Coucal is one of about 30 species of birds in the cuckoo family. Coucal meat is not only the interesting food for aboriginal people, but also the medicine to prevent and cure variety of diseases such as back pain, asthenia, arm aches, asthma, urinary discomfort,… Coucal usually lives in thick forests, especially in stream area. To catch coucal, aborigines have to use crossbow because it is difficult to catch by hand.
With aboriginal people living in the jungle, they don’t have modern tool to hunt animals so they just use the raw materials to hunt and to make weapons for hunting animals. Crossbow is one of the most popular weapons of those people. A crossbow is a type of ranged weapon based on the bow and consisting of a horizontal bow-like assembly mounted on a frame which is handheld in a similar fashion to the stock of a gun. It shoots arrow-like projectiles called bolts or quarrels. The main steps to make crossbow are:
+ Making crossbow string: Use a baking pot to collect tree’s sap, pour it in a bamboo piece. Then, dry it under the sun for some hours.
+ Making crossbow body: Use a small short bamboo trunk having hole to make crossbow viewfinder at which places the arrow. Next, choose 2 branches of trees which are strong, firm; hewn them to tie them to match with each other and to tie crossbow string.
+ Making arrow: take some strong bamboo trunks with a length of about 0.5 meter and taper one head of them to make arrow.
+ Check the crossbow work.
Then go to coucal living area to catch them.
Coucals processing method of arborigines:
Arborigines just have basic stuffs to process food such as knife or stone axe so that they often cook in simple ways. Hunted animals will be dissected and grilled on fire without processing. With coucal, after being dissected, arborigines will use a long stick to cross the coucals. Then, they’ll make a fire to grill the coucals. You can see in the following video. After roasting, the fur was burned and will be swiped out, meat was cooked and will be eaten.
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