Being a hunter is a way of life that exceeds merely hunting game, the local hunters admit in unison. They regard it as a system that holds religion, culture, socialization and even community security, but undeniably places livelihood at its centre.

No human is the lord of the wilds. This is the understanding that the local hunters display. It pushes them to study animals, classify them accordingly, and master how best they can be killed, especially in a fair chase. This way, they come to associate certain strengths, often physical and/or spiritual, with these animals and the potential dangers that come with hunting them as game. Thus, the hunters’ prayers to Ogun are often of perpetual protection from the forces of the wild. They believe that the deity ensures their safety, except that they err. Even when many of them practise Abrahamic religions, they still stay true to Ogun. The hunters of Obafemi-Owode are no exception.

Before heading to Litan, our journey began at Ajura, the village where we made our initial stop. There, Temiloluwa, the photojournalist, and I witnessed hunters pouring libations and prayers on the Ogun shrine. To allay the fear they believe we’d feel from seeing the ritual, they joked that the majority of them are either Christians or Muslims, just like us. It is no different at Litan. Here, the hunters are even quicker to root out any diabolical assumptions we may have formed about their rituals and belief system. According to them, purging their hearts of harmful intentions is even pivotal to the safety they seek as Ogun worshippers. ‘We only fortify ourselves against harm and pray to all return in one piece. Because it is only then that the hunting trip is considered a success,’ Hakeem Oloyede, one of the hunters at Litan, tells me.

Oloyede is a hunter with over 30 years of experience. These decades of hunting actively, he told me, have afforded him a front-row seat to the world of hunting at Obafemi-Owode. With this bit of information, he goes ahead to fully explain the nature of the hunting trip for which they have assembled that day through the binary of individual and group hunting. Conventionally, hunters go hunting individually at night. This is called ‘ọdẹ alẹ́’, a nocturnal hunting trip. ‘For ọdẹ alẹ́, we kill games at midnight and prepare them for sale the next day,’ he says. He goes on to describe daytime hunting as usually ceremonial. ‘Ọdẹ ọ̀sán’, he calls it. ‘A number of hunters from different localities hunt together during the day, as we’re about to do, often for a particular event. Today, that event is Odun Ogun (Ogun festival), which is being hosted by the head of this village, Baale Litan. So we have come to hunt games and feast.’

At Obafemi-Owode, a hunter’s participation in this kind of group hunting is based on invitations, and the trips can be outside his neighbourhood, the local government area, or even the state. ‘We can go anywhere to work, as long as we’re invited there,’ Oloyede explains. To understand how these invitations are passed across, one must recognize the hierarchical structures of the hunting society. At the state level is the Ogun State Professional Hunters Association which all hunters belong. Under it are the local government chapters, which are further divided into zonal units. According to Oloyede, the gathering at Litan comprises hunters from different zones of the Obafemi-Owode chapter who must have been informed by the chairmen of their various zones. He himself is a member of the Shiwun zone, an area we passed on our way from Ajura before travelling through an expanse of thicket to reach Litan. These associations give the hunters a form of identity they take pride in. One is a green overall uniform that some of the hunters have on. Oloyede said: ‘Our uniforms are one of the ways we prove our membership. We also plaster stickers of our logo on our guns. So when we meet policemen while carrying arms, they don’t apprehend us.’

This recognition also enables them to take on the extra work of guarding their localities and warding off invaders. The Obafemi-Owode local government, for instance, has lived in fear of attacks by suspected Fulani herdsmen for a long time. In 2019, nearly all the residents of Pakudi village in the local government fled in fear of a retaliatory invasion after one farmer in the area killed a herdsman who allegedly led his cattle to graze on the former’s farm. The mere sight of herdsmen gathered in groups even triggers panic in the communities. At Ajura, we saw the hunters ask for Ogun’s help in conquering the Fulani herdsmen’s reign of terror. On our way to Litan, another hunter recounts the details of the previous day to the driver—the herdsmen had overrun a farm with cows and hunters had led the team that drove them out. ‘When a community is under the attack of the herdsmen, we’re often called to rescue them and this has been happening for a long time,’ Oloyede says.

The belief that they have a duty to protect their people from harm sometimes defines the night hunting experience. ‘Hunting trips are different at night because we’re not only out for animals but also miscreants like thieves,’ says Oloyede. They try to fight back, but our fortifications help us overpower them a lot of times. We could tie them up till daybreak when everyone can see them.’ Their services are sometimes sought for this effect. ‘We also work as security guards for houses, streets, estates, or companies where we follow the orders of the person who engaged our services—to tie up any offender we catch till they (employers) show up,’ he divulges. This also balances the dual interpretation of their title in Yoruba: ọdẹ, which can mean a hunter or a security guard, depending on the context.

Diversifying their incomes, in ways like providing paid security services upon request and engaging in other trades, is typical among the hunters of Obafemi-Owode. It also becomes necessary to make ends meet, as Oloyede says, because hunting can be a gamble in which one wins today and kills game and loses many more days after that. Tí ọdẹ bá rò’ṣẹ̀, tó bá rò’yà, tó bá p’ẹran kò ní fún ẹnìkan jẹ. If a hunter takes his struggles in the wild to heart, he would keep all his game for himself. Still, Oloyede describes the occupation as a lucrative one. He explains:

The profit we make from selling bushmeat can be massive, as it is in high demand. We can’t eat all that we kill and by the time we return from our hunting trips, there are already buyers lined up for the game. The larger part of our customer base is food sellers. Others are traditional medicine vendors who need certain parts of the animals to make remedies and even masquerades. We also skin the animals (waterbucks, particularly) and make rugs with their hides.

For longer than they can remember, hunters of Obafemi-Owode have lived this life of making the most of their tools, skills, and games for themselves and their immediate communities at large.