Advertisement for the Remington Model 8 semi automatic rifle, introduced by Remington from the John Browning design in 1905 and kept into production, amazingly, until 1950 in the later Model 81 variant. The rifle, while advertised as "big enough for the biggest game", was designed to compete with lever action rifles of the era.*
We'll start off by saying that its obvious, particularly for retrospective looks into things, to say "well it was a lot different than it is now", but that's both obvious and trite in regards to something like this.
Yes, our friend the studious professor from the Laws of History page.
We should also note that hunting is one of those activities that looks at the present, past and the future nearly with an equal focus in ways that we don't look at a lot of other things. It connects us very much to our past in certain ways, and keeps us in focus on nature in a way that few things do. It has been acceptive and receptive, however, of technology, and resistant to at the same time. Indeed, ironically we are in the age, at least here, where hunting with bows receives nearly as much local interest as hunting with firearms does, even while, at the same time, the ongoing technological revolution, and in this case partially a revolution spurred on by warfare, not only continues to impact hunting but also to threaten it in significant ways. At the point at which electronic scopes that coordinate with rifles become common, for example, if they ever do, things have drastically changed and for the worse.
One of my favorite photographs, an elk hunter in Wyoming in 1904. A lot of what's depicted in this photograph could still be taken today. Horses remain in common use for elk hunting, for example. On the other hand, he appears to have used a Winchester rifle (not a carbine), to take this elk. Given the era, there are a lot of cartridge options so we don't really know what he was using.
Let's admit another thing. This is one of those rare, rare, posts here that better fits the original intended purpose of this blog than most of the endless boring posts I otherwise put up (although careful observers might note that recently more and more of the posts actually at least pertain to things that happened prior to 1920)**. And let's further admit that I don't know all of the answers on this one, so I'm hoping that somebody can fill in the blanks and add details.
Maine deer hunters, 1908.
Okay with all of that in the works, let's start off with some basics. First of all, there were a lot of good reason to go hunting in 1918.
Now, there are always a lot of good reasons to go hunting. It's a good way to really connect with real nature, not some sort of sanitized look at me in my high tech gear pretending to be in nature. And its a good way to get the protein you are actually evolved to eat. It's good to be out in nature in general. But in 1918, it would have also been a good way to get meat without being subject to the public harassment the government was engaging in at the time.
World War One era poster, one of a series, on various "less" days. As I've posted here before, for the nation's Catholic and Orthodox minority, the social pressure that applied to such things must have been a particular nightmare during World War One as they already had days in which they abstained from various foods and the government's actions, perhaps intentionally, didn't jive with what they were already doing. So they were getting days added to their already "meatless" days.
There was no rationing in the United States during World War One. Or not of the type we'd see in World War Two. About the biggest thing that the government did was to deprive brewers and distillers of grain, which started them off to the temporary extension of those industries that would follow the war with the passage of the Volstead Act in 1919. But meat wasn't rationed, for example.
The government urged consumers to save wheat by switching to other grains, such as corn and oats, for their recipes. It then restricted brewers supplies, and then cut them off, from corn and barley.
Which did not keep the government from engaging in an ongoing campaign of harassment which included all sorts of meatless and porkless days. There were no "deerless" days, or antelopeless days, or the like, so getting one would have involved getting some meat that some annoying campaign wasn't involved with.
And most Americans lived in lot more rural settings than they do today, so that put them in closer contact with nature than contemporary Americans, who might mistake pigeons in the park for nature.
Packing out a deer in 1908. Not four wheelers then (and I still don't have one).
So good to go, right? Just pack up and drive out and go hunting. After all, there were no "deerless" or elkless days.
Well, that's where the difficulties really begin when we look at this topic.
Col.. Billy Mitchell after hunting boars in France. This photo was taken during World War One under obviously different conditions than we'd see in the states, but the draped over the front fender method of carrying game was really common as long as cars had this general configuration.
Maybe, maybe not.
Now, by 1918 cars weren't brand new in the US by any means. Scenes like that in The Wild Bunch in which a person is amazed by the presence of a car in the Teens are baloney, where as a scene like that in The Professionals in which a Model T is already old would have been common. The Ford Model T was by far the most common automobile in the United States at the time, but the car had not achieved the universal ownership standard it would soon. Lots of people didn't own a car at the time, even though a lot did. People living in larger metropolitan areas, particularly did not. Surprisingly a lot of rural people also did not; they did not need them.
But cars were coming on strong.
