What Fowls for Fowlers?

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Good morning
In the Danville , ILL area there has been a large crow population for many years. Crows are my primary target for my .69 and .62 smoothbore flinters. I use mostly a mix of #6 & #5 shot and try not to shoot past 30 yards... No I do not hit every crow. But it is alot of fun and a great way to spend a morning out on Shakerag road.
Back in the 1980´s the crow population was huge.. then there was a disease die off about 2000 that reduced the flock by at least 70%. In the 1990´s it was nothing to go out and pop 10-15 as the sun was coming up. After the die off I was happy to see 10 flying about and might get 1-2.
There were more crows last time up north there.. I hope next year there will also be more.
Mike in Peru
 
Stumpkiller said:
Skychief said:
Interesting Stumpkiller, but....what lightbulb went off?
Click to expand...

Why some find a long barrel fowler awkward with current game bird opportunities. It was a different playing field in the flintlock days.


I'm pretty sure Buffalo/American Bison are not in the "fowl" classification, however. ;-)
Click to expand...

Well then where do buffalo wings come from then :hmm: Now i am cornfused..
 
Sorry, but they weren't " Greedy" back then, unless you considering the desire to "EAT" to be greedy( some of the Greenies today seem to do just that).

They simply didn't know what we know today.

We didn't have the SCIENCE then that we do today. We didn't have the entire country crossed with roads, and highways, so that people- including Scientists-- could survey large tracts of land and water to do counts on bird and mammal populations. Airplanes were not available nor used by scientists to study birds until well into the late 1920s.

These biological sciences were just beginning in the 19th century, and much of the destruction of bird and mammal populations in the Eastern Half of the country had already occurred. Market hunting was considered an honorable profession, as it fed the growing populations of early cities, Like Chicago, and St. Louis, with inexpensive meat.

It wasn't until after the Civil War that the Great Cattle Ranches evolved into the huge meat producing interests that could feed cities. And, then, they needed the advent of the railroads to transport the cattle to Eastern markets. Only when cities had assured sources of "domestically produced" meat were we able to outlaw "market Hunting of wildlife.

The idea of "sport hunting" was really a novelty of the RICH. Everyone else killed wild animals to supplement their diets with the only Meat available. They didn't have refrigeration, until the late 19th century, and then only in the big cities were electric power was available. So, game had to be eaten the day it was killed.

Market hunters killed flocks of birds sitting on the water, by drifting shallow Punts down river onto the flocks, in the early light of day. The big bore guns fired "raking " shots, to kill or cripple as many birds as possible with each shot. The boat was then rowed- not powered by an outboard motor-- as fast as possible to recover the birds before they were swept away in the current, or sank, or the cripples were able to escape. There were no game laws, no bag limits, no Possession limits laws that were being violated. They had no idea how many birds and wild mammals their were, how they reproduced, and in what frequency, or numbers, and with migratory birds, they didn't even know where all the birds nested each year. All the saw were thousands of birds flying over or resting on the rivers, and lakes along the flyways. And thousands more birds arrived or passed over every day. The idea that they could kill all of them never crossed any one hunter's mind.

Be very careful about judging the actions of people centuries ago, by modern standards.
 
Well, no they were greedy. They used to kill all the gamebirds and they could sell them at the market in town for money. They didn't eat all those birds they sold them to others. One part of the book referenced how they preferred to eat wild game rather than butcher their livestock because there was just so many animals out there.
 
Just recently I had read an essay from Alexander Wilson who wrote American Ornithology....1808-1813. His essay on the "Wild Pigeon" would astound one! He calculated that one flock passing between Frankfort and the Indiana Territory was a mile in breadth and likely much more...his words. And by his calculation extended for 240 miles in length. His estimate of the birds was "two thousand two hundred and thirty millions, two hundred and seventy-two thousand. And a low estimate he suggested. This was 1 flock. His next calculation was "if each ate half a pint of mast it would amount to seventeen million four hundred and twenty-four thousand BUSHELS of mast...per day!" It was an excellent read for anyone interested. And there wasn't enough lead or gunpowder in America to kill that many birds. I bel;ieve Paul is quite correct. Audie...
 
