Monkeys are the most highly prized meat eaten by the Machiguenga. A single monkey can weigh close to twenty pounds, and the meat is sweet and fatty during the peak fruiting season during the rains of February through April. Monkeys are preferably only hunted during this season, since in the dry season the meat is considered stringy, lean and inferior. Such a strategy also allows the monkeys time to recuperate from hunting pressure. Not only is prime monkey meat highly praised and seasonally scarce, there also appears to be a high prestige value associated with it: quick, acrobatic, highly intelligent and often inaccessible in the high forest canopy, monkeys represent a great challenge even to skilled hunters. Being a good hunter is synonymous with being a good monkey hunter.

Do Machiguenga men develop their aim and hunting skill through years of daily training with bows and arrows from childhood on? Or do some inherit natural talents from a father with exceptional vision or athletic abilities? If you ask a Machiguenga, the answer is no. There is no such thing as a good hunter, or good practice, or good luck, or good genes. There are only good hunting medicines.

Both types of hunting medicines are areas of male ethnobotanical specialization, complementing women's specialized knowledge of plants used in caring for newborn infants. Taken together, male hunting plants and female child care plants account for more than a hundred species, roughly half of all medicinal plants used traditionally by the Machiguenga of the Manu.