The automobile of this period was not the same as today's by a long shot. I've sometime pondered vehicle evolution, and I basically feel that the automobile had three stages of development, those being 1) early primitive; 2) modern car and 3) extra modern car. We're in the extra modern period, but that only goes back maybe fifteen years or so (and we're about to launch into another era, with the hyper modern car, electric and all techno etc.). In 1918, they were at the tail end of the early primitive car.
The Model T was undoubtedly the most common American car of the era, although it certainly wasn't the only car available. The Model T is, moreover, a really rugged car with good off road capabilities. You'd be better off in a Model T than a Metro Geo or a hybrid of some sort. They had good low gearing, narrow wheels and tires, and a really good clearance.
They were also mechanically bizarre in modern terms and had strange features of all sorts. And with a giant four cylinder engine, they really weren't a long range vehicle.
So, while you could go places with hem, they didn't go all that far. If you've ever wondered why, when you travel old state highways, there are all sorts of abandoned old gas stations, that's why. Indeed, if you were to travel from Casper to Laramie on State 487 you might notice that, after Casper, there were gas stations at Clark's Corners, Medicine Bow, after Medicine Bow in the sticks, and Rock River. If you were traveling in a Model T back in the day (all of which would have been on dirt roads, in the era we are speaking of) you would have stopped at every one of them to "top off".
Still, a Model T was revolutionary if you had one. You could hunt close to town. And if you were really adventuresome, you could have loaded up a lot of one gallon gas cans and maybe have even gone further.
Which is not to say that people without a Model T, or to take a decade or two prior to our focus when everyone lacked a car, did not go out hunting if they lived in towns. They did. It's just would depend upon your circumstances and where you lived.
If you lived in a smaller town and had a horse, which some did, you could ride out, or ride out with your carriage. Or you could just walk out if the town was small enough. Such activities were not uncommon, they just involved more and different effort than driving out in your car.
Of course, before we move on, a lot of Americans didn't need to go anywhere to hunt as the rural population was a lot higher than it is now. It wasn't the case that everyone lived on a farm, as cranky pundit Jim Kunstler, looking forward as he is to a post apocalyptic America, seems to believe (in regard to the Great Depression), but a lot more people did than do now. Farmers and ranchers tend to nearly always be hunters in varying degrees. Indeed, I've known some who hunted hardly at all, but then knew some others who were frank that they lived off of wild game rather than their own beef, which they raised for profit.
So if we consider that a lot of Americans lived on farms and ranches, or more did than do now, and quite a few more lived in very small towns that bordered farm or ranch country, that makes the scenario a bit different. Quite a few people really didn't need a car, they just walked out their doors and on to their places or a neighbors. And quite a few in addition walked out their front door and down the street on early mornings for the same reason. And of course if you lived on a farm or ranch you owned horses if you were going hunting for big game.
So hunting paradise, right?
Well, maybe not so much, or not so much for everyone everywhere.
For one thing, while the situation we describe above was common for many, it was also the case it wasn't for quite a few also. Americans living in big cities were immobile in a way that they have never been since. Even the wealthy had to go to a lot more effort to leave town for anything. There's a reason that the hunting trip as expedition for the well healed started up, and that is part of it. That it carries on to this day is in a way a legacy of that. For those with more modest means, getting out of town as a ready option had not really yet arrived and was in fact some time off. Indeed, the teens were still the era of livestock in town.
And then there was the game itself.
One thing that's really difficult for modern Americans to sometimes appreciate is that American wildlife was saved by hunters. Game populations in the United States and elsewhere in North America had declined enormously since the mid 19th Century and hunters, around the turn of the century, stepped into address that. Hunters, not other interests, were the prime movers in hunting season and license laws. And it was hunters that stepped into make market hunting illegal, something that started in the tail end of the 19th Century and was still going on in the teens. All that wold have an enormous restorative effect on wildlife.
But it hadn't yet. In some areas of the country game remained very common, but in others that was not the case. Antelope, for example, an animal so common in Wyoming that they outnumber people were hurting. Deer populations in much of the west, as well as elk, were way, way down.
And waterfowl was hurting as well. Market hunting of waterfowl was only just being eliminated and so the restoration of waterfowl populations hadn't yet arrived. So, while we look back on the era romantically, in reality a lot of game populations were in trouble and therefore there wasn't a good of hunting opportunities as there are now.
Okay, let's say that you are now past all of that. And you may have been. There were upland birds in quite a bit of the country in abundance a century ago. There were enough in the way of waterfowl to hunt, even if it isn't like it is now (it's much better now), and there were deer and elk in sufficient numbers to hunt, even if again it wasn't like it is now (it's better now). And small game was abundant, just as it is now (well, maybe not quite as abundant as now. . . we have rabbits living in our yard all the time). So you we're past all that and you are out there bagging your game, right?
