Shooting and Hunting during the Depression !

[2ndovc]

Every time I pick up that Old Stevens CrackShot, my Dad likes to
tell me how Grandpa would shoot mice and moles to make gloves
from their skins. Rabbits and woodchucks were a bonus.
If you didn't come home with something to show for the bullet
you fired you slept in the barn.
He always told my Dad and his brothers that they would
never know what it's like to really be hungry.

None of them ever forgot that! Nor Did Grandpa ever give up.
He left Grandma a small fortune that would have lasted three lifetimes.
That's how driven that generation was!
darn how I miss them!

jason

[BobM]

My wife was in high school in the mid 1980s. She said the history teacher gave them an assignment to interview their grandparents about life in the depression. When my wife got home she called her grandmother who asked her if she had ever watched the Waltons. Her grandma, who just left us in the last couple of years, told her it was just like that and hung up on her.

[Catshooter]

OJ,

I'm getting a real kick out of your posts, thanks.

I can tell you though that the reason you can't control the savage beast on your lap is 'cause you're not wearing yer spurs!

Don't know why you didn't think of it. You're welcome.




Cat

[OJ]

OJ,

I'm getting a real kick out of your posts, thanks.

I can tell you though that the reason you can't control the savage beast on your lap is 'cause you're not wearing yer spurs!

Don't know why you didn't think of it. You're welcome.




Cat

Cat - just in time - now she's sweet & docile -



But - on guard - thanks

Incidentally, this being about old times - the picture on the wll behind me - has historical importance -that little girl lining up that pool shot is my wife - at about age five - the man holding his head is her dad - the owner of the pool hall. They lived - upstairs so she can lagally claim to have grown up in a pool hall. That picture was on the front page of the Cripple Creek newspaper in about 1955. No wonder she was a dead-eye shot when I took her to the range to choose her PD gun.

[gamekeeper]

OJ, your posts sure are interesting.

[tman]

My father was the youngest of 4 and fed the family with game while his father and 2 brothers worked. All he had was a .22 springfield singleshot and a wards hercules 12 gauge. Guess that qualified him for the infrantry in ww2. At 91, he can still outshoot me, but i can run faster.

[2X22]

My Granddad and Grandmother were married in 1930 and went through the depression togather, obviously. When I asked them what it was like they both looked at each other and said that they were so poor they never even noticed it.

He owned a Savage 99 .22 High Power until toward the end of the depression and that was his only gun. Then he traded it for a 300 Savage and used that until the early '50's when he swapped for a Model 70 in 300 H&H that he used until he died.

I know they lived on a tiny farm of just a couple acres and provided enough produce from their garden for the entire family along with a beef every year along with chickens and eggs, deer, elk and bear.

2x22

[OJ]

OJ, your posts sure are interesting.

Thanks - that's what I aim for - interesting and never offensive - being 85 now, I sure can talk like lots of old guys but don't want to be boring.

Bear with me once more - this isn't about hunting but it is somewhat historical about days even before the depression.

I may not be older than dirt but, I am older than the Mount Rushmore Memorial - In July 1927, my parents were vacationing in South Dakota Custer State Park and drove by The Game Lodge where President Coolidge was staying - he was there to dedicate the mountain so G Borglum could start carving faces.

This will strain your credibility but, Mrs Grace Coolidge was out on the front lawn visiting with any and all who wanted to stop and visit with her. Dad asked if he could take her picture and she said yes and volunteered to hold their 11 month old boy for that picture - she said she had a son named Jack. Note the total lack of "Secret Service" guards - (Little known fact - Lincoln's last official act before his assassination was to sign the bill creating the "Secret Service" - not to guard presidents but to prevent counterfeiting money in the south and cheating citizens there.)

Imagine such happening today -



My mother never forgave me for not looking at the camera - I was too interested in Mrs Coolidge's Chow Chow dog -

[Rusty]

Congratulations OJ, hope you had a happy birthday.


Maybe all the little fellers that learned to shoot one shot at a time in the 30's made a difference when they were sent overseas in the 40's.

[shooter]

My grandpa was born right at the beginning of the depression. They were pretty much unaffected by it, living on the farm and raising or hunting most of their food. My great grandpa had 2 guns, both of which I have. One was a single shot Winchester .22, and the other a Stevens bolt action 16 gauge. My granddad tells me stories of going squirrel hunting with his dad. He said they had to bring back one squirrel for every shell, and they all had to be shot through the head, as not to spoil the meat.

