Boubacar Traoré belongs to a family of renowned gunsmiths in Bobo Dioulasso, Burkina Faso. In this short documentary he describes his work as a taxidermist and goes through memories of his first hippopotamus hunt. In the region killing one of these animals is still a serious matter, because they are held capable of tricking the hunter…

This is an excerpt from Chapter 5 of my PhD dissertation, slightly edited and enriched of various media. I prepared this post for the reading list of my course in Regional Studies of Culture – West Africa on Ways of Knowing in the Mande. Learning to hunt One of the crucial days of my fieldwork,…

When on fieldwork in Burkina Faso, working on donso hunters and their knowledge of the bush, I found myself to need a shotgun in order to join the hunters in their outings. In Bobo Dioulasso I came across Boubacar Traoré, who comes from a Jula family of blacksmiths. He sold me a locally made 12-gauge…

I decided to drop the shotgun for a day and keep the camera in hand, going hunting with Lasso and Go-Seydou. The day was very very hot, small animals can be caught resting in the shadows. But the bush is starting to become green with new leaves, which makes following game increasingly difficult. The experience…

Once upon a time a hyena came to feed at night in Karankasso, in a hole under the tall trees I see from my house. She brought her cubs to eat the earth men dug out of the hole. One night, she was left without her offspring. According to a version, they were killed by…

So it is the day before Christmas, both my friend’s shotgun and mine are being repaired and we have no meat for tomorrow. I could buy yet another hen, but I am frankly tired of being a hunter who buys overpriced chicken. Around December they reach three or four times the normal price, and I…