Showing posts sorted by date for query "before 4x4s". Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query "before 4x4s". Sort by relevance Show all posts

Saturday, June 29, 2024

Going Feral: Emergency FRS/GMRS Channels

Going Feral: Emergency FRS/GMRS Channels

Emergency FRS/GMRS Channels

I thought I'd posted something on this, but I hadn't.  

If you spend quite a bit of time in the outback, you should pack along an FRS/GMRS capable radio, or at least a FRS one.  I.e., a "walkie talkie".

I like radios, and it's really easy to geek people out on the topic, or for that matter to get arrogant in regard to them, which is a frequent problem in radio communities.  What I'm going to start off noting is something that goes down the rabbit hole in GMRS communities, but its easy to set yourself up with these sorts of small handheld radios.  Midland in particular makes good sets for regular people.

Everyone has seen these sorts of radios, and a lot of children actually use them, particularly the FRS ones.  When you buy a "bubble pack" radio set at the sporting goods store, that's what you are getting.

Okay, for some technicalities.  From the FCC website:

The Family Radio Service (FRS) is a private, two-way, short-distance voice and data communications service for facilitating family and group activities. The most common use for FRS channels is short-distance, two-way voice communications using small hand-held radios that are similar to walkie-talkies. The service is licensed-by-rule so the general public can use the devices without having to obtain a license and channel sharing is achieved through a listen-before-talk etiquette.

Other services that allow similar communications include the CB Radio Service, General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) and the Multi-Use Radio Service (MURS).

The FRS is authorized 22 channels in the 462 MHz and 467 MHz range, all of which are shared with General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) which requires an individual license for use.

That's frankly a little deceptive, for reasons we'll discuss in a moment.

A lot of the the radios you buy now have the GMRS bands on them, and lots of people, as we'll see, buy GMRS radios intentionally, which require a license, as noted.  Regarding GMRS;

The General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) is a licensed radio service that uses channels around 462 MHz and 467 MHz. The most common use of GMRS channels is for short-distance, two-way voice communications using hand-held radios, mobile radios and repeater systems. In 2017, the FCC expanded GMRS to also allow short data messaging applications including text messaging and GPS location information.

Services that provide functionality similar to GMRS include the Citizens Band Radio Service (CBRS), the Family Radio Service (FRS) and the Multi-Use Radio Service (MURS).

The GMRS is available to an individual for short-distance two-way communications to facilitate the activities of licensees and their immediate family members. Each licensee manages a system consisting of one or more transmitting units (stations.) The rules for GMRS limit eligibility for new GMRS system licenses to individuals in order to make the service available to personal users. (Some previously licensed non-individual systems are allowed to continue using GMRS.)

In 2017, the FCC updated the GMRS by allotting additional interstitial channels in the 467 MHz band, increased the license term from 5 to 10 years, allowed transmission of limited data applications such as text messaging and GPS location information and made other updates to the GMRS rules to reflect modern application of the service.

I"m not going to bother with MURS, which you don't run into that often.

GMRS is a far more capable two-way radio system than CB is.  If CB's are down in their legally restricted power range, they really only have a about a three-mile range, which is also pretty common range wise for FRS.  GMRS varies by terrain and is line of site, so it can be quite short as well, although it can be quite long.  I've hit a hand held gmrs from a 5 Watt gmrs radio from a distance of 20 miles away, and the other day I was picking up the local repeater from over 30 miles away when I actually quite listening to it.

Channel 3 is a FRS channel that doesn't require the GMRS license, and it's the channel that seems to be getting adopted for emergency radio use.  Colorado Search and Rescue has adopted it:


You can read more about that here:

FRS3 For Colorado Backcountry

Wyoming Search and Rescue has as well, but there's an added wrinkle with them.  Riffing off of the widely held weird belief in Wyoming that the area code is somehow cool, they've added the suggestion that people program in privacy code 7.


Colorado specifically asks that people not program in a privacy code.

Privacy codes are really easy to program into any of these radios.  It's just done with the keys.  What a privacy code does is filter out all the radio traffic not using it, so if you have it programmed in, you'll only hear transmissions using it.  People not using the code can hear everything, but they can't talk to you.

As noted, I like radios and I carry a hand held Midland GMRS radio (usually a Midland) out in the sticks all the time.  Both of my regular 4x4s have vehicle mounted GMRS radios as well.  One of those is the most powerful one you can have by law, which means it should be able to broadcast at distance, and it also allows the user to program in "split tones", which are useful for privately maintained repeaters.  Northern Colorado is jam packed with a really good repeater system, and it now extends as far north as Cheyenne which is linked into it.  The Torrington area has a repeater as well, but I've never been able to hit it.  Casper has a very good repeater which is part of the GMRS Live system, so through net linkage, you can hit all the way up into Montana on it.

Not that most people want to do any of that.  But the recommendations are really good ones.  The hand held radios can be bought fairly inexpensively (although you can get a really expensive one if you wish) and if you are lost, or hurt yourself out in the sticks, and much of the sticks in Wyoming is without cell service, it could be a life saver.

Sunday, May 14, 2023

The Work Truck Blog: What's this blog about?

The Work Truck Blog: What's this blog about?

What's this blog about?

Oh no, Yeoman, not another blog.

Well, yes.

This one is dedicated to trucks, more specifically work trucks.

I've always had a thing for trucks.  And by that I mean real trucks. Not the cards mascarading as trucks that are so common today.

I'm sure I picked this up as a kid.

My father always had a truck.  Indeed, he always had a truck when most men of his occupation had cars, and perhaps a truck at home (most did).  Most men who did what my father did, and at the time he did it they were all men, drove a car to work day by day.  Not my father.  He drove a truck.

One of my cousins with my father's 1956 Chevrolet pickup truck.

I don't think my father ever actually owned a car of his own, although he co-owned there with my mother after they were married.  Before my grandfather died in the late 1940s, and my father worked as a teenager at the company packing house, my father drove a packing house sedan that had been converted into a truck.  It was a 1949 Chevrolet Sedan that had the bonnet removed from the truck, and a box installed.

If that doesn't sound like a truck, rest assured it is. The suspensions on late 40s and early 50s sedans were pretty truck like.  I myself had a 1954 Chevrolet Sedan for many years, and I drove it fishing fairly routinely, just like you would a truck.  I've owned two other cars since then, and I'd certainly not do that with them.

He had the 1949 prior to going into the Air Force and when he came back out, he bought the truck depicted above, the only new one he ever owned.  He had that until some point in the 1960s.  I'm told that I cried when he traded it in.

At that time, he acquired a 1965 Chevrolet Camper Special, which oddly enough was a half ton.  I recall it well.  A stick shift, light green truck with a white tonneau tarp, he had it for many years.  I learned how to drive on it.  Indeed, when I was old enough to test for my license at age 16, he had only just recently replaced it with a 1972 GMC.  I can recall this as I had a hard time with the driving test as I took it on my parent's 1973 Mercury Comet, which I later owned.  It was an automatic and I kept going to shift during the test, something which was emphasized by the fact that I was nervous.

I already owned a type of truck at that time, that being what the Army called a 1/4 ton utility truck or vehicle. I.e., a Jeep.  Mine was a 1958 M38A1, my first vehicle.


In buying it, I acquired a 4x4, something my father had never owned.  Unfortunately for me, or maybe fortunately, the engine was shot when I got it, so like the first car in the ballad Our Town, it didn't go far.  It established a precedence, however.  I've never been without a 4x4 since, and I've owned two more Jeeps, one of which I currently drive almost every day.

The 58 M38A1 was ultimately replaced by a 1974 F100 4x4 pickup, a light half ton. It's amazing to think that the 74 was "old" when I got it, as couldn't have been more than six or so years old in reality.  It was well-used however, and I only drove it for a year or so before I traded it in, myself, for a Dodge D150, the first great truck I ever owned.


Also, a 1974, it was, as Dodge used to advertise, "job ready".  Suspended more like a modern 3/4 ton, it was rough riding and tough as nails.  I drove it well into college, even though by that time I already had a second truck, a 1962 Dodge W300.  Ultimately, I sold it to my father, it becoming the only 4x4 truck he ever owned.  He drove it until it died, and truth be known, he didn't live much longer after that.  It's odd to think that he was younger than I am now when he bought it from me, and used it until both he and it really could go no further.

As you can probably tell, I've owned a lot of trucks over the years.  If you stick to just pickup trucks, I've owned seven of them, of which four were half tons and the remainder one tons (or heavier).  All have been 4x4s.  If you include Jeeps as little trucks, which I think they are, I've owned an additional three.

I'm likely done buying them.  The last one I bought that I regularly drive I've had now almost twenty years.  Petroleum vehicles are coming to an end, and at age 60, I'm also coming to an end.

But I've never gotten over my love for real trucks, and hence this blog on them.

Wednesday, March 29, 2023

Monday, March 29, 1943 Meat and fat rationing commences in the U.S.


On this day in 1943, rationing in the US of meats, fat and cheese commenced, with Americans limited to two pounds per week of meat.

Poultry was not affected by the order.

This must have been a matter of interest in my family, engaged in the meat packing industry as they then were.

Contrary to popular memory, not everything the US did during the war met with universal approval back home, and this was one such example.  Cheating and black marketing was pretty common, and there were very widespread efforts to avoid rationing.  Farmers and ranchers helped people to avoid the system by direct sales to consumers, something the government intervened to stop and only recently has seen a large-scale return.

While wholesale inclusion of a prior item in a new one is bad form, here's something we earlier ran which is a topic that needs repeating here:

Lex Anteinternet: So you're living in Wyoming (or the West in genera...So what about World War Two?

Some time ago I looked at this in the context of World War One, but what about World War Two?
Lex Anteinternet: So you're living in Wyoming (or the West in genera...: what would that have been like? Advertisement for the Remington Model 8 semi automatic rifle, introduced by Remington from the John Bro...
 Wisconsin deer camp, 1943, the year meat rationing began.

Indeed, a person's reasons to go hunting during World War Two, besides all the regular reasons (a connection with our primal, and truer, selves, being out in nature, doing something real) were perhaps stronger during the Second World War than they were in the First.  During WWII the government rationed meat.  During World War One it did not, although it sure put the social pressure on to conserve meat.

Indeed, the first appeals of any kind to conserve food in the United States came from the British in 1941, at which time the United States was not yet in the war. The British specifically appealed to Americans to conserve meat so that it could go to English fighting men.  In the spring of 1942 rationing of all sorts of things began to come in as the Federal government worried about shortages developing in various areas.  Meat and cheese was added to the ration list on March 29, 1943.  As Sarah Sundin reports on her blog:
On March 29, 1943, meats and cheeses were added to rationing. Rationed meats included beef, pork, veal, lamb, and tinned meats and fish. Poultry, eggs, fresh milk—and Spam—were not rationed. Cheese rationing started with hard cheeses, since they were more easily shipped overseas. However, on June 2, 1943, rationing was expanded to cream and cottage cheeses, and to canned evaporated and condensed milk.
So in 1943 Americans found themselves subject to rationing on meat.  As noted, poultry was exempt, so a Sunday chicken dinner was presumably not in danger, but almost every other kind of common meat was rationed.  So, a good reason to go out in the field.

But World War Two was distinctly different in all sorts of ways from World War One, so hunting by that time was also different in many ways, and it was frankly impacted by the war in different ways.

