Conservationists and hunters can work together. So say heads of the Hunters' Association and the Wildfowl Trust.

"We are not against all hunting, per se," stated Wildfowl Trust president Molly Gaskin. "Hunting is part of nature."

"Every aspect of nature hunts for survival, not only of their own species, but of all other species in the linkages (species linked to their own).

"Every tree, bush and animal, it must survive but it must also be a part of the food chain."

"The only one who doesn't understand his role," noted the conservationist, "is man. And not primitive man, it is man today. Primitive man understood that his survival depended on the survival of everything else."

"Hunting is not a bad thing," Gaskin stressed, "if done properly, in a sensible way, whether for fun or food."

Buddie Miller, president of Hunters' Association of Trinidad and Tobago, said that the 100-year-old group has always been actively involved in conservation.

Miller is a member of the Wildlife Conservation Committee, the Honorary Game Wardens' Administrative Committee, and a former member of the Nariva Review Treasury Committee of the Nariva Swamp.

He is also a member of the committee appointed by Agriculture Minister Reeza Mohammed to rewrite the legislation for wildlife conservation, now laid in Parliament.

A significant part of the 1,000-member group are honorary game wardens.

"We spent two years replanting in the Caura hills," said Miller, 'putting down 36,000 new trees to recover some of he devastation caused by slash-and-burn."

Even with all this activity, Gaskin believes that hunting must be well regulated. Especially considering the profits involved.

Wild meat can fetch between $30 -$35 to $80 - $90 per pound. One hundred dollars at Christmas, Calvary Hill residents say. There are markets outside of the season, as well, even though it is now illegal to possess wild meat during the "close" season.

"There must be proper bag limits for every species," Gaskin said.

Hunting is permissible.

"As long as you don't kill everything in sight, as long as you don't hunt out of season, (or) when there is mating, because you disperse the animals and then, of course, there is no mating," she said.

One should not kill animals when they are young or kill pregnant females.

"You must have proper laws in place," Gaskin said. "You must have a government who is not afraid to declare moratoriums."

Moratoriums or bans are essential for a particular species or a particular area.

"Many of our problems," she said, "are not so much from the legal hunting, but from the illegal hunters who hunt year in, year out." Miller said: "You have got to distinguish between the legitimate sports hunters and the commercial hunter, the poacher, who has no care for how much or what he kills.

"One guy boasted to me," he said, "that he alone sets 21 traps (trap guns). Once the trap is set, it's on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. This is where the problem is. This is where the animals are disappearing."

Gaskin said there was little appreciation of the role of different creatures in the ecosystem.

"Many people don't know that many of the pests are there to control other pests," she said.

Instead, "ignorance and a macho attitude" rule.

Animals should not be shot and wounded and left to suffer.

"You should aim for a clean kill, rather than just for happy sport," Gaskin said. "Hunting dogs should always be trained to retrieve wounded animals."

She added: "Before we give people guns to hunt, we need to make sure that they are good shots."

Gaskin is an optimist by nature and believer in co-existence. "I hope that there could be a little more understand, because there's room for everybody."

Women don't hunt.

Yeah?

On this, my very first jaunt with a hunting party, I would pit my urban wits against man and best.

To tread on a coral snake, prod a fat macajuel, or watch the man in front disarm a trip-wire with a nasty trap-gun pouting with promise at the other end. Something like "Indiana Jones meets Bride of Papa Bois".

I did get to puff and wheeze, but "Indiana" had obviously moved.

Gilbert "Vore" Noreiga, Stevie "Pancho" Williams, Sheldon Moreno, Express photographer Kenrick Bobb and myself waited in someone's Calvary Hill, Arima driveway for the arrival of "Progee" and the dogs.

Clad in my best battered tees and jeans with a large padded autumn jacket for rain, I was advised that my too urban sneakers and jacket were all wrong for the bush.

"If plenty rain fall," Burt Liverpool pointed out as we braved the drizzle later in the day, "yuh will be too heavy tuh move."

Clad in long-sleeved woven cotton shirt and low boots, he drawled, "Yuh wouldn't be able to run!"

Burt had passed by our grassy driveway with Progee and his hounds, heading further up the main road.

