I've been following this thread with interest, but until now I have refrained from contributing any comments, simply because other people have already said what I could have said. However, Kronckew's latest post is too good for me resist adding a tail to.
When I was a kid --- say between 16 and around 30 --- I regularly hunted wild pigs in the lignum scrub around Moree in North West NSW, Australia. I hunted with a group, usually no more than 6 of us, 6 or 8 pig dogs --- vicious cross breeds that would rip up the owner as soon as rip up a pig. We didn't hunt with rifles, although one of our group usually carried one just in case the pig got a bit a difficult.
Our weapons of choice were Lee Enfield bayonets, yep, the ones with the debated blood groove, and lengths of water pipe or electrical conduit that had a point ground on one end.
The method of hunt was to drive along a track in a ute (utility truck=pickup truck) until we saw a pig or pigs, turn the dogs loose and run through the scrub after them. The pig would usually bail up within a couple of hundred yards, then we would stick it with our bayonets and lengths of water pipe. When it had weakened a bit somebody would jump in and try to cut its throat. It was a lot of fun.
It was not at all difficult to remove the water pipe, that came out pretty much as easy as it went in, except when it got bent by a bone, but the bayonets needed to be twisted to one side before you could kick the carcass of the pig off it.
On a totally different track:- we tend to think of Indonesian spears and other stabbing weapons as being mostly made of iron. Well, the ones that have survived mostly were made of metal. But when a lord called up his populace to bear arms against an enemy, many of these peasant farmers did not have metal weapons, sometimes, not even metal farming tools, so guess what? They used lengths of sharpened bamboo. The picture here is of the pointy end of one of these bamboo spears, together with a metal pointed spear in cover, exhibited in the Den Pasar, Bali, museum.
Bare skin is pretty soft.
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