43rd National Táncház Festival & Fair • 5–7 April 2024
Traditional hunting practices amongst the Moldavian Hungarians. In Moldavian Hungarian communities we can’t speak about upper-class sport of hunting with guns. Peasant methods of trapping, snaring, digging pits were used; aided by dogs, smoke, poison, homemade traps and metal traps made by Gypsy metal smiths, but rarely guns. They hunted fox, badger, rabbits, perhaps something like a weasel, mice, wild cats, birds, deer, stags, wild boar, wolves, more rarely bear. Wolves and wild boar were caught in pits with many sharpened stakes placed in the bottom of the pit that impaled and hopefully killed them. The main goal was to procure food. Badgers for example had good meat, their fat was preferred over pig fat and their tough skin made good shoes (local moccasins) and bags. The study begins by describing how to capture wild bee families… Information from many sources, time periods and personal collection over many decades is summarized here. By Halász Péter.