Hunting For A Stronger Community?

“I think Shika deer is not too smart, but wild boars (shishi) are really smart,” said Toshiyasu Kuroki, who is an experienced trapper living in Nishimera, Miyazaki prefecture. Mr. Kuroki continued, “Some wild boars can detect the traps 20cm ahead of them. The clever ones would dig in front of the traps to remove them. They even cover the spot with lots of branches to make sure other shishi don’t go in there. No Shika deer would do that kind of things.” In May 2017 when I visited Nishimera for the first time, Mr. Kuroki was a member of the Vermin Task Force there. Mr. Kuroki and other 5 experienced hunters were employed by the village municipality. They were supposed to go out hunting or trapping more than 15 days a month to cull the wildlife considered as “vermin.” In this context, they were catching mainly Shika deer and wild boars, which increasingly caused serious damages to rice paddies, fields and conifer plantations in the village. <a href="https://medium.com/japonica-publication/hunting-for-an-stronger-community-f510f7f8c28e">Learn More</a>