For one thing, by 1941 automobiles had become a staple of American life.  It's amazing to think of the degree to which this is true, as it happened so rapidly.  By the late 1930s almost every American family had a car.  Added to that, pickup trucks had come in between the wars in the early versions of what we have today, and they were obviously a vehicle that was highly suited to hunting, although early cars, because of the way they were configured and because they were often more utilitarian than current ones, were well suited as a rule.  What was absent were 4x4s, which we've discussed earlier.

This meant that it was much, much easier for hunters to go hunting in a fashion that was less of an expedition.  It became possible to pack up a car or pickup truck and travel early in the morning to a hunting location and be back that night, in other words.


Or at least it had been until World War Two. With the war came not only food rationing, but gasoline rationing as well.  And not only gasoline rationing, but rationing that pertained to things related to automobiles as well



Indeed, the first thing to be rationed by the United States Government during World War Two was tires.  Tires were rationed on December 11, 1941.  This was due to anticipated shortages in rubber, which was a product that had been certainly in use during World War One, but not to the extent it was during World War Two.  And tire rationing mattered.


People today are used to modern radial tires which are infinitely better, and longer lasting, than old bias ply tires were.  People who drove before the 1980s and even on into the 80s were used to constantly having flat tires.  I hear occasionally people lament the passing of bias ply tires for trucks, but I do not.  Modern tires are much better and longer lasting.  Back when we used bias ply tires it seemed like we were constantly buying tires and constantly  having flat tires.  Those tires would have been pretty similar to the tires of World War Two.  Except by all accounts tires for civilians declined remarkably in quality during the war due to material shortages.

Gasoline rationing followed, and it was so strict that all forms of automobile racing, which had carried on unabated during World War One, were banned during World War Two.  Sight seeing was also banned.  So, rather obviously, the use of automobiles was fairly curtailed during the Second World War.

So, where as cars and trucks had brought mobility to all sorts of folks between the wars in a brand new way, rationing cut back on it, including for hunters, during the war.

Which doesn't mean that you couldn't go out, but it did mean that you had to save your gasoline ration if you were going far and generally plan wisely.

Ammunition was also hard to come by during the war.

It wasn't due to rationing, but something else that was simply a common fact of life during World War Two.  Industry turned to fulfilling contracts for the war effort and stopped making things for civilians consumption.

Indeed, I've hit on this a bit before in a different fashion, that being how technology advanced considerably between the wars but that the Great Depression followed by the Second World War kept that technology, more specifically domestic technology, from getting to a lot of homes. Automobiles, in spite of the Depression, where the exception really.  While I haven't dealt with it specifically, the material demands of the Second World War were so vast that industries simply could not make things for the service and the civilian market. 

Some whole classes of products, such as automobiles, simply stopped being available for civilians.  Ammunition was like that.  With the services consuming vast quantities of small arms ammunition, ammunition for civilians became very hard to come by.  People who might expect to get by with a box of shotgun shells for a day's hunt and to often make due with half of that.  Brass cases were substituted for steel before that was common in the U.S., which was a problem for reloaders. 

So, in short, the need and desire was likely there, but getting components were more difficult. And being able to get out was as well, which impacted a person to a greater or lesser extent depending where they were.

And, as previously noted, game populations are considerably higher today than they were then.

New Zealanders entered the Tunisian city of Gabès.

Hitler rejected the recommendations of the German Army to place V-2 rockets on mobile launchers and opted instead for them to have permanent launching installations at Peenemünde.

Life issued a special issue on the USSR.

Nevada joined those states, such as Wyoming, which would no longer recognize Common Law Marriage.

Chapter 122 - Marriage

NRS 122.010 - What constitutes marriage; no common-law marriages after March 29, 1943.

1. Marriage, so far as its validity in law is concerned, is a civil contract, to which the consent of the parties capable in law of contracting is essential. Consent alone will not constitute marriage; it must be followed by solemnization as authorized and provided by this chapter.

2. The provisions of subsection 1 requiring solemnization shall not invalidate any marriage contract in effect prior to March 29, 1943, to which the consent only of the parties capable in law of contracting the contract was essential.

John Major, British Prime Minister from 1990 to 1997, was born, as was English comedian Eric Idle.

Thursday, February 2, 2023

Lex Anteinternet: A normal winter. How it used to be.

Lex Anteinternet: A normal winter.: A normal winter. That's exactly what we're having.  The weather here has been normal. And in Central Wyoming, that means multiple be..

After I posted the item above, it occurred to me that part of the complaining people do about winter is because they've so been able to defeat natural conditions in their daily lives and then, although only rarely, nature comes along and reminds you it's dominant for the most part. So far, our means of defeating it only do so in fairly average conditions.

Now, these are fairly average conditions, but people aren't used to them.  And there are some things you can't get around.  Six foot drifts on the Interstate highway, for example, are one such thing.

Anyhow, this caused me to recall that there was a time when people just basically endured these things.  It's always easy to say that, but it's true.

Thinking back to when I was a teenager in high school, and fewer people lived on the mountain, it was the case that the county used to annually simply inform people that the mountain road was not its first priority. So if you lived up there, they'd get around to the road after they'd cleared every other country road.  It was last.  If you didn't like it, don't live there, was the message.  People still complained, but not as much, and they didn't receive much sympathy either.

Ranchers, much like now, really didn't expect to get plowed out at all.  During the famous Blizzard of 1949 there were instances in which aircraft were ultimately flown over some ranches to see if the occupants of them were in trouble.  They didn't have phones or their lines were down.  Having known some of the ranchers who experienced that when I was young, their reaction was surprise.  They didn't expect anyone to send out an airplane, and they didn't figure they'd be regarded as imperiled for the most part.  There were excepts that year, I should note, which resulted in the Wyoming Air National Guard dropping hay for cattle.

This blog started off with the pre World War One era. What about these environs, then?

Cars already existed, and the predominant car of the era, the Model T, would actually have been a fairly good car for the conditions.  It has high clearance, thin wheels, low gearing, and it was fairly heavy for its size.  Therefore, it was a good car, to some degree, for snow.  

It wasn't a four-wheel drive, of course, and the snow we've been getting has been phenomenal.

Snow removal wasn't a thing anywhere before Milwaukee started doing it in 1862.  For the most part, most municipalities didn't do it, however, until the automobile era.  Quite a bit of plowing originally was done with draft horses, and this continued on until after World War Two to some extent.  When streets started to be plowed I don't know, and it's a little difficult to tell, without going through piles of old newspapers to find out.  The oldest example I could find was a municipal truck plowing snow in Washington, D.C. in 1916, which is frankly earlier than I would have guessed.

You don't have to have paved roads to have roads that are plowed, but it helps.  In 1916, Washington had paved streets.  Photographs of Casper show it having maintained dirt roads in the early 1920s.  I'm sure that by the 1930s, they were mostly paved.  What I don't know is when the city started plowing the snow.  A photograph that's online from the Wyoming State Archives shows the Wyoming Highway Department's first snow plow, when it was purchased, which has a date of 1923, just one hundred years ago coincidentally enough.  It's probably safe to assume the State didn't plow any highways prior to that.  Another photo from the same source shows the local high school's snowplow, which is mounted to a tractor, and has a date of 1930.  All in all, plowing the streets and highways must have come on during the 20s and 30s.

Older newspapers also show that in the 20s, the State simply closed more highways than it does now. Some highways are still closed for winter, but at least in the early 1920s the State simply closed, for example, the highway between Shoshone and Thermopolis.  Of course, you could, at that time, still make that trip by train.

That brings up this, which we've addressed before.  Prior to World War Two, 4x4 vehicles were a real rarity and tended to be confined to industrial operations or logging. Ranchers didn't have 4x4 vehicles, and regular people certainly did not.  For that matter, early 4x4s were a real slow moving off-road affair, and they wouldn't have been very useful for most people.  It was the U.S. Army that really started the development of the road capable all wheel drive vehicle and it took World War Two to really make them common.  Even after the war, it took a long while before very many town residents owned a 4x4.

This meant that once winter came, winter travel in and out of towns became much more limited.  Sure, in the 20s, when the weather improved, you could venture out, and people no doubt did. But busting drifts and the like became a post-war thing, and wouldn't have really become common until the 1960s for town residents.  Ranchers, for that matter, kept more employees at the time and some of them were stationed in the remoter areas of larger ranches so that they could take care of necessary chores during the winter.  In some instances, that meant that cowhands were stationed in remote cabins all winter long, and were checked on rarely, if at all.  And they spent the winter there without television or the internet, or for that matter, electricity.

Of course, the other thing this meant is that people whose livelihoods were in town, lived in town.  People didn't live on small acreages outside of town, for the most part, if they had jobs in town.  If you needed to be in the office, you needed to be within a reasonable distance, which often meant walking distance, of the office. For that matter, people with industrial employment tended to live near it.

The point of all of this, other than things were different then?  Well, they were different then.

They were different, for that matter into the 1980s.

And maybe folks need to have a little patience now.

Saturday, February 5, 2022

The 2021 Season

 It wasn't a great one, for a variety of reasons.

The Dude after the last day of hunting.  We finished up with an attempt, unsuccessful, on Chukars.  He was tired.

As with most hunters, the season doesn't quite follow the calendar year.  For me, it starts sometime in spring when spring turkey season opens up.  When that closes down, its fishing season for me, even though my state doesn't really have a dedicated fishing season.  You can fish all year long.

Indeed, when my daughter was at home, fishing season started as soon as waterfowl ended in January, with that being ice fishing season.  She's away at university now, so there hasn't been any ice fishing recently.

Anyhow, there's turkey season, and then fishing season, followed by sage grouse and dove season, antelope season, deer season, and elk season.  This assuming I didn't draw any special tags, like moose, and that would be a safe assumption.

Big game season yields into waterfowl season.

Seasons dictated by nature, the weather, and I guess the game and fish department.  A better calendar, however, than one dictated by professional sports or by actuaries.

Indeed, if I had my druthers, which would mean having the extra time, I'd add gardening season and this would effectively be my life.  Just the other day a slightly younger colleague of mine spoke about his dreams for retirement (which with five kids, only one of whom is in college, I'll predict will remain a lifelong dream).  They involved "travel", and when I mean travel, I mean global travel.

I have utterly no such desires whatsoever.  I've crossed oceans by plane more than once and if I never do so again, that's okay by me.

I'm a simple man.

Anyhow, in terms of unrealized dreams, this has been a year of unrealized dreams for me in a lot of personal ways.  2021 won't go down as a happy year for a lot of people, spirit of the times and all, and it certainly won't for me.

I did start off the year with turkey season.

Me early in the turkey season, dog behind me.  Yes, the dog goes.  The rifle in this picture may have been near its last hunt, as it was stolen this past year.  The hat is a heavy duty Park Service dress campaign hat.  The year before last my old reproduction, heavy duty, beaver felt M1911 campaign hat, which had become my fishing hat, and then hunting hat, bit the dust and, worse yet, blew out of my Jeep on the same day that the Dude was bitten by a rattlesnake.  The jacket is a surplus Swiss Army smock.

For quite a few years, I had access to some farm ground with turkeys on it.  That ground sold in 2020 and my access went with that.  This meant, of course, that finding a turkey, in the general season, in my region, was made quite a bit more difficult, but that's the way such things go.