Well, maybe again.
Here too we have to consider something that came in during the last century but hadn't really arrived yet. .. refrigeration. And more particularly freezers.
Eh?
Yes, we're still in the age of the ice box. And that's what people had, assuming they were living in conditions where they had that.
Somehow people overcame this, as people did in fact go big game hunting. With small game, such as rabbits, or with game birds, this isn't that much of a problem as you could put them in the ice box and eat them soon, assuming you didn't get a large number of them. And people hung game at that time, which they really don't (and probably shouldn't) do now.
Hanging game is an age old custom where the quarry is hung in a cool dark room for a time, often several days (or with a large animal longer). I still recall people hanging deer when I was a kid, but I don't know anyone who does it now.
Deer hunters in the Adirondacks, 1903. Note the Winchester lever action rifle.
But cars were coming on strong.
The automobile of this period was not the same as today's by a long shot. I've sometime pondered vehicle evolution, and I basically feel that the automobile had three stages of development, those being 1) early primitive; 2) modern car and 3) extra modern car. We're in the extra modern period, but that only goes back maybe fifteen years or so (and we're about to launch into another era, with the hyper modern car, electric and all techno etc.). In 1918, they were at the tail end of the early primitive car.
Montana hunter, 1902, returning home on skis.
The Model T was undoubtedly the most common American car of the era, although it certainly wasn't the only car available. The Model T is, moreover, a really rugged car with good off road capabilities. You'd be better off in a Model T than a Metro Geo or a hybrid of some sort. They had good low gearing, narrow wheels and tires, and a really good clearance.
They were also mechanically bizarre in modern terms and had strange features of all sorts. And with a giant four cylinder engine, they really weren't a long range vehicle.
So, while you could go places with hem, they didn't go all that far. If you've ever wondered why, when you travel old state highways, there are all sorts of abandoned old gas stations, that's why. Indeed, if you were to travel from Casper to Laramie on State 487 you might notice that, after Casper, there were gas stations at Clark's Corners, Medicine Bow, after Medicine Bow in the sticks, and Rock River. If you were traveling in a Model T back in the day (all of which would have been on dirt roads, in the era we are speaking of) you would have stopped at every one of them to "top off".
Still, a Model T was revolutionary if you had one. You could hunt close to town. And if you were really adventuresome, you could have loaded up a lot of one gallon gas cans and maybe have even gone further.
Which is not to say that people without a Model T, or to take a decade or two prior to our focus when everyone lacked a car, did not go out hunting if they lived in towns. They did. It's just would depend upon your circumstances and where you lived.
If you lived in a smaller town and had a horse, which some did, you could ride out, or ride out with your carriage. Or you could just walk out if the town was small enough. Such activities were not uncommon, they just involved more and different effort than driving out in your car.
Of course, before we move on, a lot of Americans didn't need to go anywhere to hunt as the rural population was a lot higher than it is now. It wasn't the case that everyone lived on a farm, as cranky pundit Jim Kunstler, looking forward as he is to a post apocalyptic America, seems to believe (in regard to the Great Depression), but a lot more people did than do now. Farmers and ranchers tend to nearly always be hunters in varying degrees. Indeed, I've known some who hunted hardly at all, but then knew some others who were frank that they lived off of wild game rather than their own beef, which they raised for profit.
So if we consider that a lot of Americans lived on farms and ranches, or more did than do now, and quite a few more lived in very small towns that bordered farm or ranch country, that makes the scenario a bit different. Quite a few people really didn't need a car, they just walked out their doors and on to their places or a neighbors. And quite a few in addition walked out their front door and down the street on early mornings for the same reason. And of course if you lived on a farm or ranch you owned horses if you were going hunting for big game.
This is an obviously staged photograph, but it depicts something that actually did occur in the era, native hunters. These men would have been born at the latest in the late 19th Century when all of the western Indian tribes still engaged in some subsistence hunting. This actually remained a course of conflict with authorities at the time as the states insisted on enforcing their fish and game laws, while the Tribes were still acting on their treaty rights. As we've explored here before, this still comes up from time to time even today.
So hunting paradise, right?
Well, maybe not so much, or not so much for everyone everywhere.
