Liberation -- No clear agreement exists as to the best age for 
release. In current practice most birds are liberated any time from 
eight weeks of age onwards. Many game breeders prefer to overwinter | 
flocks of birds in conditioning pens for early spring release. Late 
fall liberations should be avoided. 
The propagation of black francolins, by States cooperating with 
the Bureau's Foreign Game Introduction Program, is briefly discussed 
in Special Scientific Report No. 80 (11). 
Trapping and Banding 
In many underdeveloped regions the country people have developed 
remarkably successful ways of trapping wild game. Gums are scarce, 
ammunition is costly, labor cheap, and food sufficiently scarce so 
that a ready sale for the catch is often assured. This has led in some 
cases to the development of trapping groups, tribes or castes, in others 
to accepting trapping as one of several means of livelihood. The methods 
used vary from group to group, some trappers becoming so specialized 
that they know how to catch only one or two species. 
Where birds are for sale to Muslims, they are always taken alive. 
In southern Turkey black francolins are‘occasionally caught by hand as 
chicks. Large numbers of young birds, similarly captured, are sold in 
Iraqi bazaars during July and August. About Hillah, Iraq, adults are 
commonly taken in fall and winter by using orange-colored sheets, These 
are suspended over a small area, cleared in field or garden and baited 
with wheat, millet or date pulp. The francolins are reported not to be 
frightened of orange so at the proper time the sheet is dropped over the 
birds by a peasant operating a pull string from a blind. Some are also 
said to be picked up in hand nets by boys wearing orange clothing. 
Along the Caspian littoral soft-mouthed dogs catch francolins that 
have been flushed once and subsequently seek escape by laying low. In 
West Pakistan one''tesildar" or large landowner provided us with some 
500 black francolins caught in March by his tenants, using caged males 
as decoys to call the birds within reach of hand nets. Unfortunately 
almost all of the birds caught proved also to be males. Trappers about 
Wur near Tatta, West Pakistan,. built low fences of brush and weeds, 
placed horsehair snares set in wooden frames in convenient openings 
therein, then drove the birds to the fence by beating adjacent cover. 
The francolins were caught by the neck but as soon as they stopped 
struggling the snare loosened up sufficiently to permit them to breathe. 
In India, francolins were usually taken in nets often 50 to 100 
feet long and 12 to 15 feet wide. Fairly heavy cotton cord was used to 
make these, and the mesh was commonly from 1 to 1% inches to a side. 
Nets were staked out in or along one edge of a small field of sugarcane, 
grain, or a patch of weeds and brush and drawn up and over the top of 
the vegetation to a distance of 6 to 10 feet. Beaters then entered the 
field at the far side and slowly drove the birds into the net. In crops 
44 
