Hello, here I have a few more. You have to consider in Germany in the 18th century that hunting was only reserved for the nobility you won't see many simple bags.
Monty
Someone can certainly correct any details I’m getting wrong or omitting here, but as I understand the society of the collection of German states was fairly “dystopian”, but hunters and foresters employed by the petty rulers enjoyed some degree of trust. I’ve read accounts that Jaegers during the American Revolution served a role akin to provost troops in addition to their other duties, and even when troops moved across the German states, posted in the roads and hills surrounding the main body to pick up or pick off men who took their chances making a run for it.
As such, it seems the men who made up that strata of society enjoyed the trust of their lords. Am I correct in classifying them roughly as the era’s equivalent to “middle class”? Surviving Pistor rifles are rather utilitarian, and I’m assuming such rifles often served double duty as military arms and gamekeeper’s tool, at least in the latter half of the 18th century. Wouldn’t there be similarly utilitarian bags to serve the needs of the men who carried them? Even if the model of Jaeger troops had been established by then as separate from the model’s origin of true woodsmen serving a military role that happened to coincide with their civilian occupational skills, casting back a few generations, Caspar Wistar’s rifle looks quite plain, and to my understanding he arrived in Philadelphia in 1717 with the clothes on his back, and the rifle. He wasn’t prosperous, but he had the tool of his trade, being an apprentice-gamekeeper.
Am I completely wrong in the perception that for every fancy rifle there must have been several plain ones used by those gamekeepers and foresters in the lord’s employ? Did foresters and gamekeepers simply draw a rifle (and likely as not a “fancy” one) and accouterments from their employer when/if one was needed?
Which is a long-winded way of asking, I suppose — we know there were plain rifles, so why not an equal number of plain bags?