For one thing, while the situation we describe above was common for many, it was also the case it wasn't for quite a few also. Americans living in big cities were immobile in a way that they have never been since. Even the wealthy had to go to a lot more effort to leave town for anything. There's a reason that the hunting trip as expedition for the well healed started up, and that is part of it. That it carries on to this day is in a way a legacy of that. For those with more modest means, getting out of town as a ready option had not really yet arrived and was in fact some time off. Indeed, the teens were still the era of livestock in town.
And then there was the game itself.
One thing that's really difficult for modern Americans to sometimes appreciate is that American wildlife was saved by hunters. Game populations in the United States and elsewhere in North America had declined enormously since the mid 19th Century and hunters, around the turn of the century, stepped into address that. Hunters, not other interests, were the prime movers in hunting season and license laws. And it was hunters that stepped into make market hunting illegal, something that started in the tail end of the 19th Century and was still going on in the teens. All that wold have an enormous restorative effect on wildlife.
But it hadn't yet. In some areas of the country game remained very common, but in others that was not the case. Antelope, for example, an animal so common in Wyoming that they outnumber people were hurting. Deer populations in much of the west, as well as elk, were way, way down.
And waterfowl was hurting as well. Market hunting of waterfowl was only just being eliminated and so the restoration of waterfowl populations hadn't yet arrived. So, while we look back on the era romantically, in reality a lot of game populations were in trouble and therefore there wasn't a good of hunting opportunities as there are now.
Okay, let's say that you are now past all of that. And you may have been. There were upland birds in quite a bit of the country in abundance a century ago. There were enough in the way of waterfowl to hunt, even if it isn't like it is now (it's much better now), and there were deer and elk in sufficient numbers to hunt, even if again it wasn't like it is now (it's better now). And small game was abundant, just as it is now (well, maybe not quite as abundant as now. . . we have rabbits living in our yard all the time). So you we're past all that and you are out there bagging your game, right?
Rabbit hunters, 1916. I'm not sure where this photograph was taken, but my guess is that it's in the upper Mid West. The hunters are all armed with shotguns and they have rabbit dogs, which aren't allowed everywhere (maybe they were then). The rabbits, based on their color, might be snowshoe hares. The meat would have been consumed in short order and its likely that the fur would have been sold as rabbit fur has a value now and it had more of one then.
Well, maybe again.
Here too we have to consider something that came in during the last century but hadn't really arrived yet. .. refrigeration. And more particularly freezers.
We ran this photograph just recently. Party of women grouse hunters in Idaho armed with pump action shotguns, most likely Model 1897s.
Eh?
Yes, we're still in the age of the ice box. And that's what people had, assuming they were living in conditions where they had that.
New York deer hunters, early 20th Century.
Somehow people overcame this, as people did in fact go big game hunting. With small game, such as rabbits, or with game birds, this isn't that much of a problem as you could put them in the ice box and eat them soon, assuming you didn't get a large number of them. And people hung game at that time, which they really don't (and probably shouldn't) do now.
Florida deer hunters, 1922. They have two white tail deer, one of which is being carried by the older looking gray bearded hunter. They're also all armed with shotguns
Hanging game is an age old custom where the quarry is hung in a cool dark room for a time, often several days (or with a large animal longer). I still recall people hanging deer when I was a kid, but I don't know anyone who does it now.
Hanging quail
Hanging small game and birds is apparently still quite common in some regions of the globe and I've heard, but have no first hand experience of it, that it's still done on the British Isles. It strikes me as dangerous if you can avoid it, but it was done.
Deer in cold storage locker in Texas, 1930s.
But it's not like you can hang a deer in most of the United States all winter long. I know that this is and was done in Alaska, but the climatic conditions are obviously rather different there. In Wyoming you couldn't do that. You might be able to for a few months starting in January, but the seasons were over by then.
I don't really know what people actually did under these circumstances. Freezers didn't become common until the 1950s. I've heard of people hanging meat in meat lockers, so maybe they did that on some occasions. Or maybe they just consumed most of what they go at the time, which would mean sharing quite a bit of what you had. That's possible as well.
If anyone knows, I'd appreciate knowing as well.
_________________________________________________________________________________
*Something I haven't addressed in this thread, as it would be more of a material thread, but very much well worth noting is that hunting arms, particularly in regards to rifles, were about to undergo a revolution.
Today the bolt action rifle is by far the most common big game rifle in the United States, although AR platform semi automatics are making huge inroads. But prior to World War One that most definitely was not the case.
The reason is not so much technological, as in technological advancement, as it has to do with what people were familiar with. The Remington 08 was one of at least two semi automatic rifles that were offered to American sportsmen at the time and there were bolt actions, although none of the big American manufactures made a sporting bolt action (so if you wanted one, you had to buy an import, probably a Mauser, or you had to buy a M1903 in some configuration from the U.S. Government, which was perfectly possible). In spite of what people may wish to believe, technological advancements in firearms over the last century, while real, has been much more marginal than imagined.
