Putting meat on the family’s table was the be-all and end-all goal of the American pioneer huntsman. Meat didn’t necessarily mean venison from deer, although that dish was the most highly prized. Meat could mean anything from squirrel to bear, fox to raccoon and opossum to wild turkey — whatever might be available in the surrounding wilderness at any given time.
Hunting was an art form, learned mainly by men since childhood under the tutelage of a father, grandfather or older sibling. While the Kentucky rifle with its deadly accuracy helped to enhance the hunter’s odds of a kill, the presence of well-trained hunting dogs tipped the scales even further in the rifleman’s favor.
Some of the best accounts of early hunting exploits in the Ohio country were written by Major General David Sloane Stanley of the U.S. Army. Stanley, a Medal of Honor recipient for his exceptional deeds in the Civil War, penned the memoirs of his experiences growing up in Wayne County on the Ohio frontier from 1828 to 1848. Among those memoirs, published in 1917, are recollections of his hunting experiences.
Through Stanley’s observations, readers can glean some nuggets of what it must have been like to hunt for one’s survival among the gigantic trees of the world’s greatest hardwood wilderness.
Here, and in the several following installments, are some of Stanley’s observations about hunting for various types of game:
On hunting squirrels
“The most universal sport of the countryside was squirrel shooting. This beautiful little animal abounded, indeed was so abundant as to be quite a pest in destroying wheat and corn. I have seen fields of corn ruined for one hundred yards around the sides adjoining the timber by the squirrels. They were most destructive when the corn was in the roasting ear stage.”
Stanley continued: “The rifle used was of small caliber, shooting a ball the size of buckshot very accurately. It was long and quite heavy, and the boys were brought up to shoot offhand. The practice made good marksmen and many boys could bring down a squirrel at seventy-five or one hundred yards, and from the tallest tree with a bullet through his head. Many times my father and brother would come in with as many squirrels as they could carry, with the feeling of satisfaction that they were protecting the corn and adding an agreeable supply to the home kitchen.”
While Stanley said many settlers were “prejudiced against the squirrels” as a culinary choice, he said they were “clean feeders and its flesh is excellent food.” He noted, “The young ones not quite grown are particularly fine ,and are always recommended by doctors as digestible and agreeable food for convalescents.”
On rabbit hunting
Stanley recalled: “The rabbit of the middle states, larger than the plains rabbit but inferior to the hare, was abundant when I first learned the sport. We hunted it with hounds, but a half-hound was the better rabbit dog, being fleeter. Sometimes the dog fairly ran them down and caught them. We would chop them out of a hollow log or a hollow standing tree where it would take refuge when hard-pushed by the dogs.”
Stanley said, “The rabbit was also considered game and was highly prized for the table. They were never killed in warm weather, but as soon as the frosts set in, the rabbit was fattened, and a rabbit pot pie about Christmastime was a great treat for the children.”
