Hunting Big Game or Boko Haram, ‘You Kill It or It Kills You’
Mr. Bukar said he was with Nigerian soldiers last fall when they came across one of the abducted
schoolgirls: Amina Ali, who was scrounging for food in the forest with other Boko Haram members.
His group, which once gathered regularly in the bush to track rabbits, wild hens
and other game, first encountered Boko Haram when the militants fled the state capital four years ago and took their rampage to the countryside, encroaching on the hunters’ turf.
Last weekend, Nigeria scored a major victory in the battle with the militants, securing the release of 82 girls whom
fighters kidnapped from a boarding school three years ago as they were preparing for exams in the village of Chibok.
Mr. Bukar and dozens of members of a century-old hunting association have trained their weapons on Boko Haram, the Islamist militants who have shot, kidnapped
and burned their way through villages on an eight-year campaign of murder and destruction across the region.
The Nigerian government announced that 82 of the girls who had been taken from a school in Chibok, Nigeria,
three years ago had been released in exchange for as many as six suspected Boko Haram militants.
But not with Boko Haram," said Mr. Bukar, who is also the secretary of the hunters’ organization.
Mr. Bukar said that In the beginning, there was no problem,
