doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Thim owd fowlers

A picture best viewed by a cracklin' fire, and something in a mug to ward off the cold.
Them were the days chaps!

Brilliant Trevor, you've fashioned a homeplate outta ice old boy!

Hardy fellows, them.

When viewing the old waterfowling pics, one is struck by the rather simple clothing, for what many times looks like downright cold days. The fowlers are just wearing a single-layer jacket over a sweater, light cap, no waders, and often with no gloves.

There are woodcuts of early 19th century gents, preparing to trust themselves to a shell of a punt boat, on rough salt water, who are attired rather nattily, as for an afternoon stroll in the park. A wool Norfolk jacket might be the outer garment, at most.

Later at the end of the century, there are oilcloth coats and sou'westers seen in American photos, but there are still a lot of duckhunters dressed in what appear to be duds more suitable for an early fall upland hunt, than hypothermic environments.

Apparently all that walking about everywhere, in every weather, that the majority of the population at large -- and all the rural folks -- were compelled to do, must have elevated their hardihood to a degree which we've forgotten.

Tho, I have memories of wearing single-layer canvas hunting coats, fannel shirts, WW2 wool pants, and leather boots or leaky canvas waders, I still marvel at the hardihood with which humans have borne cold climates. Sitting in my multiple layers of wool, insulation, wonder fabric, and chest-high 5MM neoprene, and toasty warm in a light sleet storm -- is hardly the equivalant of doing the same thing ALA dressed as the gents in those old pics.

I guess that getting up at 5AM to tend to thirty head of milkers in a January unheated barn, and spending the day pretty much away from indoor heat tended to pump up those old internal furnances. At any rate, the old boys surely showed some panache' in their dress, chilly as it may look, that is hard to equal when the hunter is covered with three inches of synthetic insulation.

On the other hand, I've never felt much for style when crawling over a muddy sand bar, trying to keep some 18" scrub willows between me and a shot. Horizontal & wet hunting is, I guess, a bit in the spirit of yesteryear. A double, a pocket of shells, and a half dozen dekes on running water where cometh fowle -- and I have at least a kinship of spirit to some simpler times.

Ave, olde fellows. May you hunt forever in that pictorial Valhalla.

John, its a wonder any of these old fowlers are still around today. Guns that is - sure those old coots are bones pushing up holly and ivy.
Never an oaken gunroom, but a kitchen door jam were their lot in life.
Gunning for ducks and geese is rough on the body, cold and nasty.
It can be the easy also, a close by pond, slough or lake will do.
Take a retriever, a good sturdy double and a pocket full of shells...and forget the long trips to the frozen tundra and its pheasants.

Lowell, surely their kitchen door jam role was a blessing. It helped keep them dry and still around today!

JC(AL)

A steamy kitchen with a pot of bif stew on the boil, could come in a distant second to the oaken gunroom - I guess?
Think of how many time that poor old thing got knocked around by wife, kids and dogs!
Not to mention the drunken master of the house.

Lowell, suppose you are right. Local country kitchens with wood burning stoves aren't that steamy. Surely different when the weather is below zero.

JC(AL)

I grew up in a kitchen with the guns in the corner by the back door. No one used the "front" rooms except at Christmas or to see who was going up or down the road. The kitchen, never steamy, was the only warm room in the house.

Rifles were stacked on the outside of the corner because it cost cartridges to sight them in. We were more careful with sights than best dishes because when the big one appeared it was needed for the pot. A miss from an errant sight was no joke.

Most gunners in my fishing village kept their guns in the outside porch or shed to ease condensation. For all the salt water they were exposed to, I've never seen rust on barrels inside or out. They were lubricated with SAE30 and 3-in-1 "sewing machine oil."

Rust got into the action, of course, and the annual cleaning there was a sight to see. Off came the shotgun stock and gasoline was poured over the action until the run-off was no longer orange. Then, scoured with steel wool and toothbrush, oiled and made ready for eiders, scoters, oldsquaw and blacks the next year.

My guess, from the looks of the clothing of these gunners, is that they used their heads more than their hands. The inch-thick ice they're examining would be commonplace to most rural North Americans. It's wonderful to have the snap, though, to boot up memories of how it was long ago.

Been there, seen that.
Jas

I copied the photo and enlarged it. Forget about the pocket of shells, that old sxs is percussion.
Steve