I stumbled on an area which in 2019 I was the only one who was hunting turkeys.  Even better, early in the turkey season, you have to really hike in.  Last time I really did this heavily, in 2019, I was about the only person I saw.

The season started off that way, and I did run into turkeys.

I’m probably the only guy who takes his hunting dog out for turkey hunting, although I'm not hunting turkeys with him.  He's hiking.  Things have gotten so that I can't go out the door on a weekend anymore without the dog.  He won't allow it to happen.  This is detrimental to turkey hunting, however.

I did find a turkey at one point, but I was armed with a .22 Mag rifle, and it was in a tree.  I frankly didn't have a good enough view of it, from a distance, to tell if it was a tom or not.  I passed on the shot, and eventually he flew off.

The next trip, my luck on isolation ran out.  When I was up on the mountain, I could hear the motorized ATV brigade down in the valley.  Trying to pursue a turkey down a heavily wooded slope, I could hear them coming up. They never saw me, but I sure could hear, and then see, them.  I'm sure every turkey in the county could as well.  On the way down they passed me, and then when I was loading the dog they went by me again.

Now, like a lot of folks who are gasoline jockeys, they weren't very attune to what they were doing and where they were going.  I've had this happen twice this past year (I'll get to the other in a moment), but I was worried for the dog.  Frankly, I was highly distracted.  I put the rifle on the hood of the Jeep to load him so he wouldn't get hit.  When they passed, with the dog in, I got in and started to drive off.  I realized, however, that the rifle wasn't in the truck, and I went back to get it.

It was gone.  I walked the entire area that day, more than once, and again the next day, and again one more day after that.

I was the only one there, other than them.  I'm certain they took it.

And by took it, I mean stole it.  It wasn't hard to figure out whose it was.

I've never liked ATVs much as I think they're an insult to nature, frankly, and people abuse them.  I see people roaring over the sagebrush with them, and with their asses so welded to them that they just can't seem to get out on foot.  It's not all that uncommon for me to find somebody who will state that they didn't see anything. . . 

Yeah. . well if you are as noisy as the Afrika Korps, you aren't going to.

I did go back later, but, no turkeys.  I did run into them, but I could never get up on them.  I'm more than a bit unusual for a turkey hunter in that I stalk them, and I lack a call.  Very few people hunt them that way.  But when I first hunted them as a teenager, that's what we did, and I'm not patient enough to wait in one spot for a long time.


Then came fishing season.

Now, about that, I’m mostly a stream fisherman and always have been.  I will fish other bodies of water, and I certainly do, but that's my focus.


I can't really complain about fishing this year, other than that due to my work schedule I didn't get out nearly as much as I had hoped. And that's something to complain about.  Otherwise, my main complaint would be, I guess, that my son was off at school for most of the summer and my daughter had to have back surgery.  My daughter is a long time fisherman and my son has taken it up with more earnest recently.  


It's an odd deal to look back and realize that in some ways you're repeating your own father's history.  He taught me to fish, but at some point I became a fanatic outdoorsman and there were plenty of times that I went out on my own.  When I went to school, of course, he was left in that position, and he was a great and frequent fisherman.  So he was fishing quite often on his own.

Now I am.

One of the creeks I fished this year, and should have done a lot better in than I did.

Anyhow, before late summer yielded to other concerns, I did get out some, fishing the creeks in the mountains.  I reconfirmed a finding I'd make the prior year that a spot I found that looks good is, in fact, not.  It also looks like it ought to be populated by bears, and it probably is.

Getting into the spirit of things.

The first bird hunting season around here is blue grouse.

This has been frustrating due to interactions with novice game wardens the past few years who can't quite bring themselves to accept that a person of six decades residence knows more about how to get onto this spot and never touch foot on private ground than they do, having just arrived from California as they have, and seeing the world from a 3/4 ton pickup as they are.  When proven wrong, they varied from apologetic in the first instance, to blisteringly aggressive and rude in the second.[1]  This year, however, the local chief warden took the matter in his hands and wrote me a note, for which I am greatly appreciative.  So I got up in to the high sticks without incident.



Didn't see a single bird, however.

That, I suspect, is because it had been so dry.  No water, no birds.

I also ended up doing this by myself.  This used to be an annual routine for me and my son, and one year for me my son and my daughter.  Indeed, since my son was hold enough to hunt birds, I've never had a bird season where I didn't have him accompany me at least once, but this year, due to university, that was the case.  And not only for blue grouse, but for everything, save for fishing and antelope hunting.

Blue grouse here is followed by the short sage chicken season.  I'd seen a lot of sage chickens in the summer, but ran into one during sage chicken season. Actually, the dog found it, not me, and I wasn't ready for it. 

No sage chickens.

After that, both kids came home, but on different weekends, for antelope.

I managed, for the third year in a row, not to draw an antelope tag, and I'm not happy about it.  I like antelope as food.  I don't like the fact that my state weights out of state tags more heavily than any neighboring state.  I am, after all, a killetarian and I figure that if you live in New Jersey there are deer in New Jersey.  Hunt them.

Lots of economic interests don't figure it that way, however.

Both kids got really nice antelope, I'll note.

Deer came after that.  I only got out once, although now I can't recall why.  I didn't see any deer, but I did get stuck pretty bad in the high country.

Well, that's not quite true.  I did get out a second time, but it was marked by the fact that I fractured a tooth, and hadn't realized it, about a day prior.  It impacted severely that morning and by the time I was where I was going, I was unbelievably sick.  I barely made the long drive home, and during that time frame a storm had come in, and the highway became a sheet of ice.  A tooth extraction followed.

And then came waterfowl.


It was a fantastic waterfowl year, the best in years and years.  I did do really well hunting ducks and geese, and got to spend some blind time with one of my oldest friends.  The only sad note is that due to various things by mid summer things were a bit sad on other score and that lingered as I recalled that my trips out to hunt ducks and geese, with more around than there have been for eons, were again alone.

It was in the late waterfowl season that I had my second vehicular run in of the year, and it was similar to the first.  I was duck and goose hunting on a stretch of the river.  Up until the last few years, this stretch, which is 7,000 feet high, closes to fishermen because of the weather.  Nobody wants to fly fish in 80 mph winds when it's 10F.

That's started to change, however.

For one thing, in spite of the high altitude, it hasn't been as cold up that high recently.  It's still really windy, however.  On the day I was out there, it was probably around 35F with 80 mph winds.

I'm a fisherman too, but when hunting starts, for me fishing stops.  I'm more of a hunter than a fish hunter.  My father was the other way around.  Anyhow, I sort of figure that guys who have the run of the river from April until late August, can ease up a bit in September through December, and most in fact do.  If you see a fisherman on any other stretch of the river from August on, they tend to be friendly as a rule and share the river.  I try to avoid them.

On this stretch its different, however, and that's because most of the fishermen who tend to be in this stretch are from the big rectangular state to our south.

Now, I'm not the only waterfowler on this stretch of the river.  A few other dedicated guys are dedicated blind hunters on the same stretch.  It must be the case that they stake their claim and the fishermen avoid them.  I generally avoid the fishermen.

On this day, however, I drove down to a stretch of the river in this area that I knew was empty.  I got things, and the dog, out a couple of hundred yards away from the river and then, as the dog was milling about, a Rectangular State SUV came blasting down the two track and nearly hit my dog. Worse yet, they saw him.  

What that was about was them getting to the river before me. They probably thought I was a fisherman too, or they knew I was a hunter and they wanted their stretch of river. I hunted it anyway.  They knew they'd been assholes as they kept looking back as I walked the long stretch down and the long stretch back.  On top of it, they put in on what amounts to a wind tunnel (I knew that) and had no luck.  

There was no need for that.

Last year I took up chukar hunting in earnest.

Me chukar hunting.  Why am I dressed like I'm in the Swiss Army?  Well the reason is that I'm too cheap to buy the quuality hunting clothes that other people do, and I grew use to miltiary style clothing as a National Guardsmen and I like its features, particularly the zillions of pockets.  On  this day, the wind was bad, and hence the hood up.  Also, I'm wearing GI field pants over Levis for the same reason.

The reason has to do with having run into chukars in a major way in 2020.  I knew all the spots they'd been in, and therefore I went back. I got. . . one.


Indeed, I saw them only once.

Another reason that I've taken chukars up is that in the last few years I haven't drawn an elk tag and chukars take me into rough country and I tend not to be very good at it.

I'm not one of those people who run around looking for challenges in life.  Indeed, quite frankly, my life had plenty of challenges early on, and I don't need anymore.  Frankly, for that matter, I tend to find people who claim to take up occupations because they're "challenging" to be full of  bull.

Having said that, I'm completely different with outdoor endeavors.  Maybe I do like a challenge, and perhaps that why I'm after chukars.

While not exactly on my seasons, my failures at chukars caused me to try to find out more about them and that lead me to this excellent blog:

The Reigning Chukar Champions

It's a great read.

Anyhow, different year, different hatch.


Last day of the season.  Yep, more unecessary camouflage for the same reason.  The jacket is an Australian wind proff SAS smock that an Australian friend gave me, the trousers are U.S. Army pants.  I'm wearing a Charhartt coat for wamrth.

Footnotes:

1. In the first instance the game warden followed me out, at my invitation, and in the end relented with "I didn't think that this could be done".  On the way, I somewhat worried about him rolling his pickup truck and warned him about a hill, turn and traverse across a dam that's no big deal for a Jeep, but is a big deal for a pickup, but he did it.  He probably didn't believe me that this was a way in and out.

Well, in the end, he did.

In the second instance, the warden started off as rude and argumentative. When I explained the road that I came on, he said "it isn't a road", claiming that 4x4s had just created it the past few years.

That claim was absolute bullshit.  I looked him up, and he was a relatively recent arrival from California.

I should note that several years prior a different game warden was hugely enthusiastic that anyone had gone to such an effort to get where I was went, which was just a jumping off point at that for a hike in the mountains in pursuit of grouse.

Anyhow, with the experience noted of the two difficult wardens, I actually called ahead for the second year in a row.  The first time I didn't get a call back, and then I got the rude warden.  I did it again this year and got the regional warden, who was apologetic about his green underlings, and wrote me a note so that they'd leave me alone.  I kept hoping to run into them, but didn't.  Indeed, coming out of the hills the only one I ran into was on the main dirt road, and he'd just stopped a party of University of Wyoming female ag students who were on some sort of expedition.  I stopped, but he just waved me on, which is what I would have done if I were him.

Tuesday, April 20, 2021

"We all do things we said we never would"

So said a sticker that was on a car that belonged to somebody who parked in the same parking lot I've been parking in for 30 years.  The quote was attributed to "Soccer Mom".

For some of that 30, I've parked a real car there.  The cars were, in order of ownership, a 1954 Chevrolet sedan I once owned, a 1973 Mercury Comet, and a 90s vintage Mercury Cougar.  The Chevy I bought when I was still a college student.  I loved it, but owning it turned you into a part time mechanic and I didn't have the time. Additionally, at the time I sold it, I also had the Comet, which I had inherited, which was a nicer and more modern car.

I regret selling the Comet, but I did just that when we had our first child as I was able to buy a 1995 Ford F250 diesel for a good price, part of which was trading the Comet and a F150 to the person who sold it to me.  I  had too many vehicles anyway, I thought, and it was a good deal. The Cougar came along later when we picked it up from a friend of my wife's.  It had a lot of miles on it but it was in good condition and I drove the stuffing out of it, even though the heater didn't work.  

