Post by spence on Jun 1, 2020 20:40:27 GMT -7
My last outing was in mid January, and I was really in need of another, so I worked up a short squirrel hunt today. I frequently don't hunt our spring season because my hunting spot seems to have very few of the critters in the spring. Hunting the place at all parts of the year, I'm accustomed to having them around at other seasons, but I'm never surprised to be skunked in the spring. Hope springs eternal, as they say, so I hit them hard, spent almost four hours trying to find one to sneak up on. Skunked again.
It's always a great pleasure to spend time in the woods decked out in my colonial kit and with a flintlock on my arm. Today it was the double 20 gauge, still loaded from the last outing. Now it is still loaded for the next one.
I try to find some historical bit to concentrate on each time I go out, especially with the food I decide on and fix. I decided to take a cold lunch, today, but there was still a historical connection. Rev. Joseph Doddridge, in Notes on the Early Settlement and Indian Wars of Western Virginia and Pennsylvania, described what the early settlers did in order to get the supplies they couldn't come with up with on their own. They collected furs and sent them by way of a caravan of pack horses back east to trade. He said, "..large wallets well filled with bread, jerk, boiled ham and cheese furnished provisions for the drivers." Sounded like a good lunch, to me, so I made that my menu. I had some white farmers cheese and ham. I've been baking quite a bit of sourdough bread using a liquid yeast from an 1806 recipe by Maria Rundell, so I made one for today. Skipped the jerky, had none on hand. I did have a "large wallet", though. And my relatively new bottle gourd canteen with some good spring water.
Those old pack train drivers ate well, and I enjoyed sharing their lunch.
I spent a fair while thinking of all the good times I've had out here in the woods over the past thirty years, alone except for the memory of the old ones, and as usual, I felt all the better for it.
Spence
It's always a great pleasure to spend time in the woods decked out in my colonial kit and with a flintlock on my arm. Today it was the double 20 gauge, still loaded from the last outing. Now it is still loaded for the next one.
I try to find some historical bit to concentrate on each time I go out, especially with the food I decide on and fix. I decided to take a cold lunch, today, but there was still a historical connection. Rev. Joseph Doddridge, in Notes on the Early Settlement and Indian Wars of Western Virginia and Pennsylvania, described what the early settlers did in order to get the supplies they couldn't come with up with on their own. They collected furs and sent them by way of a caravan of pack horses back east to trade. He said, "..large wallets well filled with bread, jerk, boiled ham and cheese furnished provisions for the drivers." Sounded like a good lunch, to me, so I made that my menu. I had some white farmers cheese and ham. I've been baking quite a bit of sourdough bread using a liquid yeast from an 1806 recipe by Maria Rundell, so I made one for today. Skipped the jerky, had none on hand. I did have a "large wallet", though. And my relatively new bottle gourd canteen with some good spring water.
Those old pack train drivers ate well, and I enjoyed sharing their lunch.
I spent a fair while thinking of all the good times I've had out here in the woods over the past thirty years, alone except for the memory of the old ones, and as usual, I felt all the better for it.
Spence
