Deals with the efficiency of net hunting versus bow hunting in the Ituri. Most assume that net hunting is more efficient yet we have no quantitative data to demonstrate it.

Hunting Methods and Prey Species
 

• Monkey hunts and the use of poison arrows. He sampled 46 and accompanied them 13 times. Each hunt lasts about 3.31 hours and an additional 3.6 hours is devoted to arrow manufacture (shoot 37 arrows for each monkey killed).
• Ambush hunts are for duikers using metal tipped arrows. Only about 12% shot at ever make it to the cooking pot.
• Group hunts are game drives. They go after 6 species of duikers, water chevrotains and Bates pygmy antelope.

Locomotor patterns has information on running (very little), walking, and standing. Spend 7.7% of their time in trees.

Distance traveled in foraging activities is 7.03 km/day.

Hunting Returns

Amount of game returned is a function of amount of time spent hunting (r=.64). The rate of return for monkey hunting is 0.319 kg/hr (includes tool manufacture).

Rate of return for ambush hunting is 0.185 kg/hr.

For group hunts there is no size that optimizes a man’s chance of making a kill, or group size that optimizes hunting efficiency. This leads him to conclude that Efe groups are not organized to optimize hunting efficiency or hunting has little or no influence on group size.

Groups hunting efficiency was .266 kg/hr

 

Hunt Type	Efficiency (kg/hr)
Ambush	0.185
Monkey	0.319
Group	0.266

 

Of the 21 hunters, 7 had zero or near zero efficiency and the top seven (33%) killed 56% of the game.
 

Group Hunts: Sharing

After the first shooter, the person who owned the dog, and the second shooter get shares, about 34% remains to be divided among those who participated in the hunt. Furthermore, there is a positive correlation (r²=.368) between total man hours of hunt (hours times men) and kilograms taken on the hunt. This sharing motivates men to do this kind of hunting over other forms of hunting (ambush but not monkey) [given that some are such lousy hunters?].

 In regards to sharing reducing variance he shows that variance in procurement success (sharing portion plus kills) is less than variance in hunting success. Eight of the top ten hunters lost rank through sharing.

One who went from 16 to 3 owned four hunting dogs.

One man who was number six and regarded as one of the best hunters was reduced to number 13. This was because he abandoned his wife during the middle of the sampling period to acquire a new one and people were giving him smaller than normal shares to teach him a lesson.

[Stress that this is a group activity: therefore people are not freeloading by making demands if they made no kills.]

Age and Procurement Success

Despite the readjustments through sharing there was still a significant correlation between hunting and procurement success. However, the eight oldest either keep their rank or have it increases while the seven of the eight youngest lose rank. Therefore, it is clear that older men are getting a disproportionate share of the meat.

However, there is no correlation between rank of hunters according to procurement success and their age rank. Leads him to conclude

Shows that there is a limited need for meat by the fact of a negative correlation between hunting success and hunting time. He concludes that they are time minimizers and not resource maximizers. Cites my data in agreement and Hill and Hawkes as different.

There are two possible reasons:

1. They cannot eat or process more meat (highly unlikely)
2. They have alternative uses of time (no further need for consumption or value in trade). Alternate activities could be searching for or guarding a wife, foraging for honey, or working in the village.

Comparison of Hunting Returns: All Methods

Group hunting is by far the most common (3,807 hours compared to 152 and 84 for monkey and ambush, respectively). Although the rates or return are lower, the chances of success (mean variance trade off) are superior (63% get shares compared to 30% and 11% for monkey and ambush, respectively). Cites Winterhalder’s research on variance reduction through sharing. He says that they are risk averse.

He says that ambush hunting does not interfere with other activities (early morning and late afternoon) and monkey hunting is frequently done in a general foraging context (searching for honey can be done at the same time).
 

Chapter 6 Hunting Success and Marriage 

Findings by Hill and Kaplan show that good hunters have higher survivorship for young and a greater number of illegitimate children (which combined would equal greater reproductive success).

He will investigate male fertility in this chapter.

Marriag Patterns of Efe and Lese

13% of Efe women are married to Lese villagers which reduces the number of potential mates for Efe men, given marriage is hypergynous.

3.2% of Efe men are married polygynously, yet 37% of Efe men of marriageable age are unmarried. This is in sharp contrast to Lese men of whom 16.% are polygynous and 17% are unmarried. Of the polygynous Lese men, 25% have one Efe wife. All of these wifes are second wives and are wives of low status Lese men.

Efe Male Strategies of Competition

Wrangham and Ross show that the single most important factor for successful production (larger gardens, greater cash income, and more material wealth and better nutrition) is the number of kin in the village. This explains why Efe men do not attempt to join villages and become farmers: they would be poor since they have no kin support. [However, the appropriate comparison would be, perhaps, how well Efe men would do in comparison by following the traditional Efe foraging pattern.]

Efe men continue to follow the pattern of gathering meat, honey, etc. because it is the best way in which they can compete for mates. Men supply 72% of forest products used by Efe even thought a large fraction of the overall diet comes from women working for Lese.

Overall Hunting Success

Of the 17 hunters, the best were five times more efficient than the worst. However, there was no correlation between hunting success and being married or not. However, when overall wealth was considered, there was a significant relationship between wealth and being married. [No correlations between age and wealth, or age and overall procurement success.]

There is, however, a correlation between wealth and procurement success. He suggests that better hunters hunt less and this gives them greater opportunities to work for Lese farmers and do other wealth acquisition things.

It appears that successful Efe and Lese men associate since there is a correlation between material possession of Efe men and wealth rank of Lese farmers (i.e. their trading partners).

Chapter 7 Conclusion 

Pygmy-Villagers Relationship

It is pretty clear that Mbuti cannot persist independently of agricultural villages. He suggests, at best, they must depend on villagers for 25% of the diet.

Key variables that would determine the degree of independence or dependence are:

1. Forest available to foragers
2. Demographic characteristics including hypergyny [this is unclear to me].
3. Productivity of village gardens.
4. Availability of alternative occupations (meat traders, workers, etc.).
5. Efficiency of foraging techniques.
6. Time allocation and food acquisition of individuals in each group.

Women acquire 1/3rds of all calories consumed.

Men and women will have conflicts of interests in two areas.

1. Women wish to remain close to villagers for a short commute to work and men will wish to stay further away in order to exploit the forest more efficiently.
2. Females may wish close association with villagers so they can marry. Efe men jealously watch over their women to make sure they are not having assignations with Lese men. Frequently, men go to the village to fetch their kinswomen and wives who cohabitate with Lese men.

Efe men compete with Lese men by

1. Flexibility in residence and subsistence in an environment of low predictability.
2. Consistency of life-style (marry into what one has grown up in instead of entering of semi-foreign Lese culture).
3. Greater chances of affiliation and cooperation with close kin.
4. More frequent access to honey and meat, prized resources.

He argues, on the grounds of simple energetic efficiency, that good hunters should hunt more or equally as poor hunters. If hunting gains could be used to enhance fitness in proportion to the amount brought in (more kills, more fitness) they would hunt more intensively. He suggests the following alternative activities are important:

1. Mate guarding.
2. Trading and socializing with villagers.

Suggests Efe hunters are like Yanomamö hunters. In the case of the Yanomamö hunters quit early to guard mates and to prevent abduction of female relatives and wives.