When I ask him if he wished he still lived like that, he usually tells me that the "good ole days" weren't all that good. There are a lot of things he does miss about those times though.

[DixieBoy]

OJ - Count me as one more who really enjoys your posts. These are great stories you're sharing here. Thanks !

My Dad was born in 1918, on a farm near Gibsonburg, Ohio. The boys all had to do farm work with our Grandpa till they were 21 years old. He always said that this was hard work, but he got to hunt small game and ran trap lines too.

I remember telling him once that I wish us boys could have had a life like that, and Dad looked at me as if I was crazy. Mom and Dad rasied three boys, but we grew up in the suburbs. We had woods to play in, but not like Dad had. His stories of hunting raccoons with his dog Penny, getting skunk sprayed, that kind of stuff, I always loved those stories. I could picture it all, and it seemed like great adventure for a young man.

We lost Dad this past October, so I don't get to hear those great stories anymore. Reading of your adventures has been great, the next best thing to listening to Dad's. Thanks again. - DixieBoy

[geobru]

A good friend of mine told me this story years ago when I asked him how the trigger on his dads model 94 got broken. It was displayed in a prominent place in his living room. I thought maybe it was dropped or something, and was thinking about offering to find a replacement for it, but the story was a lot more interesting than that.

His dad shot every big game animal in the lower 48 except for a grizzly bear with that old 30-30, and was known for his efficiency when it came to putting meat on the table. His family lived in a small valley in the Cascade Mts, and they made their living by picking ferns, gathering cones, splitting cedar, and doing whatever it took to subsist off the land.

At the height of the depression, cash was short, as was food. He got together with several of his neighbors and pooled the money that they had to buy two 30-30 shells. He hiked up onto a nearby mountain and ran into two balcktail bucks. He shot both of them. One was drt and the other was still alive, Without any more ammo, he used the gun as a club and broke the off the spur on the hammer. He used that gun like that for the rest of his life and passed the rifle on to his son.

I then undrestood why my friend never opted to have the trigger replaced.

We do have it good now. When my Grandfather homesteaded in northern Alberta in about 1917, they subsisted on the flour they ground from the wheat they grew. They never shot the moose that were walking through their farm because they didn't have any ammunition for the gun. Those were tough times that caused my Grandmother to shed tears when the subject came up.

[J Miller]

Please understand when I say this, I'm not trying to pick fights from those who have been there and those whose ancestors have been.

But~ I do not understand the almost universal shortage of ammunition reported by many.

Most of those alive in 1920s and 1930s were alive in the late 1800s. Guns were always there as tools for food gathering and self defense, so why no ammo?
In many parts of the country the early 1900s were just as wild as the 1800s. Elmer Keith reported on that in his book "Hell I Was There".

If you can, please explain this to me. As I said, I'm not trying to pick a fight.

Joe

[Malamute]

I can't answer for others, but I would say that most people have never had large amounts of ammo around other than the times when they truly needed their guns for weapons, and even then, I'm surprised that so many people had such little ammo. When looking at contemporay accounts of arms listed in wagon trains or groups coming thru (as per Firearms of the American West, by Garavaglio and Worman), it seemed unusual to have more than about 30-50 rounds per gun, often less, even when venturing into known Indian country in bad times.

As for the depression, people may have had a couple boxes or so around when times were good, but couldnt afford to replace it when gone.

As shooting enthusiasts, we think in terms of larger amounts of ammo, just for fun shooting. Many people that use their guns for hunting often simply don't have much ammo around at any given time, and buy it when they need it.

I knew a lady in Wy a few years ago, she told me once about being in an old cabin in the Mts hunting when a bear tried getting in the cabin, she commented that she had 3 rds for her 30-30 then. I asked her how many she had at the moment I talked to her, and she said about 6 or 8 I think. I gave her a box of shells I loaded. When I asked her how that supply was holding up a couple years later, she said she still had most of them. She typically only shot the gun when she killed something with it, and maybe a couple shots to check her sights or shoot at a coyote.

[Catshooter]

Joe,

You can't judge others by us gun nuts. Most of the hunters I know think that if you have a half a box of ammo at home, why in the world would you buy another? That'd be pretty near 30 rounds fer crying out loud. Seriously. Vast majority of gun owners today (Fudds) still think this way. We're the werid ones.

