Game Gathering Methods

[Loosearrow]

How about some of you guys chiming in on ways to hunt or trap game without a lot of fancy modern methods/techniques? I was just thinking about my days as a pre teen and early teen in the backwoods of Arkansas just after WWII. We were dirt poor and I sometimes got one 50 round box of 22 shorts a month ($0.25 at the hardware store in town) for my $9.00 from Sears Savage single shot rifle. Some of the methods I recall were:

- A forked stick for cottontail rabbits. We lived in thick woods country with mixed pines and hardwoods. There were lots of gum trees and virtually all were hollow inside. When walking through the woods and I 'jumped' a cottontail, they always took off directly away and usually to the nearest gum tree. Honest, guys/gals, they would climb up the inside of the gum trees! We farm boys always had a pocket knife so we immediately cut a limber branch from a handy tree and trimmed off the end 'fork' so it was a couple of inches long on each side of the 'Y.' You stuck this up the inside of the tree until you felt it touch the rabbit, then twisted it into the fur and pulled Mr. bunny out of the tree. Rap his head into the tree root, hold him by the head and stick a finger into and through his fur right at the neck hollow. Rip down to the anus and you had a disembowled bunny. Scoop out the innards, strip off the rest of the fur and you had a rabbit for the pot.

- Quail. I got thousands over the years with a cardboard or wooden box. Prop the box up on a stick with a fairly long (30 feet or more) string attached. Sprinkle out some corn, chickenfeed, or whatever in a thin trail ending under the box and lay down in the high weeks/grass with the end of the string. When a quail or two ate their way under the box, yank the stick out and trap them. Reach down through the top, wring their necks one at a time and birds for the pot.

- Ducks and geese. We had a sizeable farm pond and the migrating water birds would set down in numbers in the spring and fall while on their way north or south. I was young and hardy so it was my job to get into the pond and under an old rusted out washtub (remember those?) with some holes I could see through. I would gradually work my way over to some of the birds, then reach out, grab their legs, and drag them under water to drown while I helped by wringing their necks under water. I came out later half froze from the cold water but with lots of meat for the pot.

- Bee trees. We actually has a season for bee trees in my part of western Arkansas in the old days. When walking/working in the woods, especially in summer when the weather was dry and the creeks were dried up to scattered holes, we kids always watched/listened for bees. They would come to the holes of water, drip in, and then make a 'bee line' back to their hives. They only fly 10 or 12 feet high so it was east to establish the 'bee line' and follow them back to the dead or hollow tree and the home hive. Once we'd located that, it was time to get the adults, lead them to the tree, wrap old curtains around your head and exposed skin, cut the tree and get 200 lbs or more of wild honey.

- Frogs. Got lots of bullfrogs with a trident spear made of a long tree limb and using a carbide lantern at night. Any of you remember carbide lamps? I had burn scars for years from lighting the damned things. Anyway, frog legs are delicious!

- Possums. They hang upside down on tree limbs and are easy to club in the early morning. Especially in the fall when the persimmons were ripe and they'd ate themselves into a stupor.

- Intoxicated deer. During summertime in the south and only occasional rains, the water would collect in hardwood stumps along with leaves, wild grapes, etc. You could smell a fermenting stump from a long ways off and the deer and other animals would go to them to drink. I don't know the alcohol content but deer especially would not infrequently be drunk as skunks from 'stump water.' They would stagger along, walk into trees, and fall down. Easy to club one with a hefty stick or rock and then there was lots of venison for the home pot. I can recall also seeing black bears drunk but I didn't mess with them.

Anyway, how about some words of wisdom regarding simple ways to gather food to include traps, deadfalls, snares, and so on.

Lots of good info in your post of the old ways. Common knowledge is not all that common, thanks.

 

[Trent Rock]

Trent Rock, that's a great one.... Have You read The Ohlone Way?

My main area of interest is Native Americans of the Southwest
(my Great 6X Grandfather was an adopted/kidnapped/sold Apache in 1706 New Mexico or Colorado)
But, since I grew up in The Bay Area
I'll check out that book:thumbup:

I have to give BRL credit for his emphasis on 1st person narrative historical accounts/books
Some times it's kinda boring to read
But, there is a lot of info to be had in 1st person narrative accounts

 

[tuxtex]

Hello CW4,

I´m not a native English speaker and I`m very impressed to read your posting!

From my point of view, these old stories are a kind of world heritage and when you might gone to the happy hunting ground some day in future, the remembrance to these old pioneers will gone forever as well.

Write this book!

Best regards,

tuxtex

 

[dartanyon]

Thanks Old CW4,
I enjoyed reading your yarns, easy to read. Other than going to the shops, my food gathering is mostly along the edge of the ocean with a knife, spear and a pair of goggles. Shellfish, crustaceans and fish. Not really much on the tricks, just knowing where to look. Like most creatures they have hiding places. Went crabbing with my son today and didn't do any good although my mate rang me and gave me a bag of crabs he got early this morning, and it was his birthday ... not mine.

 

[fishshooter]

Thanks Old CW4,
I enjoyed reading your yarns, easy to read. Other than going to the shops, my food gathering is mostly along the edge of the ocean with a knife, spear and a pair of goggles. Shellfish, crustaceans and fish. Not really much on the tricks, just knowing where to look. Like most creatures they have hiding places. Went crabbing with my son today and didn't do any good although my mate rang me and gave me a bag of crabs he got early this morning, and it was his birthday ... not mine.

That is one of my favorite past times during the summer. Nothing better than spending a day in the bay with a snorkel, poke pole and net collecting fish, scallops and crabs. The only thing better is eating them. You also see some really cool wildlife too.