Otherwise, I've driven 4x4s to work.

Often they've been pretty heavy duty ones that could do ranch work as well as sporting transportation.  More recently I've added an old Jeep.  The Jeep is my current daily driver, but my Dodge D3500 4x4 takes me to work a fair amount and to out of town work when I go out of town.  None of these vehicles is new by a longshot.

Most of them look like I'm ready to go pull a trailer full of bulls or go into the hills. But there they are, in the parking lot.

The point of the quote above?

Today is the opening day of turkey season.

I won't be going today. The weather is awful anyway, cold and lots of snow on the ground, but that's not the reason why.  

I'll be heavily engaged in work.

When I was first practicing law, I cancelled an elk hunting trip here in the state (a Wyoming type of trip, not a guided something) as a partner in the firm assigned me something that conflicted with it.  Another partner later apologized and noted that one of the advantages of being a lawyer was "the illusion that you could take time off when you wanted to."  I've found it to be just that, an illusion.

I've been introspective a lot recently.

An old friend. . . my oldest friend, reminded me the other day that when we were in high school I maintained I'd never have a job in which I'd wear a tie.  The conversation came up as we were at a funeral, his son's funeral, and he wasn't wearing a tie as his son always tied it for him.  He doesn't wear them often.  I was wearing one, and I know how to tie one, as I wear them so often.

My youthful declaration about ties was because I didn't want an indoor job.  At that time I was going to be a game warden.  I've written about that before, so I'll forgo doing so again, but I didn't take that path.  Instead I pursued geology, but the bottom fell out of that.  Then I went into law.  I didn't know much about the practice of law and I didn't know any lawyers.

A different friend of mine, who is a lawyer and who is married to a lawyer maintains that law was the only occupation, other than the clergy, that would suit me, and as I'm Catholic, and married, obviously the clergy wouldn't be for me (unless, of course, I was Easter Rite, but that's another story).  Religious are called in any event, and I lack that calling.  Anyhow, that fellow is a German and has a more ordered sense of the world, I think, than I do.  Maybe he's right.  I hope so, and that would give an element of necessity to the otherwise complicated way we govern or our lives.

At any rate, as a lawyer, I've been a litigator.  It's not that I pursued that, but fell into it.  Lots of lawyers used to say that "the law is a jealous mistress", meaning it would take all your time, and whether or not that's true of all branches of the law, its certainly true of litigation.

Or perhaps my personality just works towards devotion to duty and work over anything else.  But after two weeks with two untimely deaths, thinking back on the younger me, I've found that the sticker has been true to my personality more than I would have ever have guessed.

Saturday, December 19, 2020

Lex Anteinternet: So you're living in Wyoming (or the West in genera...So what about World War Two?

Some time ago I looked at this in the context of World War One, but what about World War Two?
Lex Anteinternet: So you're living in Wyoming (or the West in genera...: what would that have been like? Advertisement for the Remington Model 8 semi automatic rifle, introduced by Remington from the John Bro...
 Wisconsin deer camp, 1943, the year meat rationing began.

Indeed, a person's reasons to go hunting during World War Two, besides all the regular reasons (a connection with our primal, and truer, selves, being out in nature, doing something real) were perhaps stronger during the Second World War than they were in the First.  During WWII the government rationed meat.  During World War One it did not, although it sure put the social pressure on to conserve meat.

Indeed, the first appeals of any kind to conserve food in the United States came from the British in 1941, at which time the United States was not yet in the war. The British specifically appealed to Americans to conserve meat so that it could go to English fighting men.  In the spring of 1942 rationing of all sorts of things began to come in as the Federal government worried about shortages developing in various areas.  Meat and cheese was added to the ration list on March 29, 1943.  As Sarah Sundin reports on her blog:
On March 29, 1943, meats and cheeses were added to rationing. Rationed meats included beef, pork, veal, lamb, and tinned meats and fish. Poultry, eggs, fresh milk—and Spam—were not rationed. Cheese rationing started with hard cheeses, since they were more easily shipped overseas. However, on June 2, 1943, rationing was expanded to cream and cottage cheeses, and to canned evaporated and condensed milk.
So in 1943 Americans found themselves subject to rationing on meat.  As noted, poultry was exempt, so a Sunday chicken dinner was presumably not in danger, but almost every other kind of common meat was rationed.  So, a good reason to go out in the field.

But World War Two was distinctly different in all sorts of ways from World War One, so hunting by that time was also different in many ways, and it was frankly impacted by the war in different ways.

For one thing, by 1941 automobiles had become a staple of American life.  It's amazing to think of the degree to which this is true, as it happened so rapidly.  By the late 1930s almost every American family had a car.  Added to that, pickup trucks had come in between the wars in the early versions of what we have today, and they were obviously a vehicle that was highly suited to hunting, although early cars, because of the way they were configured and because they were often more utilitarian than current ones, were well suited as a rule.  What was absent were 4x4s, which we've discussed earlier.

This meant that it was much, much easier for hunters to go hunting in a fashion that was less of an expedition.  It became possible to pack up a car or pickup truck and travel early in the morning to a hunting location and be back that night, in other words.


Or at least it had been until World War Two. With the war came not only food rationing, but gasoline rationing as well.  And not only gasoline rationing, but rationing that pertained to things related to automobiles as well



Indeed, the first thing to be rationed by the United States Government during World War Two was tires.  Tires were rationed on December 11, 1941.  This was due to anticipated shortages in rubber, which was a product that had been certainly in use during World War One, but not to the extent it was during World War Two.  And tire rationing mattered.


People today are used to modern radial tires which are infinitely better, and longer lasting, than old bias ply tires were.  People who drove before the 1980s and even on into the 80s were used to constantly having flat tires.  I hear occasionally people lament the passing of bias ply tires for trucks, but I do not.  Modern tires are much better and longer lasting.  Back when we used bias ply tires it seemed like we were constantly buying tires and constantly  having flat tires.  Those tires would have been pretty similar to the tires of World War Two.  Except by all accounts tires for civilians declined remarkably in quality during the war due to material shortages.

Gasoline rationing followed, and it was so strict that all forms of automobile racing, which had carried on unabated during World War One, were banned during World War Two.  Sight seeing was also banned.  So, rather obviously, the use of automobiles was fairly curtailed during the Second World War.

So, where as cars and trucks had brought mobility to all sorts of folks between the wars in a brand new way, rationing cut back on it, including for hunters, during the war.

Which doesn't mean that you couldn't go out, but it did mean that you had to save your gasoline ration if you were going far and generally plan wisely.

Ammunition was also hard to come by during the war.

It wasn't due to rationing, but something else that was simply a common fact of life during World War Two.  Industry turned to fulfilling contracts for the war effort and stopped making things for civilians consumption.

Indeed, I've hit on this a bit before in a different fashion, that being how technology advanced considerably between the wars but that the Great Depression followed by the Second World War kept that technology, more specifically domestic technology, from getting to a lot of homes. Automobiles, in spite of the Depression, where the exception really.  While I haven't dealt with it specifically, the material demands of the Second World War were so vast that industries simply could not make things for the service and the civilian market. 

Some whole classes of products, such as automobiles, simply stopped being available for civilians.  Ammunition was like that.  With the services consuming vast quantities of small arms ammunition, ammunition for civilians became very hard to come by.  People who might expect to get by with a box of shotgun shells for a day's hunt and to often make due with half of that.  Brass cases were substituted for steel before that was common in the U.S., which was a problem for reloaders. 

So, in short, the need and desire was likely there, but getting components were more difficult. And being able to get out was as well, which impacted a person to a greater or lesser extent depending where they were.

And, as previously noted, game populations are considerably higher today than they were then.

Tuesday, July 21, 2020

Jeep gets competition for the first time in a long time.

Mid 1960s Ford Bronco in original configuration. Seeing one today that hasn't been lifted or altered in some fashion is rare.

Bantam invented the Jeep, basically, but went a bit too light in doing so.  Entering a competition prior to World War Two to make a really lightweight multipurpose truck, they fulfilled the requirements perfectly and it turned out to be good, but too darned light.  Shortly after that, Willys Overland, a car manufacturer that had started off marketing rugged cars that could be driven by anyone, entered the picture, went a little heavier, and the Jeep was born.

Jeeps were so new at the start of the American entry into World War Two that there weren't any in the very early 1941 combat theaters of the war, contrary to what films like They Were Expendable or In Harm's Way may suggest.  But Jeeps came to be such a feature of the American military that even by 1945, when They Were Expendable was made, it was impossible to imagine a U.S. military without them.

Naturally Jeeps went right into production after the war and, save for a pickup truck and an early 4x4 proto SUV, they came to define Willys so much that hardly anyone remembers they made anything else.  In spite of that, however, Willys itself didn't survive even as Jeep did.  Willys was sold to Kaiser in 1953 and the company became Kaiser-Jeep, which was soon really just Jeep.  In 1970 that company was sold to AMC, showing that having only one popular product is a tough marketing line.  In 1986, AMC sold the line to much larger Chrysler, which has kept it ever since.

During that period of time, Jeep kept on keeping on and the popularity and utility of the "1/4 ton truck, Utility" was such that a plethora of competitors arose.  The British Land company entered the field soon after World War Two with the Land Rover, a heavier, more expensive, and much less reliable competitor.  Toyota entered the field with the Land Cruiser, a heavier, extremely reliable competitor.  Nissan entered it with the reliable but rarely seen Nissan Patrol.  And American giant Ford entered it with the Ford Bronco.

Well, actually Ford had always been in the Jeep game, having made Jeeps during World War Two. Their production capacity was larger than Willys and so they received a contract to make them after it was clear Willys couldn't produce enough.  In 1951 Ford reentered the field with the M151, the last widely used Jeep in the American military. The M151 didn't enter commercial production, and indeed was downright dangerous, while ironically the military Jeep being replaced by it, the M38A1, did, as the iconic CJ5.  It took Ford until 1965 to rectify that with its own Jeep sized vehicle, the Bronco, which it made until 1977.

The Bronco was always unique.  It's style leaned on the Ford pickups of the day, with its square styling which somehow managed to look sleek.  It still does.  And while a lot of Bronco's were 6 cylinders, quite a few were V8s, with the largest of the two V8 options being a 302 (AMC's CJ5 had the option of a 304 V8.

And then it all went away.

Why that occurred isn't exactly clear.  Ford quit making the Bronco in 77.  Toyota quit offering the J40, their Jeep like Land Cruiser, in 1984, although it kept on in Brazilian production until 2001.  Nissan Patrols were always rare in the US, but the original Jeep like version went out of production in 1980.  Having said that, they quit selling the Patrols in the US in 1969.  Suzuki entered the field late, but then left the US market in 1995 when they quit selling their Samurai here.  The International Scout, which also had its own unique styling like the Bronco, disappeared in 1980.

Now, if a person is picking up a them here, it's probably the "here" aspect of it.  What occured is that these short small trucks disappeared from the US market, save for Jeep. Why would that be?

We've dealt with that some here before, so we won't delve back into it.  That old post is here:

The Rise and Decline of the "SUV".


