Carved decoys belonging to Art Holland, a well-remembered market hunter from St. Eleanors. Courtesy Holland Family.

by Ian MacQuarrie and Daryl Guignion -#-

Prologue

T ime is of the essence. It is early morning on the shore of Mal-

peque Bay, the first week in October, perhaps this year, perhaps last.

In front of the blind the outlines of plastic decoys are dark spots on the water; they bob gently in the slow swell of the incoming tide. It is a quiet morn-ing, but now some wake-up calls start among the marsh-dwellers. An early rising Yellowlegs tries his harsh whis-tle — loud enough to turn a sheepdog at a mile. Jacksnipe are on the move to their feeding places, banking and twist-ing in flight like tiny fighting planes. The birds seem noisier than usual; they sense something different in their shoreline life. It is a different day. In fact, it is Opening Day of the waterfowl season.

Out on the Bay a few ducks are rau-cously awake, getting ready for their morning rituals. In the blind the hun-ters also prepare. They check watches for legal shooting time; it is illegal to fire prior to precisely one-half hour before sunrise (standard times are printed on their licenses). They pat their pockets to feel the reassurance of the necessary documents. There are many. The hunters carry Firearms Acquisition Certificates; these have allowed them to purchase the shotguns between their knees. The guns must not be larger than ten-gauge, or be cap-able of holding more than two shells in the magazine. They also have Fire-arms Safety Certificates; these are necessary in order to purchase a Pro-

vincial Hunting License. Since they are hunting migratory birds, they must have a Federal Hunting License with its obligatory Duck Stamp. The re-triever crouched at their feet is also properly licensed, although he seems to find the tag on his collar more of a nui-sance than a comfort.

All is in order. Let us leave the hun-ters to their sport, and meet them, at mid-morning back at their car. Per-haps they will think we are Game War-dens (who will be very active today)....

The hunters empty their game pockets into the car trunk. No illegal song-birds, no curlew, no plover. No birds taken for their plumage. Not more than four black ducks, nor one wood duck, in the allowable six. The birds must be transported with one wing attached to allow identification. It is, of course, illegal to sell them.

It was not always like this.

Hunting for Money

A century ago on Malpeque Bay, the shooting season started in spring, when the first birds arrived, and ceased only when the survivors left. There were no licenses, no controls on firearm size or type, no safety courses, no duck stamps, no game wardens. The hunter could use whatever method he desired, including live decoys, to attract the birds, and he could do as he wished with what he shot. He could (and often did) give them away. Or he could sell them. Hunting for money, this latter practice was called.

It was a time when almost all wildlife species were slaughtered at any oppor-tunity. Some animals were feared, or hated as competitors of the immigrant farmer; sheep-killing bears and "wild-cats" were already on the bounty list by 1825. Others were killed for food or fur, as no doubt they always had been. When leisure time became available, hunting as necessity gave way to hunt-ing for sport, a fine distinction of motive which no doubt eluded the victims. Finally, a few people made some or all of their living by hunting for the market.

On a wider scale the North American slaughter was enormous. Millions of bison (or at least parts of them) were removed from the plains. Billions of passenger pigeons ended up on the table or were used for hog food.* Walrus, seal, beaver, and others: all had their roles to play, briefly or for centuries. All things for Man's use, in one way or another.

Animal parts for decoration also had their place. Many a Victorian parlour had its display of stuffed songbirds, perhaps overseen by a gloomy moose-head on the wall. The trade in feathers for decoration of the human female was also considerable. Herons, ibises, egrets, gulls, and terns suffered greatly all along the Atlantic coast. This slaughter in particular was a strong

* For more about the passenger pigeon's Island connections, see Geoff Hogan's "An Infinite Number of 'Wood-Pigeons'," The Island Maga-zine, 16 (Fall-Winter, 1984).

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Judge Peters's "goose-boat" in 1860, probably photographed by Henry CundalL

spur towards the formation of the first Audobon Society in 1886.

Up and down the coast, waterfowl were also being taken by any means, in staggering numbers. Birds were hunted at night, at any time of year that they were available, with boats, rafts, or sinkboxes. Shallows were baited, and live decoys used to call in their cousins. Swivel guns were mounted in boats, or the old four gauge muzzle-loaders were lashed to frames. Their effect was dev-

astating. In Long Island Sound, one gunner noted that 127 birds were bagged with a single shot from one of these cannons. Others wrote of bring-ing birds home by the wagon-load, the cart-load, even the train-load. The market was large, and many people were hunting for money.

