SIKALADI, Indonesia: One morning last February, the usually quiet town of Sikaladi was awakened by the boisterous voices of hundreds of men and the incessant barking of their four-legged friends.
A few days earlier, residents saw a wild boar chewing on nuts in agricultural land on a thirty-meter-high hill overlooking Sikaladi, an agrarian town of 1,500 people in the mountainous region of West Sumatra.
Members of the Indonesian Pig Hunting Sports Association (PORBI) who heard the news immediately told other members to gather at the foot of the hill. They will hunt the pig.
Since 8 am that day, hunters had crowded Sikaladi. They came one by one on motorbikes with iron cages containing dogs on both sides. More established hunters come driving pickups, capable of bringing along four to eight dogs in one go.
“It was very stressful when we saw our dogs chasing wild boars, the noise, the barking, the cheers of our friends,” said Sumantri, a construction worker who admitted that he had been hunting wild boars since childhood, when talking to CNA.
