After months living with the Mentawais, I still don't understand how to read the augurs in chicken or pig's stomachs. For two or three minutes, they study all the veins of the fascia. I was told that the way they are arranged determines the good or bad augur. If it is good, all the family will be healthy and people will surely catch a deer, monkey or wild boar during the next hunt.
People can even foresee which day to go hunting.
If the augur is bad, the group or individual is destined for bad fortune. If the animal was killed to heal a sick person, he or she would die quickly. If it was good, he or she would be healed. If nobody was sick, it could mean bad luck for all the clan, a sign of an approaching accident or a disease will hit someone. My friend Martinus reassured me that it is rare for the augurs to be bad, but that old medicine men are never wrong in their predictions.