I may be (probably am) wrong on this but I've heard a few times over the years that a factor (large or small) in the decimation of the Bison was caused by the government. The idea being to remove the Bison from the equation thus starving out the Indians who depended on the Bison for so much of their every day existence. The "Ultimate Solution".

Vern
 
"And by his calculation extended for 240 miles in length. His estimate of the birds was "two thousand two hundred and thirty millions, two hundred and seventy-two thousand. And a low estimate he suggested."

Man that is nearly inconcievable, one big bunch of birds, not a good time in history to be a statue, for sure!
 
i don't think they were greedy, just making a living. i'm pretty sure no one ever got rich being a market hunter.
 
"Paul...if the buffalo died of disease, have you EVER read an account of ANYBODY seeing thousands of dead buffalo lying about [that weren't skinned] that died of disease? I'll bet you can't.'

I gotta agree, I have seen nothing to shift the demise of the Buff from the over hunting theory anywhere,and pretty much take a lot of Dr.Sams stuff with a grain of salt myself
 
"Well, no they were greedy"

I don't think we can fairly apply our morals and standrds to the thinking of those from the past the common line of thought was likley that tere was an endless supply of game
 
John James Audubon, the Making of an American

Adubon describes "the pigeons were still passing in undiminished numbers, and continued to do so for three days in succession" He also describes that the flock was a mile wide and he calculated that there were 1.1 Billion and that his number was conservative.

That is only one flock.

Alexander Wilson had calculated more than 2 Billion for a comparable flock. The book goes on to say: A modern expert estimates the total number of passenger pigeons in the area as 3 Billion.

Audubon goes on to describe the wholesale slaughter of those birds as they roosted. Whole towns of people turned out for the slaughter, men, women, children and everyone pitched in to load the dead birds in wagons. Local farmers turned their hogs out to feast on dead birds shot by volley fire and landing on the ground in huge gobs. The trees were destroyed by the weight of all the birds trying to roost together. It was quite a sight and impressed Audubon to no end. He was distressed by the wanton waste as many of he brds were left on the ground either for the hogs to eat or to rot. They simply killed more than they could possibly haul away.
 
Just a thought for the group.

We know that large numbers of pigeons, and bison were killed for meat, hide and bones; plus a few shot for sport which I think was rather rare at that time. Still we are talking vast numbers by almost anyone estimate at the time.

This leads me to wonder if the decline was not due in part to the cyclic nature of animal populations. Perhaps the pigeons and bison were at their peak and their decline was both manmade and natural. Unfortunately when it can time to peak again, the many factors already mentioned coupled with population expansion and habitat loss reduced the normal animal population increase. This is just speculation on my part of course.

Perhaps those familiar with Native American traditions would know of stories when starvation threatened, because the buffalo or other food sources was scarce, prior to the influence of western expansion.

I seem to recall that after great locust plagues, the locust responsible for them went extinct.


Now in answer to the original question, "What Fowls", I have shot quail and woodcock with my percussion, turkey with my flintlock and Skeet with both.(Clay fowl if you will) :wink:
 
Ancient One said:
I may be (probably am) wrong on this but I've heard a few times over the years that a factor (large or small) in the decimation of the Bison was caused by the government. The idea being to remove the Bison from the equation thus starving out the Indians who depended on the Bison for so much of their every day existence. The "Ultimate Solution".

Vern
Click to expand...

Another completely unsubstantiated myth. I've heard this same thing over the years. I even figured that it was true untill I realized there is no evidence of it actually occuring. I can not find anywhere where some Colonel, General, or whomever gave an order or made a policy to destroy the bison herds to starve the Natives. this goes right into the same BS pile as the myth of Whites importing smallpox on purpose to destroy the Blackfeet and other tribes. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The evidence and documentation exists to the contrary.
 