On the Island there was a local mar-ket, and, of course, export to Boston was also important. Wild game com-manded a premium over domestic fowl.

In Charlottetown in 1861, partridge were selling for 16 cents each, or twice the price of a pound of beef. Wild geese were worth up to a dollar, again about double the price of their domesticated counterparts. While prices must have fluctuated depending on supply, sever-al sources report that brant shipped to Boston brought the gunner from 50 cents to a dollar each.

The hunting techniques used depend-ed on season, species sought, and to some extent, on the area. In spring, on the south shore of the Island, hunters would sometimes use paddle-propelled "goose-boats" (sometimes called "sneak boats"). A hunter could lie in the bot-tom of one of these and, by turning cranks connected to the paddles, sneak into the middle of a flock of geese. The boats were even painted to resemble a floating ice-cake. Along the north shore, in Malpeque Bay and around Hog Is-land, sinkboxes were popular. A hun-ter could have several of these dug into a bar at different tide-levels, moving from one to another as the tide rose and fell.

An interesting aspect of the hunt involved the number and type of decoys used. While a gunner might use a few live decoys, large sets of hand-made wooden blocks often were used. These might have been made by the gunner

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Fatal Attractions. Although wildfowl would set even to clumped seaweed, skilled decoy-makers raised their craft to the status of folk art. These examples are from the permanent collection of the Prince Edward Island Museum & Heritage Foundation. Clockwise from left to right: canvas Canada goose on wire frame, wood and wire goose without canvas, black duck, plover, wooden Canada goose.

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himself, or by a local expert. (Some still survive, and are much sought after by collectors.) Geese, ducks, brant, curlew, and other species were made in differ-ent styles: as floaters or shore-sets, for field or ice.

Some of our older hunters recall the market-hunting, pre-bag limit days. Malpeque Bay was a favourite area, and the spring brant shooting, in par-ticular, seems to linger in their minds. "There were oceans of brant; I have seen five thousand in a flock," recalls Erskine MacNutt, who hunted the Hog Island bar. "We would hunt before before going to school...in a good morn-ing we would have at least 40 brant."

Brant would return to the Island each spring, staying for perhaps two months as a migration stop-over, and fattening on the eel-grass growing in the shallows. Good hunters would let them alone until they put on some weight, then the birds were shot by the thousands, for sale or local use. Island-ers such as Henry Leslie of Kensing-ton, Art Holland of St. Eleanors, and Kier Ramsay of Hamilton were involved in this, and other aspects of market hunting. The birds were packed in ice, either dressed or with feathers still on, and shipped to Boston. Sinkboxes from the Basin Head Fisheries Museum.

Conservation and Regulation Market hunting as a legal occupation began to die in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Reaction was building against the slaughter as species that had once darkened the sky became scarce or locally extinct. The conserva-tion movement was gathering steam, and receiving much support from sport hunters (who also shot huge numbers of birds), worried about the future of

their pastime. The long, slow change, from looking at waterfowl as a busi-ness to thinking of them as an interest-ing part of the environment in need of protection, was underway. All along the eastern seaboard, state after state and province after province began en-acting protective legislation. Some-times they even attempted to enforce it.

Waterfowl s laughter gradual ly became waterfowl management. The killing continued, but in quite different

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"Goose-" or "sneak-" boats were quiet but rather unwieldy vessels. Unless a peep-hole was built in, navigation was largely by ear.

ways and with many restrictions. This required the evolution of new attitudes in people; it also entailed the some-times painful process of developing and enforcing legislation. With respect to the migratory species, an additional problem existed. Since these far-ranging birds did not recognize human jurisdic-tions, their conservation entailed co-operation from far north to deep south. National and international agreements were necessary to deal with a resource that was jealously claimed by many provinces and states.

In the United States, the landmark Lacey Act was passed by Congress in 1900. This bill tried to eliminate the destruction of birds as a business, either for food or feathers. It enabled the individual states to control the trans-shipment of birds, and it brought the "Feds", with their powerful legal machinery, into the battle.

Human nature being what it is, some people put a good deal of effort into working out ways to circumvent the law. Boxes of birds were labelled "but-ter" or "eggs", with a layer or two of the farm product on top of the illegal game. The same techniques would be used a bit later to move alcohol during Prohi-bition days.

Prince Edward Island had moved with many other jurisdictions in estab-lishing closed seasons and controls on night hunting and game export. As usual, the problem was enforcement.

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Famous gunner, Art Holland of St. Eleanors, shown here in later life.

