



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