Hunting
It is believed that the shape and elliptical flight path of the returning boomerang makes it useful for hunting birds and small mammals. Noise generated by the movement of the boomerang through the air, and, by a skilled thrower, lightly clipping leaves of a tree whose branches house birds, would help scare the birds towards the thrower. This was used to frighten flocks or groups of birds into nets that were usually strung up between trees or thrown by hidden hunters.
Non-returning boomerangs (termed "throwsticks") for hunting larger prey, such as kangaroo, were used for small prey as well. These throwsticks fly in a nearly straight path when thrown horizontally and are heavy enough to take down a kangaroo on impact to the legs or knees. For hunting emu, the throwstick is aimed toward the bird's neck, in an attempt to break it.
Read more about this topic: Boomerang
Famous quotes containing the word hunting:
“They take unbelievable pleasure in the hideous blast of the hunting horn and baying of the hounds. Dogs’ dung smells sweet as cinnamon to them.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)
“As I drew a still fresher soil about the rows with my hoe, I disturbed the ashes of unchronicled nations who in primeval years lived under these heavens, and their small implements of war and hunting were brought to the light of this modern day.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The French manner of hunting is gentlemanlike; ours is only for bumpkins and bodies. The poor beasts here are pursued and run down by much greater beasts than themselves; and the true British fox-hunter is most undoubtedly a species appropriated and peculiar to this country, which no other part of the globe produces.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)