In 1906, a new Game Act was passed which included protection for "useful" birds (for example, insect-eaters). It also established the members of the newly-formed Fish and Game Protec-tion Association (sport hunters and fishermen) as Fish and Game Wardens. Laws were still broken, but now there was a legally-vested interest group in the province which could generate pres-sure for better wildlife management.

By 1912, the regulations of the Game Act had a ring familiar to today's hun-ter. Take, for instance, the seasons:

Partridge — Oct. 15 to Nov. 15, every second year

Ducks — Aug. 20 to Dec. 31 Brant — April 20 to Dec. 31 Curlew & Plover — Aug. 1 to Dec. 31

The open seasons were long, but at least there were closed seasons. Spring shooting was restricted to brant, curlew and plover were still legal species for the gunner, and there were no bag

limits. However, the killing of non-game birds—with a few exceptions, such as hawks and crows—was prohi-bited. Night hunting and the use of swivel, automatic, or pump guns was also forbidden.

Already, in the early regulations, the Island was showing a willingness to discriminate against anyone "from away". Non-residents required a $15 hunting license; sons and brothers of residents were charged $2.50; Island-ers were license-free.

Enforcement of the laws was spotty, if attempted at all. Old-time hunters recall the days before World War I as still being rather wide-open. Ralph Ramsay of Malpeque began hunting in the first decade of this century. "There were no seasons," he recalls, "no bag limits; people shot as much as they wanted...and they were crack shots." At any rate, the export of geese and brant was still legal, so hunting for money continued.

Pride mingled with anger in a Fish and Game Protection Association report in 1912: "Partridge have increased in numbers greatly since the Association began to protect them...most are shot by parties who devoted their whole time to scouring the covers to procure the birds in order to sell them." And a little later, "Reports reach us that game was frequently shipped, packed in bar-rels or otherwise disguised, from Summerside, but owing to lack of funds...we were unable to prevent this export of game...."

The federal governments in both Canada and the United States finally moved, by treaty, to control the hunt-ing of migratory birds. The Migratory Birds Treaty was signed in 1917 be-tween Canada and the United States, and enabling legislation was passed in the following year. Spring shooting was banned, the lengths of open sea-sons were limited, and of greatest importance to market hunt ing, it became illegal to sell migratory birds.

Again, enforcement was a problem. There are reports of spring brant shoot-ing continuing into the 1920s on the Island. However, the legislation was tested in the Supreme Court of Prince Edward Island (King v. Clark, 1920) and upheld. Between the passage of the new laws, increasingly stringent en-forcement, and the disastrous die-off of eel-grass (which drastically lowered the brant population), spring shooting passed into history.

Epilogue Hunting for money, in the direct sense, was over. Some of the market hunters became guides for wealthy "sports" who came to the Island for fishing and

hunting—still excellent by most stan-dards. Others became sport hunters. It was a relatively easy transition; the line between sport and market hunting was often blurred in any case.

While techniques, restrictions, and bag limits have all changed, geese and ducks still set to decoys each autumn. And the hunters still shoot them. Though the profit is gone, the thrill remains.

Sources It is fortunate that there are still local residents who remember the last of the market hunting days. It was a pleasure to talk to Erskine MacNutt about Mal-peque Bay shooting. Stan Vass and Allison Owen very kindly arranged this meeting, and contributed com-ments of their own on the subject. Ralph Ramsay of Malpeque, the well-known decoy maker and hunter, also spoke vividly about the old days, of market gunners and American "sports". It was from Mr. Ramsay that we first heard the expression "hunting for money".

Albert M. Day's North American Waterfowl (Harrisburg, Penn.: Stack-pole Co., 1949) provides a good sum-mary of the control of market gunning in the United States. Decoys of Mari-time Canada, (Exton, Penn.: Schiffer Publishing, 1983), by Dale and Gary Guyette, includes sections of Island market hunting, with short comments on some of the people involved. Joel Barber's Wild Fowl Decoys (New York: Dover Publishing, 1934, 1954), while dealing primarily with New England, has comments on Maritime gunning, and is particularly valuable for decoy illustrations.

Closer to home, C. Birch Bagster's Progress and Prospects of Prince Ed-ward Island (Charlottetown, 1861) has an interesting list of prices for wild game and domestic fare. Reports of the Prince Edward Island Fish and Game Protective Association are included in the Reports of the Commissioner of Agriculture (printed in the Journals of the Legislative Assembly) for a number of years.

Lastly, we thank all those kind peo-ple who had comments, criticisms, and words of advice on hunting in the early days, M I

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