The reason had to do with what people were used to. And th at was the lever action. Lever actions, an American innovation, had come in strong after the Civil War and had only been rivaled, after cartridge arms were fully established, by single shot rifles, which were the choice of very serious sportsmen. The Remington 8 was an attempt to compete in that market.
Bolt actions had been around for quite awhile but it was really advancements in smokeless power that made them a really suitable, indeed ideal for many, rifle for hunters. Be that as it may, by the time that smokeless bottle neck cartridges really came in strong, with military bolt actions, in the 1890s the lever action was dominating the field. Advancement in elver actions, the most critical of which were again by John Browning, meant that lever actions were adaptable to most of the newer smokeless rounds. As scopes were rare in teh game fields at the day, the greater degree of accuracy afforded by bolt actions wasn't really appreciated at first.
Bolt actions were really introduced to American shooters with the Krag, the rifle that was adopted to replace the "trap door Springfield" and which introduced smokeless ammunition to American military use. It was a good enough rifle for what it was, but it was outclassed right from the onset by the Mauser rifles, and therefore its service live was short. That meant that the Krag became available as as surplus rifle to sportsmen nearly as soon as it had actually seen use. The Krag, however, shot a cartridge, the .30-40, which was only marginally better than the .30-30, a cartridge that Americans were very familiar with already, and the Krag couldn't fit a scope, not that anyone would have really thought to do so. So it make little impact on hunting arms other than that it became one.
It was World War One that changed that. The war exposed well over a million American men to the bolt action rifle and thousands of Masuer 98s rifles were brought home as war prizes. Remington, which was making the M1917 Enfield on a contract with the government, kept it in production in a sporting form, somewhat out of necessity as the brief cancellation of the contract meant that it had a lot of actions on hand and nothing else it could do with them. Winchester, which had also made M1917s, didn't try to compete at first but that soon changed and in 1925 it introduced the Model 54 rifle, a design based on the M1903 which would go on to become the legendary Model 70. Lever actions remained in use by they started declining as a result Automatics, on the other hand, simply didn't take off for the most part, in spite of a couple of exceptional examples to the contrary, until the Fantasia like persistence of AR manufacturers convinced many that the Jam Master was suitable for the game fields like it was for the battlefield, even though the latter has always been debated.
As bolt actions came in, scopes did too, but very slowly. Indeed, while German hunters armed with 98s had been using scopes since prior to World War One for European big game, scopes didn't really enter the picture much in the US until just prior to World War Two. After the war, however, they really took off.
Shotguns may have seen more change in a century in some ways, as odd as that may sound, than rifles. If that's true, that's due to the changes in cartridges more than anything else, but having said that, it isn't the sole reason.
As we've already seen, "repeating" shotguns had come in pretty strongly by World War One in the U.S., and pump action shotguns were already quite common. The John Browning designed Model 1897 was a major presence in the game fields by that time. Here automatics had, however, also made an appearance and they'd really seen more acceptance than they had in the big game fields in regards to rifles. Here too a Browning design, the Auto 5, was a large part of that. Manufactured from 1902 to 1975 it was a shotgun that commanded loyalty well after it was actually obsolete. It was already a common shotgun by 1918.
If a person wasn't using an automatic, they were probably using a side by side shotgun, and that gun may well have been a 10 gauge. The reason for that is that shotgun shells were just 2.5" long, not the 2.75" standard length that they are now, and the thought of making a 3" or 3.5" was unheard of. That would ironically come in with steel shot, after it was mandated in recent decades for waterfowl hunting, as it's been noted that the principal impact of steel shot was to return the shotgun to its earlier level of performance.
While all these types of shotguns are still around today, the over and under, a common shotgun now, was not. Indeed, the over and under was uncommon at the time.
Waterfowl guns of the era tended to have enormously long barrels based on a misunderstanding of barrel length and performance. This changed over the years even though, even now, shotguns primarily designed for waterfowl will sport longer barrels than they really need to.
**As World War One draws to an end, the long run of nearly daily posts here dealing with the Punitive Expedition through the Great War will inevitably wrap up and the blog will return to more of its original nature. Having said that, we only recently started to see a lot of posts on the Influenza Epidemic of 1918-19 so that will have an impact on "century ago" type posts. And the peace talks, remaining fighting on the border (yes, it's not over) and the occupation of Germany will all play into future posts.
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