Questions Concening a Hunting Pouch from Lacrosse

[Elnathan]

I was looking through some papers the other day and found a couple of photocopies from Richard Lacrosse's book The Frontier Rifleman . On pages 156 and 157 Lacrosse show a small (5" by 5") heart-shaped pouch with an internal divider and a strap that goes down the sides and bottom, not the back, covering the seams of the bag. The flap is closed a leather thong that passes through holes in the flap and and front panel. It a dandy little pouch, but a little bit odd as hunting pouches go - I have never seen another with a similar strap or flap closure arrangement. Lacrosse dates it to 1750-1800, but I take that with a grain of salt.

I asked about it some seven or eight years ago on the old board, and one knowledgable person that he had a gut feeling that it might be early 19th century, perhaps a militia pouch to accompany a musket and catridge pouch IIRC. Since a fair amount of water has flowed under the bridge since then and hopefully our understanding of old pouches has increased somewhat, I thought I'd ask if what folks thought about its date and origins now.

I'd also be interested to know more about the leather it was constructed from - Lacrosse doesn't mention what tanning method was used, and while ordinarily I'd assume some type of bark-tan, his description of "soft deerskin, approximately 1/8" thick" makes me think of braintan. I have some bark-tanned deerskin of similar thickness and while it makes a good pouch, I wouldn't describe it as soft.

I am sorry I don't have a picture - I don't think that I would be breaking copyright by posting a scan, but folks around here seem to frown on it and I am not 100% sure...

[G. Elsenbeck]

I also have that book and the hunting pouch is very similar to one shown in Jim Webb's book, "Sketches of Hunting Pouches, Powder Horns and Accouterments of Southern Appalachia", pages 18 and 19.   While not evident the pouch in Lacrosse's book has a full gussett, the attachment how the straps were done to leave me to believe it does have one.  To get the 'divider', the maker merely used two pieces of leather as the front and attached to the gussett giving you in essence an inside pocket.  I'd guess the width of the gussett would be between 3/4 to an inch wide to match up with the straps as well.
I've made a couple of these pouches and while you note the 'smallness' of the pouch seems inappropriate I can assure you these 'little' pouches will carry anything the normal hunter of the time (todays) would likely carry to bring home the dinner.   
Gary

[Elnathan]

Thanks for the reply. I have a couple of photocopies from Webb's book, so i will have to dig through my papers and see if I have those pages. The gusset suggestion makes a lot of sense - one of the problems with sketchbooks in general is that there always is the question of how accurate the sketch is...

As for size, when I dug up the picture it struck me that it might make a very good pouch to take on a short big game hunt. My current pouch is only a bit larger and can hold everything I need to keep my rifle functioning, plus about twenty-plus rounds of ammunition. I made the flap out of a piece of hair-on calfskin, though, and it only occurred to me much later that it might not be a wise idea to wander through woods full of other hunters with a 6"x6" patch of light brown hair riding right over my liver and kidneys....

Smaller, lighter, and less likely to get me mistaken for a deer seems like a good idea.