By Joe Mosby

Note: Speculation is frequent in the following remarks, but they are about deer hunting – a pastime speculative in its very nature.

In Arkansas these days, we do not hunt deer like the generations before us. We have so much better equipment now, from guns and ammunition to clothing and snacks.

But are we better deer hunters? How would one of us in camo clothing, carrying a pocket full of assorted chemicals and lugging a semi-automatic scoped .300 Magnum rifle, compare to the 1850 hunter with his everyday work clothes and maybe an apple in a pocket and a single-shot percussion-cap muzzle-loading rifle?

For starters, the 2009 hunter is out there for sport, recreation and enjoyment, although he or she probably will make use of the meat if a deer is killed.

The 1850 person was in the woods for one reason. Deer supplied meat for the table.

Two aspects of deer hunting have changed immensely in this century-and-a-half we’re looking at.

The 1850 hunter worked on the ground. About 80 percent of today’s hunters work from an elevated stand.

The 1850 hunter knew the woods well, was in them often and moved through them silently and easily.

The 2000 hunter may spend a half-dozen days a year in the woods, and to move through them, he or she calls on a noisy all-terrain vehicle. If today’s hunter walks in the woods, the process is loud – crunch, snap, pop, swish, crackle.

This typical Arkansas deer hunter of 1850 got close to deer to shoot one. Practically all the hunting was in forests because Arkansas then was practically all forests. The hunter didn’t and couldn’t shoot across a crop field.

The 1850 hunter went to where the deer were. The 2009 hunter waits for deer to come to him or her.

Sneak up on a deer on the ground? Today’s hunter would snort at the suggestion. Can’t do it? The old hunters did. Today’s hunter gets above the ground in a fixed stand, hopefully erected near a travel route for deer. The stand is often on the edge of an opening or the edge of a field.

Shooting for the 1850 hunter was close to level. Shooting for today’s hunter is usually at a downward angle. Most anyone with firearm experience will agree that it’s more difficult to shoot upward or downward as compared to shooting in a level plane.

A muzzle-loading rifle was, and is, a close-range weapon, with “close” meaning under 100 yards.

In the deer hunt of old, shots tended to be under 50 yards. The 1850 hunter had one shot and was careful to make it count.

The bullet was a round ball, heavy compared to today’s cone-shaped bullets, but this round ball had quite a bit of knockdown power at close range.

The muzzle-loader had open sights, usually the buckhorn or V notch type.

Compared to today’s breech-loading rifles, the muzzle-loader was heavy on the front end, and this can be a help to a shooter with experience, although it seems awkward at first to a person accustomed to modern rifles.

Today’s rifles with telescopic sights can be much-more accurate than the old black-powder guns.

From a rest, like a bar on a tree stand, the shooter can pick a small spot in a vital area on a deer standing still and hit it — again, with experience.

Should the deer be running or even walking, then the odds drop sharply away from the shooter’s favor. A moving deer for the oldtimer meant finding it with both eyes open then closing one to look through the open sights.

The 1850 hunter may have used a rifle with two triggers. These were the more-costly rifles, and they were highly prized by their owners.

When a deer was in the sights, the hammer or the rifle was cocked, then the front trigger pulled or “set.” This made the rifle ready for a light touch on the rear trigger to fire the rifle. The term “hair trigger” came from this source.

Today’s rifles, nearly all of them, have single triggers requiring a definite squeeze to fire the cartridge.

Probably, upwards of 95 percent of today’s hunters use rifles or shotguns with multiple-shot capacity for deer hunting. It’s not uncommon to hear of someone “emptying the clip” at a deer, meaning four or five shots in rapid succession.

Wouldn’t the 1850 hunter be amazed at this act?
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Joe Mosby is the retired news editor of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and Arkansas’ best known outdoor writer. His work is distributed by the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. He can be reached by e-mail at jhmosby@cyberback.com.