We'll add that its likely lawyers had something to do with it as well.  The American judicial system which in civil courts strongly features the "contingency fee" in which lawyers make a percentage of what they collect from their victims encourages lawsuits at an epic rate (although Germany amazingly exceeds the US for suits per capita, somehow).  That makes anybody making anything a target for suits.  Lawyers justify themselves to the public and themselves by arguing that they're making the world a better place by doing this, which is debatable, but they're certainly making it a more expensive one without a doubt.  Lawyers have wiped out light aircraft manufacture in the US, the only country where it was really common, and they likely helped drive all but the Jeep out of the US market. Small 1/4 ton 4x4s remained sold in nations with a less insane civil legal system.

Well somehow they've started to come back.

It started, as we've already noted, with the modern Jeeps seeing competition enter in the form of its old self, by an Indian company, which we noted here:

The Jeep to receive competition from the Ghost of Jeeps Past?


That version of the CJ5 was governed down to 45 mph. But the Bronco isn't.  Indeed, one of its options features a seven speed transmission and its clear that it will be a fully highway going vehicle as well as an off road 4x4.  And by appearances, it introduces the independent front suspension into the civilian market for 1/4 ton trucks.  Jeep has resisted that as Jeepers really adhere to tradition and the old Willys had solid front axles.  The M151 didn't, however, so that isn't that new.

This Bronco signals the real return of competition in the 1/4 ton field.  Land Rover may be back in play as well with a new Defender. 

Jeep may be set to get a run for its money.

Saturday, November 23, 2019

Hunting (and fishing), Stateside, during World War Two.


A note.  And one that I'll note here more than I might otherwise when I'd otherwise note it.  This post engages in a lot of speculation.

That's because the details on this one are really hard to get.


A year ago I posted this item, which dealt with putting game meat on the table during World War One:

So you're living in Wyoming (or the West in general) during the Great War and there's talk of food conservation, and you are a hunter. . .

what would that have been like?

At the same time I posted that, I was going to follow up with one on the same topic, but for stateside during World War Two.  I'm finally getting back around to it.

And in getting back to it, I'm finding that I know a whole lot less about it than I thought I would, and its hard to find information on it.

Before I go on, however, I should note that, in fact, I actually did touch on this topic just a bit, and in a way that's relevant to our topic here. So to show I'm not completely remiss, I'll incorporate that old text back in, right below.  You'll note that we're not only repeating that post, but repeating the photo that we linked in above.

Today In Wyoming's History: October 14, 1943. Material shortages in World War Two and the Hunting Camp.

Deer season opens in much of Wyoming today, and apparently has for awhile, which brings us to this interesting item from 1943.

Today In Wyoming's History: October 14:

October 14


1943  Hunters were asked to donate animal skins to the war effort.  Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.

A Wisconsin deer camp in 1943.  I couldn't find a Wyoming example and this one was available for use. The rifle on the wall appears to be a nice Mauser with a set trigger, perhaps a rebuild of a World War One prize rifle.  Photograph courtesy of the Wisconsin Department of Fish and Game, which retains all rights to the same.

If this seems like an unusual request, we have to keep in mind that the leather requirements for the service during World War Two were quite high, and moreover various uniform items used different types of leather.  Cowhide was the most common leather in use, of course, but elk hide was specifically required for mounted service boots, which were used by cavalrymen, horse artillerymen and other mounted soldiers.  While its common to believe that mounted soldiers did not exist in the U.S. Army during the Second World War, this is in fact incorrect and only horse artillery was actually phased out during the war.  Mounted service boots continued to be made for service use as late as the late 1940s.

As noted in the entry above, leather was a serious war material during World War Two.  Indeed, I could have gone into more detail than I did.  As noted, cowhide was to be found in regular Army combat boots, service shoes (an ankle high boot) and shoes, but also in such things as tanker's helmets.  Horsehide formed the original leather for the famous A2 flight jacket, but apparently due to shortages that was changed to goat hide fairly early on. Those who received the early A2 jackets were lucky as horse hide is incredibly tough, although the goat hide jackets were loved by those who were issued them.  Most of those soldier were airmen, but not all of them were, as they were also a semi dress item for paratroopers, showing in part how many were made.

Sheepskin was the material for an early series of high altitude flight jackets mistakenly remembered today as "bomber jackets".  Like A2s, they were general issue for pilots in Europe until mid war when a synthetic flight jacket began to replace it.  They remain a popular item today, as does the A2, on the civilian market.

So I can see where deer and elk hides would have been in demand.

What's a little more puzzling, actually, in this photograph, is the presence of the young men in the photo. We tend to think of every available man of service age being in the service during World War Two, and as the war went on those eligible for conscription definitely increased as service standards decreased, strained by the war as they were.  But here we see at least a couple of men of service age in the photo.  Of course any number of explanations could explain what we're seeing. They could have been service men on leave, or who had been discharged for wounds.  Or ineligible due to health.  Or in war vital jobs where they were exempt from conscription, or otherwise so exempt.  

Hunting in World War Two, I recall my father telling me (who was in his early to mid teens at the time) was made a bit difficult because of cartridge shortages.  Of course, reloading already existed so some may have had prewar stocks of supplies.  Otherwise, shells were hard to get.  Gasoline to get to the game fields was as well, which might have increased the need to have a camp like these folks (who obviously had one before the war, however, as we can see the years that they've occupied it written on the wall).

Of course meat and other foods were also rationed during the war, which would have made a camp like this all the more attractive for other reasons as well.

Lots to ponder and consider in this one.

Which takes us back to our topic.

For those who may not have read it, the first post dealt with hunting in every sense during the World War One time frame, including conditions and technology.  Like a lot of topics we can and have addressed that contrast World War One with World War Two, the topic is a lot different for the Second World War in every sense. 


We'll touch upon the lot of the same topics, and when we do we'll related back so that we've tied in what we've already written on. 




Easy to do, right?

Well, oddly not so much.

This is one of those topics I should know a lot more about than I do, as I already noted.  After all, my father was in his early teens during this period and he was a hunter and fisherman, so I surely know a lot first hand about this, right?

Well, not as much as you might think, although I can recall broaching the topic with my father.

Part of the reason, in retrospect, that I don't know that much about this in that second hand fashion is that my father really never said that much about his early life.  He did some, and in some areas, but on a lot of topics he was pretty quiet.  My grandfather died just after my father graduated from high school and that was such a painful event that he was just silent on a lot of things that involved my grandfather.  This is likely one of them.

I know that my grandfather was a hunter and fisherman from my father.  In terms of being a hunter, he was a bird hunter.  As far as  I know he was not a big game hunter at any point in his life.  At least in his married years he didn't own a rifle.  He did own a shotgun, and according to my uncle, was so good with a shotgun that he'd hunt pheasants with a single shot .410 and only take the small number of shells needed to fill his limit, and come back with that.  I.e., if the limit was three, he took three shells.

He hunted waterfowl as well, and indeed he used a double barrel, exposed hammer, Damascus twist  12 gauge shotgun for that.  Indeed, I have a letter he wrote to my father, early in my father's college career, noting that he had been invited to Thermopolis to hunt ducks.  I don't think of Thermopolis as a waterfowl destination today, but it does have year around open water and farm fields.  It probably does have good waterfowl hunting.

More than anything else that letter, I'd note, counseled my father not to worry so much.  I don't think of my father as somebody who worried a lot, but he may have.  I do.  But I digress.

Rationing

In my first post dealing with the Great War I noted the following as a good reason to get out in the game fields in 1917 and 1918.



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.




In 1941 through 45 there was an additional reason.

Rationing

Grocery store customer presenting ration coupons.

During the Great War the government didn't ration food, or anything else, in the United States. It resorted instead to campaigns, including just outright shaming you if you didn't get with the program.  During World War Two, it outright controlled access to many commodities, including lots of foods.

This was a huge change from the First World War and was no doubt for a variety of reason, including an appreciation that the war wasn't going to be over quickly.  Indeed, World War Two ended more quickly than anticipated (so did World War One, after we reassessed what we'd gotten into).


The Office of Price Control, a wartime agency, was given authority to impose rationing on January 30, 1942, mere days after our entry into the war.  By the spring of 1942 sugar was rationed.  By November, coffee rationed.  The following March of 1943 meat, cheese, fats, canned fish, canned milk and various other processed foods were rationed.  Late war the limits started to come off, save for sugar which was rationed into 1947.


Added to that massive meat purchases by the government impacted supplies in any event.  Military disruptions of regular food supplies and transportation were an enormous feature of the war.  So even if you had enough in the way of ration tickets to buy a leg of lamb at the grocers, there was really no guaranty that it was going to be there.


Contrary to the way a lot of Americans chose to remember it later, rationing was very unpopular.  Black markets and cheating were endemic.  The government always knew that it wasn't popular but in an effort to reduce its impact promoted gardening to alleviate shortages.  Victory Gardens, as in World War One, were common in World War Two.


With that being the case, Victory Hunting, if you will, made sense.  If you couldn't buy meat downtown, shoot it out in the field.  If you couldn't buy fish, catch it.

Big Game

The best way to put quite a bit of meat on the table would logically be to get an animal that's pretty big. So logically, we'd expect big game hunting to have increased. But there were a lot of factors going into that, including of course that a lot of hunters were serving in the military.

Western ammunition advertisement from World War Two.  These are posted here using the educational and commentary exceptions for copyrights.  This advertisement gives a good example of how ammunition companies used their wartime manufacturing in the form of patriotic advertising while also providing the reason for the absence of their product from store shelves.


On that, however, let's note that there was never an era in which every single American male was in the service, as sometimes we also like to hear suggested. A huge number were, but quite a few were exempt from service also. Additionally, a lot of North American men never left our shores.  Stateside service is service, and that should not be noted.  But not everyone's service was like being in Saving Private Ryan.



Anyhow, it occurs to me now that what my grandfather hunted is what we'd expect a Mid Westerner to hunt in the first half of the 20th Century, which is what he was.  Bird hunting was good from where he was from, and it wasn't bad here.  So that's what he'd grown up doing and that's what he did.

By his early years deer hunting had likely declined in the Mid West and all big game hunting had very much declined here.  Indeed, Antelope, which outnumber people in Wyoming, was closed to hunting at some point point in the 1890s and the first hunting season wasn't reopened for antelope until 1943.  This is hard for modern Wyomingites to imagine, as antelope are now so numerous they're a road hazard in town.

For that matter, deer are also.  Both of these events, however, developed in my own lifetime. There were no antelope in town until I was in my twenties.  Now there are deer, antelope and turkeys in town.  Deer appear in a lot of towns all over the United States, and for that matter elk show up in towns like Estes Park, Colorado. That's all quite new.

In 1943, when antelope was reopened, antelope hunting had been illegal in the state for fifty years.  However, anemic law enforcement meant that it likely continued to occur until around World War One.  It was in that decade that the Game and Fish really began to become effective and have the real ability to actually enforce the state's game laws.  Indeed, we've already seen an instance here in which a Game Warden lost his life in 1919 trying to enforce the law, something that is in fact exceedingly rare, thankfully.*

Men my father's age who had grown up here always remarked how much more big game there was in the state in their later years than when they were young.  They attributed it to the solid work of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and also to ranchers, who began to police illegal hunting on their own lands and who put in a lot of water improvements.  People don't think much about that now, but men of that generation frequently remarked how water improvements had created big game populations were they'd never, and we do mean never, been before.  They were well aware of the changes.

