Within the Baka culture, hunting is one of the most important activities, not only for its role in providing food (Baka Pygmies live mainly by gathering and fishing), but above all for the symbolic meanings and the prestige traditionally attached to it.

In fact, the most skilled hunters are very respected and taken into great consideration, especially if they are specialized in the most significant and rewarding game activity: the big elephant hunt.

Exciting and dangerous, elephant hunting is linked to other fundamental cultural activities, e.g. men's initiation and women's ritual songs aimed at propitiating hunting.

Symbolically less important, but even more significant if we consider the practical task of providing daily food, are the other types of hunting performed in the rainforest with bows and poisoned arrows, crossbows, spears and traps. Contrary to what occurs in other pygmy cultures of the equatorial zone, the Baka do not know the use of hunting nets.

The forest animals killed by poisoned arrows (and sometimes by shooters lent by some bantu farmers who then keep almost the entire prey for themselves) are above all mammals. Among them there are various species of primates, artiodactyles, rodents, etc., which are also hunted at night. Another common hunted animal is the pangolin, a nocturnal and insectivorous mammal of the pholidotha order, covered with horny scales.

By means of traps placed near big and medium-length watercourses, the Baka hunt the crocodile, which is usually hit and killed by spears.

The importance of hunting in the Baka Pygmies culture, as in all the other African pygmy cultures, also comes from the fact that it is taken into great consideration by their mythology and traditional songs, where it is a recurring and basic element.

Unfortunately, due to the diminishing number of preys and the less frequent long expeditions in the forest, today hunting does not provide Pygmies an adequate supply of animal proteins anymore, which causes serious nutritional problems especially in children.