196 A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 
while the evils of inbreeding are banished. One sees traces of long-tailed-fowl blood 
even in the fowls of Kagoshima, where I saw many cocks walking about whose 
tail-coverts were so long as to drag for several inches on the ground. 
In the Malay States most of the aborigines, even the small nomadic tribes, keep 
domestic fowls, which they breed and eat. They also occasionally have captive pheasants, 
but do not eat these, but keep them for barter with the Malays. Any wild Junglefowl, 
however, which they happen to shoot or snare they consider good food. The usual 
method of trapping of these natives is to place numerous nooses woven of hair or 
vegetable fibre on the ground and bait the place with grain. 
Another way which I observed at Kuala Tembeling is by means of an ayam déndk 
or decoy bird, usually a hybrid cock or hen tethered near the traps or snares. This same 
method is used elsewhere in Assam, Siam and the Sundarbans. An open space near 
the forest is usually selected, the decoy bird tied to a stake and surrounded with open 
nooses and scattered grain. The challenge of the tame bird, which is trained to call often 
and loudly, attracts the wild cocks, who rush up to give battle, when they are almost 
certain to become entangled. Or if a hen approaches, she is attracted by the grain and 
also falls a victim. In Celebes the decoy fowl is called wawansa/ in the language of the 
Alfaros, and to catch a Junglefowl in this manner is called mawansal. The natives of 
this island do not attempt to tame the wild-caught birds, but use them only as food. 
Still another variation of the decoy trapping is practised in Sulu, where the domestic 
bird is tethered in the centre of a circle of spring nooses. Many wild birds are thus 
captured, but only cocks. Even where grain is added to the charm of the calling bird, 
the females remain aloof. 
In northern Burma the bamboo fence traps, with their scores of deadfalls, account 
for many hundreds of Junglefowl in the course of a year. In other places I have seen 
separate nooses set for these birds, each attached to a bent sapling and baited with 
grain. 
Besides using decoy birds the Malays imitate the crowing and the flapping of the 
wings of the Junglecocks, and they taught me so that several times I was able to 
inveigle the birds close to me by making them think that a challenging bird was 
concealed in my cover. 
It is difficult to say whether Junglefowl in general are decreasing or are at least 
holding their own. If we consider only the isolated, really pure strains, they are 
unquestionably becoming fewer in numbers, but those which haunt the vicinity of 
villages and cultivated districts, although shot frequently and suffering from the many 
enemies, such as snakes and small carnivores, which make life a burden for the village 
fowl in India, yet are constantly gaining recruits from the ranks of the domestic birds. 
In the reserved forests in the sub-Himalayan region the birds seem to be fully 
holding their own, as there is little shooting there and the native foresters have little 
time for snaring and trapping. In these Government Reserves the birds are protected 
from all shooting from the first day of March to the middle of September. The most 
common time for Junglefowl drives either on foot or from elephants is from November 1 
to the end of February. 
To the southward, in the Central Provinces of India, the close season for this 
species is from March 1 to November 30. 