This is true for Wyoming but it's also true for lots of the West.  The huge elk, deer and antelope populations today are a produce of those early 20th Century efforts by hunters and fish and game departments.

What that does mean, however, is that in a lot of the country there wasn't nearly the big game there is now.  There were deer camps in the Midwest and deer hunting in the South and East.  In the West it occurred as well. But the huge populations we see today, well that's new and post war.

And all of that is a pretty significant factor.

So, just to start with, for family's like ours, in much of the country, there wasn't a really high chance that you were going to rely on deer or elk for the year simply because the numbers weren't there.  In some parts of the country, this wasn't the case and you could.

Which takes us to the next big game factor which had really changed, and then also hadn't changed to the present level.   Before we do that, however, we'll look at small game and birds, which are actually hunted more than big game.

Other Game


Another example of wartime advertising, this time for Remington ammunition and shotguns.  The dress shown for the duck hunter is correct for this period.  Note the lack of camouflage.

We've spoken mostly about big game so far.  Frankly much of what we've noted would apply to other types of hunting as well (and fishing to some extent), but as big game hunting is more of a dedicated enterprise, and as small game populations were very high in this period, with bird populations recovering from market hunting earlier in the century, the situation was truly different as to hunting these categories.  You could plan, however, to pretty easily supplement the table with game birds of all types as well as rabbits, as long as you could secure ammunition, and by and large, while it was very much limited, it was at least somewhat available.

In fact something odd about mid century not only made rabbits available for hunting, but had risen them to a threatening pest.  Rabbit populations exploded to such a level during the 1920s and 1930s that a lot of communities had "rabbit drives" to try to knock the population of them down. In spite of repeated annual efforts, it was only partially successful, and rabbits remained easily available.

Rabbits, in fact, had established themselves as a category of poverty food during the Depression, when their vast populations coincided with desperation.  Lots of people in various parts of the nation supplemented their tables with rabbit, and sending out a younger member of the family to hunt rabbits as a serious endeavor was extremely common.

Waterfowl was also in good supply during the 1940s and large numbers of men hunted ducks and geese on a dedicated regulated basis.  Indeed, waterfowl hunters fell victim to one of the great stateside disasters of the World War Two period, the 1940 Armistice Day Blizzard, that hit the Midwest.  Forty nine duck hunters in Minnesota alone were killed in the blizzard.  That was the year prior to the U.S. entering the war, of course, but it provides an example of how waterfowl hunting was doing well during the 1940s.

Indeed, one of the things if you look at ammunition posters and the covers of sporting magazines of this era that strikes you is how often they depict scenes of small game and waterfowl hunting. That's what was on hunter's minds, as that's what they were doing.

Of course, if you were going hunting during the war, for whatever you were hunting, you had to get there. . . .

Motor transportation.

In our earlier post on this topic, we noted that in the 1917-1919 time frame, motor transportation isn't what it was today.


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.




So things had changed by 1939-1945, right?

Well yes and no.

Motor vehicles came on rapidly after the Model T was introduced, and indeed it didn't take very long for the Model T to have substantial competition.  In fact, we've been running, in a different context, Gasoline Alley cartoons from 1919, in which the use of, repair of, and the buying of selling of, automobiles was a common and repetitive theme.  And that cartoon started in 1919.

By 1939, a mere twenty years later, the early automobiles had yielded to the next generation of automobiles, which are more recognizable to us.  As they came in, as another thread will shortly explore, so did the pickup truck.

Having noted that, a lot of early cars were in fact pretty truck like, or at least SUV like, if we don't require a SUV to be a four wheel drive.  They had good clearance and relatively low gearing, both of which were features of the fairly primitive roads they were expected to have to be driven on, at least on occasion.  As the other thread will note, even the 1954 Chevrolet Sedan I once owned had surprisingly good clearance and I'd use it to go fishing in the summer.  Lots of people did just the same with their 1920s and 30s vintage vehicles, which are the ones that would have been in use in the 1939 to 1945 time frame.**

Also in this time frame the pickup truck came in, with the first examples of production models come in during the 1920s.  The pickup truck rapidly became a highly common vehicle in the West.

Just like today, right?

Well. . . no.

What didn't exist in average hands were four wheel drives.

Four wheel drive as introduced mechanically very early, and it actually predates World War One. But it was also extremely primitive and heavy duty.  The details of how to make an effective four wheel drive vehicle on a less than industrial vehicle level really weren't worked out, with some odd ball exceptions, just prior to World War Two and frankly because of it.  Four wheel drives made their appearance in various armies between the wars and in the American Army and the British Army in particular there was a lot of emphasis put on developing them.  Indeed, in the U.S. Army the push was such that a dissatisfied artillery branch developed its own 6x6 vehicles between the wars and the Army manufactured them itself until the cost was simply to high to rationalize.  By that time, however, they'd advanced the technology sufficiently that by the late 1930s civilian manufacturers were ready to take over.

Just prior to the U.S. entering the war civilian manufacturers were at the point where they were ready to make 4x4s for the military in the light vehicle roll.  The Army adopted 1/4 ton  and 1/2 ton trucks, and spinoffs of the same, just prior to the war  Fairly early in the war these had been supplemented by 3/4 ton trucks.  In the light category, 1/4 ton, Willys was the leader with its Jeep, although the light vehicle manufacturer Bantam had taken a serious run at the field, and Ford was in it as well. At the 1/2 ton and 3/4 ton truck level, Dodge was the leader in the U.S. but Chevrolet was in the mix as well (and oddly the leader for Commonwealth 4x4s, which were heavier) and International was also making 4x4 trucks.

All that set the stage for post war, but it didn't mean anything in terms of civilian vehicles.  Civilian vehicles were 2x4.

And 2x4 vehicles, including trucks, are limited in the winter and in rough country.

Indeed, while it comes well after this, this enters into the area of my personal experience.

My father, who was an outdoorsman, only ever owned one 4x4 pickup, and it was one that he bought from me.  Otherwise, he didn't ever own one.  He acknowledged the rough country merits of 4x4s, but like a lot of drivers of his generation he never owned one as he believed that the increased number of moving parts they had meant they had to be maintained more and wore out quicker.  This belief was common.

Indeed, this belief was so common that area ranchers held it as well.  Quite a few ranchers in this region, well into the 1960s, relied upon 2x4s for daily ranch duties. They often, but not always, had a 4x4 but it was often a really heavy duty one like the flat fender style Power Wagon and they used it only for rough use and feeding.  They typically didn't use it as a daily driver, with there being some exceptions.

As an example of this, my father in laws father, who was a rancher and farmer his entire life, didn't drive 4x4s, just 2x4s.

For men of that generation, if conditions were really bad, they'd used tire chains to remedy it.  Everyone who had a 2x4 pickup had tire chains.  Now, a lot of people who have 4x4s do not have chains, although people who traverse the really nasty country in really nasty conditions do.  I do.  Even more amazingly, however, it was fairly common for men, and they were mostly all men, to just chain one tire.  In an era prior to positrac, all rear axles were "lockers" and that would usually work.

The point of all of this is this.  The same generation that relied on 2x4 pickups didn't go out in really horrible conditions when they could avoid it.  So, once winter really hit, and in a lot of areas it hits early, a lot of the country was just shut off.  There were no ATVs (I wish there wasn't now) and most urban dwellers didn't have horses, so the seasons in the really remote areas shut down at that point, whether they were open or not.

Added to that, the pickups of the day had surprisingly short range.

Up until at least the late 1960s pickup trucks had "saddle tanks", which were gasoline tanks that were in the cab of the truck.  The bench seat, and they were all bench seats, was right in front of the gasoline tank in the cab.  Off hand, the only exceptions I can think of were military trucks in the pickup truck class, which did have gasoline tanks that were located under the box.  Why this wasn't universally done I have no idea of.

Anyhow, the tanks usually only held around 13 gallons of gasoline.  As trucks of this era all got bad mileage, the far edge of your range was really only around 140 miles at the most.  Indeed, when I drive a 1960s vintage truck from Casper and Laramie, and vice versa, as a student, I stopped off in Medicine Bow to top off the truck.  Laramie is 145 miles from Casper.

Given this, it was the universal practice of outdoorsmen to take cans of gasoline with them if they were going way out into the hills.  My father, for example, would take a Jeep can with five extra gallons of gasoline if he was going up into areas that today I would never think of doing that for.    Not too surprisingly, therefore, most people stuck  much closer to town that a person might otherwise suspect.

Added to that, during World War Two gasoline was rationed in the United States.

The story of gasoline rationing is a little more complicated than generally portrayed.  For one thing, it didn't come into effect in all states at the same time.  Originally seventeen states on the East Coast were subject to it starting in May, 1942.  In order to make the pain of the effort universal, the Administration brought it to the remaining states by the end of the year.

Oddly, the effort didn't exist in order to conserve gasoline, but rubber. The logic was that with less gas there would be less driving, and that would save rubber.  Rubber was in short supply during the war and there were constant concerns about rubber.  In order to even get a ration stamp you had to demonstrate that you didn't have more than five rubber tires.  For the same reason, the speed limit was made to be a maximum 35 mph nationwide, half of that which applies on many of the state's highways today.

Stamps were affixed to car windows indicating their gasoline acquisition priority.  A stickers limited a car to 4 gallons of gasoline per week.  B stickers could get 8 gallons per week, and were issued to those who worked for a military industry.  C stickers were issued to those who were essential to the war effort, such as physicians, and X were priority stickers which allowed for unlimited gasoline purchases.

For most people, therefore, you weren't going to get much gasoline in the first place and therefore your ability to go very far was constricted.  You weren't going very far.  And if you saved up so  you could, you were only going to do so maybe once.  That would certainly impact how you did things, at a bare minimum.

But people did indeed go out.  Saving up gas rations, traveling with companions, there were ways to get it done, but with an economy of resources.

Shortages of other things

Among that economy of resources, we'd note, were cartridges.

Wartime advertisement explaining part of the reasons that shotgun shells were in short supply. . . they were going to the military.

Every manufacturer that could be pressed into making war materials was, and those that basically made something that was a war material was naturally pressed into service.  Such items as washing machines, for example were not made during the war as their makers were making other things for the military.  Cars weren't precluded from being manufactured for civilians after a date in 1942 and therefore 1942 was actually the last model of civilian vehicle until the war was over.

Ammunition manufacturers obviously had a specific wartime role to do.

While most civilians probably don't appreciate it, the military has made its own ammunition for a very, very long time.  Those familiar with cartridge cases can identify which government arsenal ammunition came from simply by reading the information stamped into the cartridge's base.

Be that as it may, the military never makes enough ammunition during war time or times of crisis to supply its own needs, so companies that made ammunition were busy during the war making it for the military.  That means, for civilians, ammunition was hard to get.  People did get it, but at least based on what I've been told, the supply of ammunition really curtailed a lot of hunting during the war. Even hand loaders would likely have found supplies of components very hard to get after a certain point, although I suspect that those who were dedicated shooters probably started stocking up in 1939.

Indeed, they would have had reason to as American ammunition manufacturers also supplied ammunition to Allied powers.  I don't know how extensive this was during WWII, but I know that at least the British purchased U.S. manufactured ammunition. As during the war certain U.S. weapons spread to our Allies, U.S. ammunition no doubt did as well.

