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Health & Fitness

The Bad Old Days (Part 2) - Did sportsmen really have it better back in the day?

Did sportsman 50-100 years ago have it better than we do?

We continue the discussion from of "The Bad Old Days". 

Did sportsmen back in the day really have it better than we did?

I think it is easy to say from a technology standpoint the answer is no, although I know a few old timers who wouldn’t trade an Ithica Model 37 for a Benelli Vinci to save their lives. 

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But what about from an abundance of game, property and overall regulations?  For this I think land was certainly much more available.  

In the 20’s -40’s you could hunt thousands of acres of state property. Land was more available -- even private land, you could go up to someone’s property and knock on the door to talk to them and ask for permission to hunt.

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Today people don’t have the mutual love and respect for each other, and a 6’3” man asking to hunt on someone else’s property can be a scary prospect for many. 

Game herds, however, is another story. Light regulations were cropping up in the 1920’s but were not based on deer management science. Michigan was one of the pioneer states to begin executing deer management principles and in the early part of the 20th Century, herds were estimated at around 45,000 deer in the state. Today, advanced management plans, firm regulations and enforcement keep the deer population in Michigan at 1 million to 1.3 million deer.  

This same logic applies to all game animals and fish. Regulations in the U.S. and states abroad help keep the land clean, waters clear and fisheries thriving. Many of these did not exist back in the day.

I believe there is a very strong case for over-regulation of people and industry, but zero regulation led to poor environmental conditions for wildlife and conservation of land.  

In this I give the modern sportsman an edge, the abundance of wildlife and clean environmental conditions give us safe access to wildlife like never before even if hunting land is less available. 

Were they truly better than their modern day counterparts?

Simple answer to this question is YES!  Being a sportsman, one thing you learn quickly is that to be good, you need time in the field. Something that average modern sportsman are not blessed with.

Our busy lifestyles and on-the-go jobs and culture do not often afford us the time we want for getting away from it all. Sportsmen of yesterday had to work hard for game, this meant being skilled.   

Today the hunting industry is a booming market full of top technology that makes up for this lack of time in the field and skill. It is designed to make it easier to pick it up and be somewhat successful early on. We have all heard of the first-time hunter who bags a 10 point.   

The increase in technology diminishes the skills that our fathers and grandfathers had. Those skills were learned after hundreds of hours in the field. Trial and error from failure after failure. Some learned how to be good because they had to, not because they wanted to. Young men of their generation learned that if they wanted to spend time with their father, they needed to learn to hunt or fish.  

Sportsmen of the early 20th Century were die hards, and didn’t pick it up on a whim, or decide one day to get into it after reading an article on hunting. Don’t get me wrong, I love teaching others about our great American Heritage, and the fact that someone can go out and hunt tomorrow and have a good chance at success is what is driving the success of our sport, but the skill of hunting is being diluted.   

I do not possess a tenth of the skill that my grandfather did. I’m not as patient, I don’t blend my awareness with the wilderness around me as easily and I don’t have the field experience; but one day I hope to have enough to pass to my sons and they can learn and build the skills to pass to their sons. 

After all this writing, it seems pretty even, sportsmen of yesterday were more skilled, had better access to land and were regulated less, but they had less wildlife to chase, harder technology to master and hunted environmentally less friendly grounds.

As much as I say I’d love to live in the “bad old days,” I like it just fine with our current conservation efforts and hunting paradises we build for ourselves. Now I just need to find more land to hunt.  

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