Hunting

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Hunting

Europe. On the surface hunting might seem to have been a natural sport for almost everybody in pre-industrial Europe, but such was not the case. City dwellers did not have much opportunity for hunting. In England the woods were progressively reserved for the nobility and the gentry. Ordinary people were prohibited from taking the birds, deer, and rabbits from these reserves, and while some poached, others never even tried their hands. Guns were also much less accurate and much more difficult and time-consuming to operate. The rifled bore, which gives the rifle its name, was used in the eighteenth century, but even by 1800 there were still smoothbore muskets sitting on people’s mantles. John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts, loved bird hunting as a young man but eventually gave it up for a series of reasons which suggest why ordinary Englishmen were not hunters: it was against the law as well as too expensive, strenuous, dangerous, and just plain difficult. Winthrop noted, “I have ever binne crossed in usinge it, for when I have gone about it not without some woundes of conscience, and have taken much paynes and hazarded my healthe, I have gotten sometimes a verye little but most commonly nothinge at all towards my cost and laboure.” Africans and Native Americans probably did better. Hunting was an integral part of male work in their cultures, and they were trained to use spears or bows and arrows from a young age.

New World. Even as game was denied to most of those living in Europe, promotional literature for the colonies noted the immense herds and flocks of animals suitable for hunting. Initially colonists bought wild game from the Native Americans rather than kill it themselves. In time, however, some colonists became good marksmen. Various colonies offered bounties on “vermin”—crows, foxes, squirrels, and wolves—animals which destroyed crops or killed domesticated animals. New England farmers hunted with one or two other men. In the South hunting parties were organized which sometimes utilized Native Americans. Men hunted on foot and on horseback, with dogs or without. In South Carolina men hunted alligators from boats. By the eighteenth century there was leisure time for hunting, but except perhaps on the frontier most colonists never relied upon their own skill to put meat on their tables. On the other hand, while settlement pushed out larger animals such as deer, birds and especially pigeons were plentiful, even in the cities. As late as 1720 Philadelphia passed laws against shooting pigeons, doves, partridges, or other birds in the streets and orchards within the city limits. Ducks and other fowl were still available in the marshes close to all port cities.

TRUE TO THE MARK

Caesar Rodeney of Delaware kept a diary in which he recorded his everyday activities. Among these were recreational marksmanship:

1727. December 23. We went to Shooting for 7 yds of Drugt. [Drugget, a kind of cloth] which I had Set up to be Shot for it wass woun by John Willson.

1728. January 13. after brakt [breakfast] Met Nowell at the Gum trees In order to Shote for five Pounds Which he wan[.] My Parte wass 20 Shilling [one pound.]

January 20.1 Set up a hat to be Shot for Bro Danil Woun it[.] We Shot In ye Woods.

February 3.1 went to John Willsons to a Shooting Match for a fidel: John Hart & I Woun it between us[.] I gave him my Part for Paying my Shot—

February 9. Shot 2 or 3 Guns at Marks[.]

Source: “‘Fare Weather and Good Helth’: The Journal of Caesar Rodeney. 1727–1729,” edited by Harold B. Hancock, Delaware History,10 (1962): 33–70.