Yet another example, this time from Savage. The Savage Model 99 was the most modern and unique lever action of the time and in fact had been purchased in small numbers during World War One by at least one Canadian militia unit.  The hunter is again shown in correct clothing for the era, note the red hat.

Suffice it to say, arms manufacturers also were busy with wartime production. However, while the war lasted for the U.S. from December 1941 until August 1945, there was no shortage of civilian arms and therefore this would have had very little impact on civilians during this time frame.

On those arms, quite a bit had happened since World War One, because of World War One.

Prior to World War One, the great American hunting rifle was a lever action and the great cartridge in most hunter's minds was the .30-30 Winchester.  We dealt with that, somewhat, in a footnote in the post on this topic in relation to the Great War.

The First World War exposed millions of American men to bolt action rifles for the first time, and by the same token to the U.S. .30-06 cartridge.  The combined impact didn't cause the lever action .30-30 to disappear, but it did make huge dents in its occupation of this field.  Soon after the war hunters took up hunting with bolt actions in greater numbers, some of those rifles being 98 Mausers that were brought home as war prizes.  More than a few of those rifles are still in use today.  Surplus M1903 Springfields and M1917 Enfields soon became available as well.  Winchester introduced its Model 54 bolt action, a rifle based on the M1903, in 1925 and a real evolution in this era began.

The Model 54 never achieved the legendary status that its successor the Model 70 did, which was introduced in 1936.  It went on to be a legend and achieved that status nearly from the onset of its introduction.

Remington actually beat Winchester to the punch, introducing the Model 30 in 1921.  In doing that, Remington was making a virtue out of necessity, as the Model 30 was a civilian version of the M1917, a rifle that Remington had made over 1,000,000 of for the Army during World War One, but which had seen an abrupt and financially devastating contract termination for as soon as the war was over.  Left with a large number of M1917 parts in process, in 1921 it took to using them for a civilian bolt action rifle.

In some ways the Remington rifle was better than the Model 54 and Model 70.  For one thing, it's "dog leg" bolt handle was so law that it would accept any scope without modification.  This was not true of the pre World War Two Model 70s.  As it was, however, this hardly mattered as few American hunters of the time used scopes.  Indeed, the Lyman Alaskan, with a mere 2.5X magnification, was introduced just prior to war and was about as popular of scope as there was, which says something as its a marginal product at best.  Target shooters were using the expensive 8X Unertl by this time, which is a super scope for the range.  The inadequacy of American scopes of the period is shown by the fact that the Marine Corps chose to use this scope, rather than the anemic Alaskan, in spite of it  featuring fragile mounts and being rather complicated to use.

Shotgun wise, the years between the wars made the Winchester Model 12, which had been introduced in 1912, absolutely dominant.  Other designs existed but the years between the war were the years of the Model 12, when it achieved absolute dominance.

That it achieved dominance is remarkable for another reason.  Up until extremely recently, and even to a fair extent now for that matter, most men who hunted big game tended to own one rifle, or perhaps two.  Multiple gun batteries were uncommon.

Frankly, they are now as well. And it would be totally untrue to suggest that there were not men who owned multiple rifles.  There very much were. But the rule tended to be that a man acquired a rifle, often as a gift, when he was of hunting age and that rifle, if it was new, tended to be the one he used the rest of his life.

That was very much the case for men that I knew who had grown up in the 40s, and for that matter it was also generally the case for men my age as well.  My own father had first gone big game hunting in the late 1940s with a borrowed .30-40 Krag lever action.  As he wanted his own rifle, and had limited funds, he ordered a surplus M1903 from the government soon thereafter but the onset of the Korean War precluded it from arriving.  At some point, his mother bought him a Remington 721 .30-06 and he used it for the rest of his life.  Two friends of his had Winchester Model 70s they had acquired when they were young and they never owned another rifle even though they were dedicated hunters.  All of these rifles were fitted with scopes from the period when they were new, and those scopes were never replaced.

For boys here, when you were old enough to big game hunt, which is somewhat older than it is now, the topic of rifles was an intense one.  Types and calibers were debated, and hit was hoped that whatever was given to you as a gift fitted your hopes as it was assumed you'd use it forever.  Quite frankly, that assumption was largely correct and undoubtedly many big game rifles given to boys here in their teens remain in use by their owners today exactly as anticipated.

This is noted here for a couple of reasons.  One is that it means that a lot of hunters in the 1940s were using rifles that were from much earlier decades and always would.  Bolt actions may have been the acknowledged cutting edge, but for men who had been shooting lever actions since their teens, that wouldn't have been persuasive enough as a rule to cause them to acquire something else.

Something about shotguns, however, was different.  It always has been to an extent as seemingly shotgun shooters are a lot more likely to change guns as time moves on.  Even in industry history this has had an impact as Browning's Auto 5 design became a gigantic success as hunters in North American and Europe adopted it, but the same design in the Remington Model 8 sold hardly at all.  Bird hunters were willing to give up the guns they were using in favor of the new automatic, rifle hunters weren't.

Before moving from the topic, hunting with pistols didn't exist, even though advertisements of an earlier era often shows a handgun carrying hunter defending himself against a bear.  Only one magnum cartridge existed for handguns at the time, the .357, and it was carried mostly by law enforcement officers.  Indeed, it was favored by highway patrolmen.

Bow hunting, that is hunting with a bow and arrow, made its reappearance in North American in this time frame.



A host of early bowhunters made their appearance after World War One, with the best remembered one today being Fred Bear, who was a bow manufacturer as well.  Dr. Saxton Pope and Arthur Young, however, were also quite active and today the records on bow hunting are kept in a periodic journal named after Pope and Young.

I'll confess that like a lot of topics in this thread, I'm fairly ignorant on the early history of bowhunting as, in part, I'm not a bowhunter.  I'm actually surprised to see how early its 20th Century reappearance was.

In my state bow hunting became legal, I think, in the 1970s.  Most, probably all, states have cartridge regulations that provide how large a cartridge must be, and by implication bow hunting was illegal.  That's really changed and now there's "bow season" and "rifle season".  In the 1940s, there was only rifle season most places, or simply the season.  Being not sure when cartridge requirements came in, I can't say exactly how that worked at the time.

Fishing

I haven't touched much on fishing, and I didn't in our post on World War One as well. That's really a significant omission.

One really notable development in the past few decades has been the development of "catch and release" fishing.  This really didn't exist when I was a kid and I frankly find it odd now.

Almost all of the men I at least somewhat knew when I was a kid fished, and frankly a huge number of them do now as well.  But the fishing when I was young implied fishing for the table.  People did let fish go, but if they were really too small to eat.  Going out and fishing for a day and letting everything go would not have occurred and frankly it's an odd thing to do from my prospective now.  I get why its done, but living a bit closer to nature than most, I still find it odd.

One thing that was notable to me even when I was young was that the men who grew up here who came of age in the 1940s tended to be fishermen first and hunters second. They did both, but they were inclined somewhat more strongly towards fishing.  Men who grew up after that, and now women, tend to be hunters first and fishermen second.  Men who grew up in neighboring Nebraska in the 40s, however, tended to be bird hunters overall.  Men who came from neighboring Montana were almost always big game hunters.

Why this was never occurred to me but in retrospect I suspect it had to do with available game populations.  People hunted (and fishing is hunting) what was available.  In Wyoming, the fishing was good but the big game hunting really wasn't.  This must have been the case for Colorado as well, as Coloradans were heavily fishermen.  Elsewhere, other game animals were more available and that reflected in men's primary focus.  People did everything, but there was, and tends to remain, a focus.

Anyhow, around here I know the fishing was good and all the men who grew up in the 40s had lots of stories about fishing.  They did a lot of it.  The fishing was for the table.  For men who came from Catholic or Orthodox families, moreover, fishing for the table meant fresh fish on Fridays, something that really mattered during a time when all Friday's were meatless.  That rule had become so habituated with my family that, as my father fished at least twice a week during the warm months, that we routinely had fish on Fridays long after it ceased to be a requirement.***

One thing about fishing that is different from hunting is that in some places you can do it basically in town, or very close to town.  In my area a major river runs through town, for example.  Having said that, it's also the case that it wasn't until the Clean Water Act of the 1970s that a lot of water in and around towns was safe to really take much out of, at least near town.  Here too, in my area three refineries bordered the river, and that may be perhaps why I was in my 50s before I saw anyone fishing in town.

Also, in the West, the summertime control of rivers was extensive.  This simply isn't done now, but rivers wtih dams were often choked down to nothing.  In Wyoming this is only done now in the are of Guernsey for some reason, but it was widely done in the 1940s.

An example of a pre war manufacturer showing its much different wartime production, again providing a reason that its products were not readily available.

World War Two came before the cost of fishing equipment became insane following the film A River Runs Through It, so it was additionally affordable.  But here too the war impacted things.  Companies that were capable of making rods and reels were capable of making other things, and they were.  Moreover, one thing that was used by fisherman as a matter of routine,  lead, used a critical war material that was being heavily used for war production.  So, here too, there were shortages.

On materials as we've noted changes in various things over time, one thing to note here is that the modern Spinning Reel didn't exist.

Ancestors of the Spinning Reel did, but at this point in time fishermen were usually using fly reels or Bait Casting Reels.  Spinning Reels of the modern type would be introduced by the French company Mitchell in 1948 and they've dominated in their application ever since.  But in the 40s, if a person was fishing a lake, he was using a Bait Casting Reel. For that matter, he might be using one if he was fishing a large enough river.

I have a Bait Casting Reel that dates back this far as it was my father's.  I have no idea whatsoever how to use it.  I also have a fairly old Mitchel Spinning Reel.  Until doing this post, it never occurred to me how old it might be.

Fly Reels haven't changed that much since the 40s and indeed well before that, except that this period saw the height of the popularity of the spring loaded fly reel.  I have one of these and when my daughter was young I pressed it back into service.

Pemco automatic reel






This is a Pemco fly fishing reel that's rather old, which I recently pressed back into service.  I'm pretty sure I have it mounted backwards here, but I rather absentmindedly did this as the line was feeding out from the other direction.  I rather obviously could have fixed that, but I just took it for granted that it was feeding out from the correct direction.

The action of this reel is rather odd, and I wouldn't buy one if it were offered now.  It's an automatic reel.  That is, the line retracts when the trigger is pressed.  Having said that, I'm rather surprised by how well it works.

Anybody know anything about these?

Epilog

I had the occasion to take this apart the other day, as I had to add line to it.  In the process, I stripped it down to clean it. Turns out it works much like a wind up clock.


Here's what keep the whole thing running. A long steel spring that is set to an axle, which is set by tightening the base.

This is another item that was my fathers' and it likely dates back to the 1940s.

Refrigeration

One thing that had definitely changed between the wars was the advance of refrigeration.

In our post about hunting during the Great War we noted:

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.

Now, this had changed and was changing.



The first home freezers were introduced just prior to the United States entering the war.  It's estimated that somewhere between 45% and 55% of American homes had home refrigerators, rather than "ice boxes" by the very early years of World War Two.  That's a pretty rapid transition, but of course it also means that roughly half the homes in the United States were still relying on ice boxes.