There was a pretty good resource I linked to earlier in this thread regarding U.S. Bison policy or lack of (it's about halfway down the webpage).
http://www1.american.edu/TED/ice/buffalo.htm

In 1874, Secretary of the Interior Delano testified before Congress, "The buffalo are disappearing rapidly, but not faster than I desire. I regard the destruction of such game as Indians subsist upon as facilitating the policy of the Government, of destroying their hunting habits, coercing them on reservations, and compelling them to begin to adopt the habits of civilization. (The Military and United States Indian Policy, p. 171)
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Aldo Leupold on the Passenger Pigeon...

The Passenger Pigeon was no mere bird, he was a biological storm. He was the lightning that played between two biotic poles of intolerable intensity: the fat of the land and his own zest for living. Yearly the feathered tempest roared up, down, and across the continent, sucking up the laden fruits of forest and prairie, burning them in a travelling blast of life. Like any other chain reaction, the pigeon could survive no diminution of his own furious intensity. Once the pigeoners had subtracted from his numbers, and once the settlers had chopped gaps in the continuity of his fuel, his flame guttered out with hardly a sputter or even a wisp of smoke.
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As quoted by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology who also writes...

The key to the Passenger Pigeon’s abundance was its nomadic flocking behavior, which allowed it to exploit seasonally superabundant crops of mast (beechnuts [Fagus grandifolia] and acorns [Quercus spp.]) that were unpredictable in space and time.

Passenger Pigeons bred almost exclusively in huge colonies of at least hundreds of thousands of pairs. Aggregating in such immense numbers allowed the species to satiate any potential predators, until they attracted the ultimate predator””humans armed with nineteenth-century technology.

The dramatic decline to extinction, which occurred over a period of 30 years in the latter half of the nineteenth century, was driven by a combination of habitat loss and human disruption of essentially every nesting colony.

During this period, there were no uninterrupted and completely successful mass nestings, which were necessary to sustain the population.


Billions of pigeons at the start to be sure, but nesting in a few enormous colonies each year, said colony sites moving from year to year with the food supply, which had to be hundreds of square miles of mature forest, all in a mast year.

Withal the pigeon lasted most of the Nineteenth Century, but steady logging and clearing did it in, combined with the spread of railroads making the harvesting of most every nesting attempt an economically viable proposition.

Birdwatcher
 
Stumpkiller, that is a great piece of period anti Indian sentiment. It is one of the engines pushing the "starve them into submision" myths. There are no documents showing expenditures for troops to spend time or ammunition killing bison or bounties for civillians to decimate the herds. Bison were valuable for their hides as we were in the middle of the Industrial Revolution which required leather belts to drive the machinery. Also thousands and thousands of barrels of dried Buff. tongues were being shipped east. I know that during this same time the Whites were trying to "civilize" the natives partly because they didn't know what else to do. The iea was, if they could turn them into good Christians and teach them to till the soil then things would be okay. It was a means to an end. Over hunting (same as happened with the beaver trade) took care of everything in the end.

Now that we've completely bent this thread out of shape I'll shut up and let others in to discuss "what fowls for a fowler"

:bow: :surrender:
 
Stumpkiller said:
Skychief said:
Interesting Stumpkiller, but....what lightbulb went off?
Click to expand...

Why some find a long barrel fowler awkward with current game bird opportunities. It was a different playing field in the flintlock days.


I'm pretty sure Buffalo/American Bison are not in the "fowl" classification, however. ;-)
Click to expand...


Duh....of course. :redface: I didn't consider the title thread Stumpkiller. Great observation by the way. :thumbsup:
 
So we can assume that he primary reason for the demise of the American Bison was the loss of nesting habitat and the lack of sufficient pigeon droppings to sufficiently fertilize and nurture an adequate supply of prarrie grass on which the Bison needed to graze? :idunno:
 

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