The hounds of hell (to the 'goutis) numbered about 11, nipping and yapping, entangled in each other's leashes of nylon rope.

No taller than 20 or 25 inches above the ground, the combinations of beagle, foxhound and mongrel strained at their leashes as we crossed the Arima-Blanchisseuse Main Road. They were released as soon as we got to the very base of the mountain, Cangrejal No. 1.

"You breed them with beagle (for their) nose," Progee, really Noel Williams, would say later. "And with foxhound for speed."

Their small stature helps them to better negotiate the 'latro', or tangles of bush and ground vines on the mountains.

In the bush, they didn't keep up the loud baying and yelping like you see in those fugitive movies. They were remarkably quiet, until they spotted an animal.

Progee has been breeding hunting dogs for the last six to seven years, having come from a family of hunters. His brother, Ray, and nephews Pancho and "Small Man", accompanied us as well.

The Civilian Conservation Corps had cleared a path through the bush up the mountain, which we followed. The licensed firearm owners carried their own rifles.

"The men with the guns should walk in front,' advised Vore, dark-haired, almost six feet tall. If the gunman walks at the back of he party, he says, it's carried open, unloaded, across the back of the neck and shoulders.

We paused on the path in a cool clearing two hours later. The hounds had disappeared now, their barks echoing first on the ridge above us, then toward the main road below.

"When yuh her (of) men getting shot in hunting accidents," he leaned on his makeshift walking stick, smoke curling from between his tar-reddened moustache, "is because they was playing the fool."

It's hard to get shot hunting, they maintained. People who accompany the gunman are usually behind him. Whenever he fires, he tends to aim low.

While he and the dogs are in the bush, the rest of the party are either on the path or at camp. Movements in the bush are registered regularly by loud calls, howl or whistles by both groups. That way, everybody knows where everybody else is.

Even the dogs are fairly safe, for the agouti, which we had come to hunt, is so swift that it tends to have a lead of several yards on the hounds.

"Sometimes they does even do a 'spin'," said Vore.

The wily 'gouti, with the dogs in pursuit, will make a wide circle, back behind the dogs, then double back again and break the path. The, while the canines are hot on the wrong trail, he bounds further back into the bush. Hopefully, not across the path of the gunman.

The object of the day was to try to catch one agouti. There was half of another already seasoned in someone's fridge from the last hunt. Two would have been a bonus.

"It have men now who does hunt with cellular phone and walkie-talkie," said Burt. They hunt in large groups and form catchment lines along the mountain ridges and close in one ht animal, rather like on-land trawlers.

"If he (the agouti) running on one side of the bush and he going across to the other side, they just ring or beep the other side," he gestured dramatically, "and they go get him."

'Is dem men does damage the hunting," declared Vore. "The 'gouti doesn't have a chance. Dey does catch all kinda 12 and 14 'gouti one time."

He pulled on his half-drawn cigarette.

"What yuh go do with 14 'gouti?"

"If we catch one, we happy!" returned Burt, then with raised eyebrows, "an' if we catch two…!"

Loud guffaws from the camp.

At least four hours passed before Pancho emerged from the bushes. Progee and Ray were not seen that afternoon, even after we heard the "bounce", or gunshot.

Soon after the bounce, the dogs stopped barking, a sign that there was an agouti at the other end of the barrel.

"If they didn't get 'im," advised Vore, "they would still be barking."

On our way to the camp and during our stay, the dogs would return one by one or in twos and threes. Pancho would be heard calling to them, often from a distance, at times a little closer.

"The dogs not huntin' good today," noted Vore. "They now getting back into it."

The hunting season runs from October 1 to February 28, 29 in a leap year. For the remaining seven months, the hounds remain relatively inactive.

"They just stay in the kennel," said Vore. "You could only exercise them (hunting) during the month before the season begins. But you cyah carry any gun."

Apart from the "walkie-talkie techno-hunting", the constant quarrying in the Northern Range threatens the presence of the wildlife. From our camp on the top of the ridge we could see large quarry sites further north, stark against the emerald carpet hills.

Next week, we go to Valencia, where, Progee said, there's high wood, no latro.

"We'll be able to see the 'goutis leaping," he said.

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