By: Dennis

Dennis — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:23:06 +0000

The statement implying “poachers” killed the birds is not entirely accurate and misleading. Commercial hunters providing for a lucrative market did almost strip the birds from the land for the vibrant and profitable millinery trade of the time, a demand driven by the wealthy in the cities to fulfil their fashionable cravings. It took 4 herons to provide a single ounce of plumes, valued at twice that of gold, providing plenty of economic incentive to gun the marshes. The political atmosphere of the day allowed for and even encouraged this wasteful and wanton profession. The sportsman conservationist movement was not to begin to take shape until men like Henry William Herbert, writing as “Frank Forester” founder of Forest and Stream magazine and recognized as the prophet of the American code of the sportsman began to point out these atrocities and thru his writings resist the “Progressive” mind set of the time. The adolescent Theodore Roosevelt was heavily influenced by these articles published in this periodical. Later in life one of Roosevelt’s closest hunting companions was George Bird Grinnell. Grinnell avidly hunted waterfowl and furthered the sportsmen’s movement writing of the “code of the sportsmen” in his book American Duck Shooting first published in 1901 and still in print today. Audubon, in my opinion was not at all an environmentalist as defined today, but a skilled artist with a passion for birds that he loved and pursued, and those combined passions are reflected in his art. Some of Audubon’s last words on his death bed at his Upper Manhattan estate, “Minnie’s Land” referred to hunting the ducks he loved so much on a pond near his home. Though these men may have forgone hunting other game later in life for one reason or another the one fire that burned passionately until their death’s; waiting for the break of a cold winters dawn hoping for ducks to appear in the marsh. There is no irony, all of them were passionate hunters and loved to hunt waterfowl. Sportsmen / Conservationists and especially waterfowl hunters are leaders of the environmental and conservation issues, though some groups would like to claim otherwise. For your own edification you may enjoy researching and concluding for yourself the impact of the sportsmen’s movement and how it worked to stop market hunting, spring shooting, initiate species limits and the whole host of practices that were shone to be imprudent and unsustainable. – Dennis

Comments on: Filmmaker Interview: Lawrence Hott

By: Dennis