Here is what Waderow said--"In my opinion, good moose hunters are much better hunters then their predecessors due to the skill it takes to locate, and bring in a trophy bull. By trophy I mean 50" class. Anyone can get a 30" bull to come and eat an apple out of their hand (slight exaggeration) but the big guys circle down wind, will sit and listen for an hour before breaking the fringe. Will send the cows out first. They are just plain old cagey. From the pictures floating around from the 60's, the average moose was over 40". Not anymore. Most moose pulled out of the bush are 30" or so...if that.
All this said, I do partially agree that hunters from years past were better then MOST, of hunters today."
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The days of the true meat hunters, the type with families depending on him feeding them, ended with WW2. I have seen kids coming to school with only dry bread in their lunch pails. Then, their Dad got a moose. Now, lunch pails were filled with chunks of moose meat and the kids ate it like hugry dogs.
Not all old timers were good hunters, some just couldn't get an animal, while others were exceptionally good hunters. But, in no way can you compare these meat hunters of old, with modern pleasure hunters, who try and tell us they are hunting for the meat!
Hunting at that time meant starting out in early morning with the rifle and a lunch. If snow was on the ground, walk the area where game might be and hope for a fresh track to get on to. It took great skill to follow game tracks and get teh animal. The animal used every trick in the book and only a very good hunter would be successful. With no snow, hunt the likely areas. The game was very scary at that time, because any animal could get shot any week of the year, and the animals knew it!
My much older brother was an exceptionally good hunter, especially for elk. In every circustance, he knew what the elk would do. In his yuthful exuberance, he shot some huge bulls. Until the family told him to, "for heavens sake, get animals that are good eating." He then became known throughout the area as a hunter who always got the choicest of eating meat. Many Indian hunters could smell game in the bush and my brother also had this ability. I once saw him demonstrate this. I was with him when he stopped and said he could smell elk in the sqampy area ahead of us. We went into the swamp and sure enough, a herd of elk had just moved through it.
He commonly walked seven miles to a lake where a trapper lived in a cabin, stay with the trapper a day or two and hunt. One time he and another brother went there on a warm day, with a few inches of snow on the ground. Over night it turned cold, froze the snow, creating a condition where walking was extremely noisy. The trapper told them to not even bother going out in those conditions. They went, got onto some fresh elk tracks when the hunter brother gave instructions. He told the younger brother to do exalty as he did, while being half a step later in walking. This made the noise sound like a four footed animal instead of two legged. They would walk noisily like this, breaking step, for a mnute or two, then stop dead still for a while. Doing this, they walked right up to the elk herd that was bedded down at mid day, and shot two elk.
Show me a modern hunter capable of thes skills.