I worked with one guy who decieded to reload for his '06, his deer gun. He loaded up, beleive it or not, two hundred and twenty rounds! 220! That's the way he said it to me. He then proceeded to hunt from that stockpile for the next twenty years. Still had a bunch left.

America is still an incredibly rich nation, esp when you compare it to others. Most of these guys during the depression had two single shots, a .22 and a shotgun. How many guns do most of us here have? When you can afford a dozen guns, you're very well off in my book.

Plus ammo was expensive in those days. A fine steak dinner could be had for a dollar, dollar and a half. House payments were $15 to $30.


Cat

[66GTO]

Uphill both ways, seems to me in the late sixties I paid about $.50 a box for 22s to shoot in my K22 - Many thousands!

When you make this comparison it makes you realize .22 ammo has come down in price relative to other necessities:
(I'll use the year I graduated from high school, 1966)

Cost of a new Chevrolet Impala then: $3,000
Cost of a new Chevrolet Impala today: $30,000

Cost of a gallon of gasoline then: $.32
Cost of a gallon of gasoline today: $3.60

Cost of a box of 50 .22lr then: $.50
Cost of a box of 50 .22lr today: $2.00 ( or $1.47 at WM for Federal Lightning)

And think back to just 3 years ago, before the run on ammo after Obama, when a box of .22lr was a buck or less. Most of that run up in ammo prices has been in the past 3 years.

I am down to two or three rounds left in my one box stash. Time to go buy another box!

[OJ]

I can resist anything - but temptation - though It's getting harder to find as years go by.

Not all about hunting but, my personal contact with history - my dad was born in Torrington, Wyoming November 27, 1900 - Dad, as such, was the first white child born there - all previous births were native American Indians. Grandpa King was the railroad station agent at the furthest west end of the railroad - and, when another rail segment opened, he moved there. Here he was in early times - he's the well dressed one in coat, vest, white shirt, and tie.



When I point out how tough he was, my wife reminds me Grandma was pretty tough also - delivering a baby while living in boxcars - dad had four older sisters too. I'm sure the delivery lacked any medical supervision.

Now - for the hunting in depression days part - Grandpa King always took me with him to maintain his windmills so I could shoot prairie dogs close to the windmills. Usually, prairie dogs stood by their holes and, when shot, just dropped down the hole. This one day, however, I shot one on the run between holes and he flipped over dead. While I took rabbits home for my dog, I had never been faced with a prairie dog corpse - so I looked at it and, with the wisdom of an 8 year old, decided to take it home.

Now, Grandpa King was meticulous in all things - you could eat off the bed of his pickup - and I didn't want to get blood on that very clean bed - but wait - there was an empty coffee can just asking to be used for a prairie dog body - to keep blood off the pickup bed.

Reality came at the next windmill when he looked at me and said he was thirsty and would I get his drinking can for him from his pickup bed.

The next 15 minutes (seemed at least that long) were the longest in my life - with me answering all questions about "why???" with "I don't know".

Unforgettable hunting incident in depression days.

[Borregos]

Just got round to reading this thread, very interesting reading.
OJ keep on with the history posts, they are great

[geobru]

Please understand when I say this, I'm not trying to pick fights from those who have been there and those whose ancestors have been.

But~ I do not understand the almost universal shortage of ammunition reported by many.

Most of those alive in 1920s and 1930s were alive in the late 1800s. Guns were always there as tools for food gathering and self defense, so why no ammo?
In many parts of the country the early 1900s were just as wild as the 1800s. Elmer Keith reported on that in his book "Hell I Was There".

If you can, please explain this to me. As I said, I'm not trying to pick a fight.

Joe

Joe,

As others have said, we are the wierd ones who have a lot of ammo on hand. When I was growing up, dad had a shotgun, a 30-06, a single shot 22, and when he was in his 40's, he bought a 22 pistol. I remember when I first shot the 22. We started with a 50 round box, and we took home change from that box! He had a box of ammo for each gun, except for the 06 which he had a box of 220's and a box of 180's, both about half full. When we prepped for hunting, we shot 2 to 3 times. If the gun hit where you aimed, sighting was done for the season. The next time you fired the gun, it was at something with the intent to kill it.

As far as the lack of ammo during the depression, my people survived on what they could produce, so there was very little hard currency with which to buy ammunition. Can you imagine today trying to find a place that would be willing to sell you two 30-30 bullets? Those were just different times. It would be wonderful to be able to talk to some of those guys about their reasoning at the time wouldn't it?

