Hunting as sport

[Kermit]

Interesting article here:

http://www.jaegerkorps.org/NRA/Hunting%20Guns%20in%20Colonial%20America.htm

It makes the comment that hunting was considered a sport in colonial America. Today I think we tend to romanticize the rugged pioneer and the longhunter, but most colonists did not fit either category.

Which brings me to wonder: to just what extent was hunting a "sport" in 1700's North America? Conjecture aside, does anyone have any evidence of the sporting nature of hunting for our ancestors?

[BrownBear]

I recall reading an account recently of Crockett in Three Roads to the Alamo, and I think there were literature citations to go with that account.  I'm not at home to reconfirm at the moment, but in one of his breaks from Congress he spent several months by himself in the wilderness and reported shooting an ungodly number of bears for sport.

BTW-  That's a dandy read.  It's a real eye opener on lives and life styles, and enough to kill once an for all any romance we might harbor about Bowie.  Scoundrel of the first water.

[frogwalking]

Bowie would have to go a ways be be worse than Andy Jackson.  He and Crocket hated each other after they fought indians together.  That is also quite a story.

[northmn]

I have seen a few misconceptions on colonial firearms and their role.  Mostly it seems to depend upon the region.  The Northern areas from Ticonderoga south that Gentleman Johnny traversed was pretty rugged and he did have to face angered frontiersmen.  The battle of Oriskany was one of frontiersmen vs natives.  Many of the Southern states were also less developed which also gave legends like Francis Marion a chance to employ guerrilla tactics as in the movie "The Patriot"  which was based upon Marion as one resistance figure.  The central colonies were pretty much European in nature and as to cities and established farmland.  Men either worked in towns or were farmers.  Hunting was not a mainstay, but was sport in these areas for making a living.  Men were expected to serve in militias, and were armed for militias, but made their living as tradesmen, laborers or farmers.  The longhunters wee more of a border phenomena.

DP

[smylee grouch]

I have read where there were squirrel hunting contests but cant remember dates o0r regions. That would qualify as sport I think.      Gary

[Dphariss]

Hunting stuff that is dangerous has always been a sport. In fact any hunting has always been sport to some extent.
I like to hunt, I hunt to eat true but I still like to hunt. Does this make it subsistence or sport?
Lewis and Clark had to ORDER the hunters to stop hunting GBears.
In Colonial American most wildlife was considered a nuisance, a threat to crops or/or livestock etc etc.
It was also free meat. If you killed a bear you could put off killing a hog or beef for the meat and cooking fat.
Deer, raccoons, beaver and others were hard on corn. Deer and moose and buffalo just love oats and barley.
The first time real damage was done to some crop the wildlife was in trouble.
I have read that even the natives did not like a lot of wildlife near their corn patches. Probably why they used to burn off the undergrowth in the forest every fall.

AS a little side bar...
Sport hunting is not a bad thing. I suspect that subsistence hunters in the east and farmers protecting crops were harder on the game than the sport hunters. But this said there were excesses in this too. Read "With Rifle and Hound in Ceylon" by Baker.
Later on...
Sport hunting has preserved and greatly expanded the wildlife in both numbers and diversity in late 19th and especially 20th century America.
Sport hunting and the revenues is generates has been key in saving wildlife in parts of Africa.
Now photo safaris are getting  popular.

Dan

[SCLoyalist]

Like the referenced article says,  hunting in England was mostly sport for the landed gentry, but in North America the availability of open land and wide distribution of firearms made hunting a 'primary means of survival.'

Thomas Jefferson's observations about the value of hunting and rambling about with firearms, rather than violent activities like playing ball, probably indicate hunting being viewed as sport.   And, there is this recorded observation about TJ as a sporting, not subsistence, hunter:

Isaac Jefferson, in his inimitable Memoirs of a Monticello Slave, gives a clear picture of Jefferson the hunter. He recalls that Jefferson hunted "squirrels and partridges; kept five or six guns...Old Master wouldn't shoot partridges settin'. Said 'he wouldn't take advantage of 'em' - would give 'em a chance for thar life. Wouldn't shoot a hare settin', nuther; skeer him up fust."[4] Isaac goes on to say that when Jefferson heard hunters down in his deer park at Monticello he "used to go down thar wid his gun and order 'em out."

Maybe the gentry of the United States who had some wealth tended to look at hunting as sport, whereas poor folks looked on hunting as necessary to put food on the table and money from meat and hides in their pockets.

[James Rogers]

Just because there was a need or desire for the meat, there was (and is) always "sport" involved no matter how ethical.
Hunting through the generations of us po white trash in the south has always contained that element of "sport" that is considered recreation and fun no matter how the "need" is justified. 

[Daryl]

Through the 1800's English "Sportsman" came to the US and Canada to hunt.  This happened more often than we realize - a number of these 'incidences of sport hunting' are mentioned in Firearms of the American West 1803-1865.

[northmn]

Reading that excerpt about Jefferson is a bit humorous to me.  Jefferson was quite wealthy, and ther were a lot of "partridges" back then.  The old fowlers, with the shot avaiable, would cover a car door at about 20 paces.  I have been playing with a cylinder bore 20, and even with modern shot it does scatter.   Hinton in his book about the "Golden Age of Shotgunning" which was in the 1870's and later mentioned how the muzzle loading shotgun stayed popular for some time as those with breech loaders ahd to spend all night loading for the next day while those with ML's coulld sit around and socialize.  Mention was made of the sheer volume of shooting they would get as in up to 200-400 rounds a day.  We cannot imagine that today, where getting a shot a game bird is getting to be a successful day.

DP

[T*O*F]

Through the 1800's English "Sportsman" came to the US and Canada to hunt.  This happened more often than we realize

This is true.  In addition, from the late 1600's on in England, there were 2 categories of guns.....military and sporting.  If it wasn't a musket, it was a sporting arm.

[doug]

But this said there were excesses in this too. Read "With Rifle and Hound in Ceylon" by Baker.

      The part that got to me was when Baker complained that the french and the natives hunted "just for food".  This is the same Baker that seemed to shoot everything that moved.  In his words, not one in 100 elephants had tusks worth taking but he shot them anyway.  He appeared to have a pack of 30 or 40 dogs for hunting deer but because of the heat and lack of refrigeration, the deer were only killed for dog food.  I am not sure if anything was used on the water buffalo that Baker killed by the dozens.

cheers Doug

[Daryl]

Our more 'modern' sensibilities do not allow what passed for 'sport' "in the old days" - oh well.

 Look-too at the slaughter of buffalo from trains - for sport- most often, nothing was taken - buffalo running off with a bullet or ball somewhere inside. Thousands and thousands killed that way- seems to me the military promoted this type of 'sport' to assist with their agenda.