The first really successful widely used home refrigerator was General Electric's "Motor Top" refrigerator, which was introduced in 1927.  A separate freezer compartment was added to home refrigerators in 1940 for the very first time.  Some time after that giant freezers came about, but exactly when I don't know.  That may not have been until after World War Two, but I don't know  that.  What I do know is that it's not uncommon to find freezers even today in some households that likely date back to the 1950s, or at least the 1960s.  While the GE Motor Top refrigerator contains some dangerous constituents, they were so well built that apparently its not uncommon for them to still work today, although there are dangers to that.



The first large home freezer, or "deep freeze" as they used to be called, was introduced in 1945, too late to be common for homes during World War Two.  Today, big freezer units are really widespread and in fact they became so very quickly.  In fact, by the 1970s the number of homes that had a freezer was statistically 50% in electrified homes.  I don't know what it is today, but if it was 50% in the 1970s, it has to be at least that today.


Our home acquired one in the 1970s and big game hunting was the reason why.  It gave us the ability to freeze antelope and deer and keep them for long periods of time.

Now, while I have addressed this in the earlier thread, there's obviously something I'm missing here and I'm not sure what it is.  There was a lot of deer hunting across the country prior to the 1940s and people were keeping the meet somehow, but how?

One suspicion I have is that I think you may have been able to rent space in meat lockers, but I frankly just don't know that.  And I doubt every hunter would have done that. Something was done, but what?

One other thing to note is that in the cold parts of the country, and not all of the country is cold, meat was likely kept for a long time just by hanging it.  This is done in Alaska and the Canadian far north today, but I suspect it was also done in the more northerly regions of the country earlier on. Indeed, I also suspect that some people simply hung meat in cool places, if they had some sort of cellar in wich to to that.

You wouldn't do that now, as there'd be the fear that you'd get something awful, bacteriological infection wise.

Of course, fairly recently in this blog we looked at meat preservation.  I've never heard of anyone speak of meat preservation in terms of wild game, but there's probably some of that which occurs.  Indeed, in thinking on it, I know that people smoke fish now.  If you follow the links on this site you'll find that people even now do in fact smoke wild meat, including deer, and some salt it. There's plenty of recipes for corned deer, or corned bear, for example.  So maybe a lot was going on like this in earlier eras and I just don't know about it.  That's highly likely, in fact.

A note on equipment

I thought about adding a comment on this here, determined not to, and then changed my mind.

One thing I thought I'd note is that frankly equipment hasn't changed as much as people might suppose it has, either from 1914-1918 to 1939-1945, or from 1939-1945 to the present.  If you look through a hunting catalog and you aren't a hunter, or even if you are, you might naturally leap to the opposite conclusion about the present.  With one basic assumption, or maybe two, modern hunting equipment is very close to what it was in the 1940s, or frankly to what it was in the 1910s.

One thing that changed somewhere after World War One, and I'm not sure exactly when, is that regulations came in requiring visible clothing  for big game hunting and that clothing was red.  Now its blaze orange, although in Wyoming it also includes florescent pink.  Around World War One there were no such regulations, although it was already the case that in much of the country hunters were wearing red coats. By the 1970s the laws had changed from red to orange.  I'm not sure when the change itself actually came about.

A lot of people would note that outdoor clothing has certainly changed since 1945, and that would be true.  For one thing, warm coats in the 40s were almost always wool.That's true, but I'm not going to really get into the history of outerwear here.  I would note, however, that recently I've been seeing a lot of winter wool coats show up being worn by ranchers, so the wool mackinaw is coming back in some heavy outdoor uses. Wool vests certainly have.

At any rate, the 1940s remained very much in the wool era, although cotton had started to come on strongly due to the washing machine becoming common. During the Great War the modern washing machine was just coming on and it was still, quite frankly, more than a little bit frightening.  By the 1940s washing machines were arriving, their universal onset, as we've already discussed, only retarded by the Great Depression.  It was the modern washing machine that made cotton the clothing of choice for everything as it is so easily washable.  Lots of cotton clothing was becoming quite common for everyday wear and rough wear by 1939 and so we'd expect to see this in the game fields as well. We do, but not as much as you might suspect.  The durability of wool really caused it to keep on, keeping on.

One thing a person would note about hunting clothing of the 10s, or the 40s, or for that matter the 50s and 60s, is that it was likely a uniform color or checked, assuming that it was purpose bought.  Red "buffalo checked" shirts, for example, were common for hunters of the 40s.  Checked coats were as well.  Otherwise, a person might expect to see dark green or the like, a color associated with hunters since Medieval times.  Duck hunters commonly wore cotton duck coats, as cotton duck, the heavy canvas, is nearly water impervious and in fact can be water impervious if waxed.  Camouflage wasn't seen in game fields.

Camouflage has come in, and in strength since World War Two but it was not a feature of hunter's clothing at the time, something that modern hunters may well wish to ponder.  Duck hunters brought it in after World War Two and probably because of World War Two, as the "frog pattern" introduced by the US during the war was adapted to duck hunting clothing.  Indeed, this was so much the case that by the early 1960s Cuban counterrevolutionaries deployed in the disastrous Bay of Pigs Invasion and U.S. Special Forces troops sent to Vietnam who are seen wearing what appears to be WWII frog pattern uniforms are usually in fact wearing civilian "duck hunter" pattern clothing.  When bow hunting became big, however, and as bow hunters are exempt from the blaze orange regulations in most places and they increasing adopted it.  At first, camouflage in big game hunting indicated either that the hunter was a bow hunter or had served in the Cold War military.  Now its extremely common irrespective of the fact that most big game animals have a type of vision for which camouflage is fairly irrelevant.  Waterfowl are distinctly different, which is why it appeared first here.

For one reason or another camouflage has so come into American society that at the present time its seen simply everywhere.  Some of this is due to companies that want to associate with the activities of their employees, so they have camouflaged company hats, but a lot of it is simply a fashion trend.  Camouflage started to make its way into everyday wear after the Vietnam War and its very much everywhere now.

One change in clothing underappreciated, is that by the 1940s outdoorsmen were wearing rubber soled boots.  In the teens they weren't.  The era of hobnails had come to an end in North America, if not in Europe, where millions of soldiers were still marching in hobnailed boots. American soldiers weren't.  The era of the universal vibram sole was still thirty years away or so, even though the Swiss design already existed, but rubber soles were now standard in American outdoor footwear.  Interesting, soles that were regarded as revolutionary at the time would be regarded as inadequate now.

Hobnails were standard on most heavy duty outdoor shoes well into the 1930s.  Alternatively, men simply wore leather soled shoes with no hobnails. Shoes of this type are incredibly slick, but that's what was around.  Good rubber soled shoes started to be introduced in the 1930s and in 1937 Italian Vitale Bramani introduced the Vibram sole after designing it in the wake of the deaths of two friends of his mountain climbing.  Even before that Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. had praised much less aggressive rubber soled shoes in his book East of the Sun, West of the Moon, about hunting in the Himalayas.  Vibrams were so much of an advance that the U.S. Army had adopted them for mountain boots by World War Two, although the adoption of that sort of sole for combat boots in general had to wait until they appeared on Jungle Boots, from which they spread to all types of combat boots thereafter.

Sportsmen were quick to pick up on rubber soled boots and they were very much in the fields by the 1940s.

In terms of equipment simply carried by hunters, by and large most hunters today would find the equipment very similar and for that matter they would all the way back to 1910 and back.  I've already dealt with rifles and things associated with them, so will not deal with that again. Beyond that, most hunters carried a hunting knife and maybe a few accessories. Some, if they were way out back, might carry a compass and maps. All this is still true, except the compass has been replaced by now almost entirely by the GPS which is now almost a universal item owned and carried by hunters. While I don't appreciate a lot of modern technology, rather obviously, I"m a huge fan of the GPS.  Between WWI and WWII there were no advancements of that type at all, so there would have been no changes.

One thing I should note is that once in the game fields hunters were afoot. That sounds obvious, but today thanks to the unfortunate introduction of the ATV, this is much less the case.  I despise ATVs and are the one thing, together with the cell phone,t that I wish I could banish.  Anyhow, in the 1910-1920 time frame, as with the 1939-1950 time frame, once hunters were where they were going, they were afoot.

Well, maybe. 

Most hunters I knew who had started hunting in the West early on weren't shy at all about driving across the prairie if they felt it warranted.  It was very common.  It still frankly is with ranchers, who while they may complain about people "making new roads" aren't shy about doing it themselves.  In recent years, due to the onset of the ATV, there's been a dedicated effort to restrict vehicle access in all sorts of ways, and I"m in favor of that.  Hunters with vehicles in the 40s, however, were only really restrained from doing that out of concern for damaging their vehicles or wearing out hard to replace tires.  In the 1910-20 time frame vehicles were amazingly durable off road and this was no doubt the same, for those who had them.

For really rough country, then, before, and now, there were horses and mules. I don't know the extent to which town people in the 40s kept horses, but it may be a lot more common than I'd imagine.  I know that in my own town there were places to rent horses on the edge of town forever, and as far back as I can personally remember there were men who kept horses for no other purpose.  Indeed, this takes us back to vehicles a bit in that at least as far back to the 1920s and all the way through the 70s there were men who carried horses in the back of pickup trucks with stock racks.  I haven't seen this done now since that time.  There were also quite a few very light duty horse trailers that were towed by trucks we'd regard as light now.

Turning to fishing, I've already discussed reels.  Fishing equipment itself, beyond that, changed very little between World War One and World War Two, other than that the first primitive waders started to come in.

This was due to advancements in the production of rubber prior to World War One.   Commercial waders were offered as early as 1850, but it was really in the 1910s when they started to be really practical.  Having said that, rubber production in that period still wasn't really perfected for clothing, and it wasn't until 1942 that this would be the case, due to World War Two.

Anything that came in during the war wasn't available commercially until after the war.  Therefore, modern waders really came in at that time.  Prior to that, therefore, most men simply waded in with clothing somewhat suitable for that, something most would not do today.  Cotton trousers and canvas tennis shoes were very common for this in the 1940s. Chuck Taylor high top tennis shoes were in fact very common in this use, having come in during the 1920s, and that was the early practice of my own father. 

Indeed, being short of stature and having a hard time finding waders, and beyond that simply being cheap, wading in with light tropical weight Army trousers and tropical combat boots was my own practice up until extremely recently.  It's definitely different that using waders and even now in streams I'll do that.  Anyhow, if you want an idea of what the practice was during the Second World War era, or the First World War era, watch the fishing scenes of A River Runs Through It and you'll know.

Conclusion

Well, that covers a lot of ground, more than I meant to cover at first.  Hopefully its been interesting.  If you know something that's been omitted here, add to it.  Or if there's something to correct, do that.


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*I should note the seriousness with which Wyomingites take game and fish laws is not universal everywhere. Recently an oilfield electrician told me about an event, some years ago, in which he was part of a local electrician's crew that marveled at the stew and chili that was served by a Texas oilfield crew everyday on location. They learned, in the process of this, that the crew was poaching deer and that is what they were eating.  They accordingly turned them over to the Game and Fish.

The Texas crew was stunned. They just couldn't grasp what is that they'd done wrong.

**During World War Two civilian manufacture of automobiles ceased. So basically it's nearly impossible to find civilian vehicles manufactured in model years 1943 to 1945 and there were really not many 1941 and 1942 models either.

***This is another way that I compere very poorly with my father.  For that matter, I compare poorly in every respect, of which this is a notable one.