[Charles]

In 1960, I bought my first new rifle for $109.00. It was a Winchester 70 Featherweightin .243. A Weaver K4 scope was purchased for $28.00 plus the mounts and rings for a few dollars more. I bought four boxes (20 rounds each) of Winchester 100 grain Power Point ammo with the rifle. I sighted in and hunted with that ammo for almost ten years, killing over 30 deer and 3 antelope. It never took more than one shot per animal and the rest of the rounds were for practice.

I did handload the 75 grain Sierra HP over 4895 in the fired cases for lots of coyotes, jack rabbits, ground squirrels, javalina and other assorted smaller critters.

It wasnt the Depression, but money was tight when I was young and those habits die hard. I go out to the range these days and hear..pop..pop..pop..pop..as folks send huge numbers of rounds down range. I stil can't wrap my head around the shooters today who just seem to spray ammo down range. I can have a great day at the range with 20 rounds.

I still have the rifle, scope, dies and most of the original cases.

Today folks have so much extra money that ammo seems cheap to them. But for most of the history of this country, ammo was expensive and just plinking at stuff was not done. That is why God made 22s.

[tman]

A brick of .22's would have fed a family thru the entire depression. A case of hi brass #6's would have seemed like a treasure box. As tough as times are today, i guess they were harder back then.

[Dave]

I agree about folks not having much ammo during the Depression. In fact from what I understand from the old folks, all gone now, is that prior to WW II everybody had nothing. Take my Grandfather. He was born in 1890. He had a pocket knife. It would never occur to him to buy another one until that one was lost or sharpened away to nothing. All of us have a bucket full of knives. I never saw him fire a shot unless he was killing something. He would have thought having a rack of rifles and shooting a lot was "foolish". He always said "Don't see how much you can do with. See how much you can do without". Some of that was from necessity but some of it was just a way of living. The old timers just didn't have much in the way of material possessions for the most part.

[C. Cash]

Always great to see your posts OJ and great stories here.

My Grandparents were Texas and Oklahoma Farmers who got hit hard along with many in those areas during the Depression. They did the Grapes of Wrath track to Central California around 1936-7 in the interest of feeding their families. They were "functional" people with very little sentimentality in terms of holding on to the old weapons designs. I'm sure they had levers and doubles at some point and I've even heard some stories about them, but the guns that always seemed to be present were a 22 rifle(sometimes a pistol for coons), and a "long tom" single shot shotgun. They were the essentials and not much else was needed. Here are two that survived from my Dad's side of the family, though the Winchester shotgun might be from the 40's.

Another photo of my Great Uncle Hartley and his big brother holding the Stevens 22. He was an avid coonhunter and broke horses all his life as a profession.

[OJ]

Well, I sure appreciate your kind words about my history stories - and don't want to overdo it - but, I do have this one more my reminiscing revived.

Growing up, I had no older brother to guide me but, did have three cousins (actually mother's cousins) who were the epitome of real cowboys - and every so often, I got to spend a couple of weeks with them. They taught me most of what I needed to know about being a cowboy - and being on guard in life also - so to speak.

They would think up all kinds of things to trap me and we kept a running tab - on bets they made with me over those visits - no money changed hands - just a running tab. Rarely, I would beat them at their game - I really won the "snipe hunt" when they found me waiting in the house before they got home.

I went out to help with the spring job of fence fixing (ranches were fenced off in sections). Concerted effort to "wipe out" coyotes only reduced coyote population but did produce an explosive increase in Jack rabbits - any walk of 50 feet or so was bound to jump up at least one.

The bet for that trip was that I couldn't bag one rabbit per day of my two week stay - and they would furnish the rifle and ammo. Now, they knew my only sport was shooting rabbits and was generally considered pretty good at it - so, I knew there had to be a "catch" - but I sure couldn't figure out what it was. I was about $2.25 in the hole and, if I won the bet, would be twice that ahead of them.

First day out after I bagged my third one on the run in less than an hour, the oldest "cousin" (11 years older than I) demanded to know how I did that - if I told them, they would double my winnings.

The question surprised me and I reminded him they'd seen me shoot before and shouldn't be surprised. His reply was that they didn't expect me to do that with a rifle that didn't have any rear sight.

Well, nobody had told me that rifle didn't have a rear sight -