A Brief History of American Hunting
An article written for OkayestHunter/Where2Hunt
Today, we hunt for sport. That’s why we can get by being Okayest Hunters. If we don’t harvest an animal, our family’s not at risk, and we’re not going to die over the winter. However, it wasn’t always like this. It’s easy to forget that hunting used to be a totally badass, necessary part of life. It’s still badass (obviously), but hunting wasn’t the fun filled weekend at camp that we’re familiar with today.
To start off, let’s take a look at Native American hunting. Native Americans were probably the least Okayest hunters, in that they found abundant success, and formed a bond with the land they hunted on. We could call them “Exemplary-est Hunters”. Hunting was a core part of their culture and traditions, with the animals they harvested providing them food, clothing, tools, shelter; pretty much anything that they could use the animal for, they would. Little of the animal was wasted, and the tribes paid great respect to the animal, for they understood they could not thrive without it. For the Native Americans, to be a hunter was to be a provider for the tribe, and learning to hunt was a great right of passage in becoming a man.
Fast-forward to the colonial period, and hunting was still vastly important, however for a different reason. Under the British Monarchy, all fish and game were considered to be royal property, and so when the Colonists came to the new world, hunting became a symbol of freedom. In fact, in Plymouth in 1623, a mandate was set in place that all hunting and fishing was free to everyone. While these colonists relied on and coexisted with nature less than the Native Americans, hunting was still integral to their survival, and lasting long winters.
As time passed and hunting in the newly freed United States developed, it began to make a shift and become somewhat sport-focused. In 1887, Theodore Roosevelt founded the Boone and Crockett Club, the first wildlife conservation organization in North America. The club was formed with an intent to educate the public about wildlife, set standards for hunts that made it into a sport, and put a stop to overexhausting the game of the American frontier with rules and regulations.
Other clubs such as the Pope and Young Club came along with similar goals, and over the last 200 years, hunting has become what we know it as today. It’s amazing to look back on this history and admire the contrast of the two worlds. Today, we hunt for the activity, the tradition; we hunt because we want to be hunters. The hunters before us didn’t have this luxury, they hunted for a purpose. To survive, to be one with the world around them, even to proclaim their freedom. So next time you don’t fill your tag, just remember that being a hunter isn’t about taking home a 12-pointer to gloat to your buddies. Being a hunter is about being a hunter.
Turkey Season: The Jurassic Classic
An article written for OkayestHunter/Where2Hunt
Think back to your childhood — specifically the year 1993 — and I’m sure you’ll remember the blockbuster hit Jurassic Park. Following the release of this film, just about every little kid and their sister wanted to be a paleontologist— the dinosaur boom had commenced. The American public had become thoroughly obsessed with these lizard-like beasts.
Follow the story about 30 years later, and those kids did become paleontologists. And what did they find? Birds.
It was… like all birds. And not majestic, soaring, amazing feats of nature. A vast majority of what we think of as dinosaurs were disappointingly enough gigantic flightless birds. Feathers and all. Remember those veracious little velociraptors, with scaly skin and jaws snapping like piranhas? The photo on the right is a more accurate depiction of what these creatures probably looked like.
Now that we’ve gotten the disappointing — yet fascinating — truth out of the way, it’s time to talk about why every spring, you have the opportunity to be a total and complete badass. The opportunity? Turkey hunting.
Turkeys from the family that we know (Meleagridinae, which is a subfamily of North American Turkeys) have been roaming the planet since 23 million years ago, making them one of the older species of modern bird— although Chickens take the cake at around 67 million years ago.
Turkeys remained quite similar throughout their evolutionary history, and they even bear similar traits than their extinct ancestors from the Phasianidae family— the family of large, grounded birds. They prove to be a window into what these pre-historic species behaved and looked like.
So what does this all mean to us? We’re hunters, not anthropologists. What this means is that every spring, we can go after a bird that is a living fossil, and has been on this earth 4,600 times longer than human civilization. We may never get to fulfill our movie-fueled childhood dream of chasing down a T-Rex, but we get to do something that’s damn close, and for what it’s worth, that’s pretty neat.