I just realized most my outdoor activities revolve around food.

 

[paleojoe]

I agree!

 

[fishshooter]

I think you and I would get along just fine Joe.:thumbup:'

 

[paleojoe]

Right on Brother!:thumbup:

 

[Trent Rock]

Here is another one from One Man's West by David Lavender
Involves a hole, some herbs and a stuffed coyote!!!

http://books.google.com/books?id=ouE1KQdYpjgC&pg=PA94&lpg=PA94&dq=one+mans+west+catching+eagles+hole&source=bl&ots=Mtevw5DdYB&sig=1z9CqiZg4KE4xVVA7-z2d7WGaaY&hl=en&ei=gyoxS9u5MYfIsAP_q6DGBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=&f=false

 

[Davyd]

Fish shooter

Good crabs - where do you dind them and how do you get them?

They look like what we call blue swimmer crabs here in OZ - and I have not found any snorkelling.

The crabs I used to get were mud crabs - from walking along the edge of sandbanks in an estuary at still water with a spear- prefferably at dusk.

All the blue swimmers were generally caught with conical baited nets (witches hats)- except the one that latched onto a friends toe when walking across the sandbanks one time

On another note

In Fiji on a reef I went out with a local snorkel fishing - at night with a crude spear (effectively a sharpened nail) and a torch - basically just found sleeping fish and jabbed them. Simple and effective

 

[Old CW4]

Time to post again I guess so here goes. For starters, I hope I haven't 'romanticized' a bygone era. Looking back from today's vantage point, those days were vastly different and a sort of adventure. However, there was also a lot of hard work, danger, and just plain drudgery that went into survival. Sure, we ate a very good and balanced diet but, oh boy!, the hoeing, weed pulling, bug gathering and burning, harvesting, and preserving that went into all that. Hmmm? Bug gathering and burning. What's that? Well, we kids went up and down the crop rows with buckets plucking off all the tomato horn worms, grubs, and other creepie crawlers. When we got a three gallon pail full of squirming bugs, we went to the end of the row where there was a brush fire burning and dumped the bucket full into the flames. My! All sorts of pops and snaps and sizzlings as the critters burned.

I had a boyhood friend who would up crippled for life from a rattlesnake bite. We were picking boysenberries at a local farm and were, of course, bare foot. He was struck on the right foot by a sizeable rattler. The adults X cut the fang wounds, sucked out the poison, and got him to town as quickly as possible. He survived but his foot and leg partially withered and he was lamed for life.

A next door neighbor was hooking up a team of mules to a wagon to haul wood. He was bent down behind the left hand mule mending a broken trace chain with bailing wire when the mule turned and bit a huge chunk from the left side of his neck and he died from shock and blood loss.

Another neighbor worked on a state road crew. He would be gone for two to three weeks doing pick and shovel work, then get paid and come home. Usually, he would stop somewhere and buy a quart or so of moonshine, get home drunk, get drunker, and beat up on his wife. He did that once too often. He was royally drunk and passed out atop their bed. She stripped him, sewed him up in the bedsheet, and damned near beat him to death with a riding whip when he came to the next morning. I remember the sheriff and ambulance coming out from town. He was whipped from his neck to his foot soles and damned near died. As far as I recall he never beat 'mama' again.

I remember being out in deer hunting camp with the men for the first time. I was about 12 and my job was to gather firewood and water, keep coffee on the fire, and otherwise keep my mouth shut. It was early morning and I was squatting off to the side while the men were all standing around the fire and drinking coffee before the day's hunt. I was looking right at a big, bearded guy who was sipping coffee from a tin cup. All of a sudden he went sprawling backwards and I distinctly remember hearing a 'bang!' from a distant hillside and seeing something fly out behind him. He hit the ground dead and what I'd seen fly out was a six or eight inch long piece of his spine from being hit dead center with a 30-06 bullet. That ended deer camp that fall and the sheriff determined a neighbor, with whom the dead guy had been feuding for years, had sniped him from 300 or yards away.

That was my first time seeing someone killed. The second time was at the Ft Smith, AR stockyards. I'd helped a neighbor load a bunch of calves and went with him to the stock sales some 50 miles away. I was on a sort of overhand porch at the second story level and looking down into the yards. A big, heavy guy was sitting atop the rail beside a cattle chute and chalk marking the steers as they came up the chute. One hit the rail just beneath him and he toppled over backward and fell six or eight feet into a hog pen behind him. He went 'kersplat' into the mess and I laughed. I did until a huge boar hog ran over and chomped him in the stomach area. The boar ran off pulling the man's intestines out of his body and eating them as he ran off. I was almost in shock. Several men jumped into the hog pen and kept the boar back as they lifted the guy out of the muck. They gave him a cigarette and he smoked it while waiting for the ambulance but he died before they got there. No way he could survive with most of his innards eaten by a boar hog.

I remember those things too. People stomped and bitten by mules and horses, gored by horned cattle, crushed by trees they were cutting, mutilated working in sawmills, and so on. These were not every day events but they did happen and sure left a hell of an impression on me. It was a good life all in all but also a hard life with lots of work and ways to die or get maimed along the way. We young folks, of course, just knew we were invulnerable and would live forever. We rode or tried to ride every colt and calf in the area and bragged about our close calls. I'm glad I survived.

 

[coote]

dang. It is sad about those deaths and injuries (and amazing at the same time).

It is good to learn about real life. Thanks for sharing. Feel free to write more.

My best wishes .... Stephen Coote, Nelson, New Zealand.

 

[Davyd]

ditto - Melbourne Australia

 

[dawsonbob]

Good stuff, indeed, Old CW4. You really should write it all down while you can.