history of calling

adi

adi

New member
i looked around and i couldnt find to much about calling prior 1940 , i was wonder if you guys have any knowledge of "ancient' calling , like if the natives here did or they were just trapping and stuff like that .

every time i watch a cowboy movie i see some excellent calling spots and i was wonder if in those times they were doing any calling?
 
I have wondered that too on the old westerns. I think there are more coyotes now than in the past but what do I know! I agree though, I am interested in the history of our sport and I love the old photos!
 
I can't think of anyone wanting to eat coyotes, so calling back then would be just for the hides, IMO. I would guess more effort was used for food, like deer, bear, buffalo, etc..

Again, just guessing about the Indians.
 
The earliest published book that I'm aware of is Ray Alcorn's book, which has been reprinted. He is the father of our sport. Henry Davis' book The Southern Sportsman also mentions a little about calling "wildcats" and foxes.

There's also Bert Popowski's books "Calling all Varmints" and "The Varmint Hunter's Bible". Both are excellent.
 
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Just an obsevation. In the past coyotes were killed for furs and to protect stock. Almost everyone that needed to remove predators used a trap or shot them on sight.

Sport hunting meant birds or big game.

Roads weren't very good, cars wern't as reliable and they wasn't as much free time as we have now or the expendable income.

Sport hunting and calling didn't really start to get popular until the early 1960's and even then callers were few and far between. And info on products and hunting stradigies were limited to the Herters catalog and pockets of local activity. Mainly Texas and California as they had large populations of coyotes with little fur value. States like Mn, WI, IA, MI had virtually no coyotes, Fox were run with hounds and trapped.
 
It's not much of an "official historical record", but my great-granddad was born in 1917, and used to tell us that the only time they would shoot coyotes was if they caught one in the act (tearing down calves). In general, HIS dad considered it a waste of ammunition to shoot at coyotes, so he had to be dang sure he wasn't going to miss. He has passed on now, otherwise I would have asked him when he started actively calling coyotes, but my guess would have been sometime after the war (WW2), by then he was calling with my grand-dad and great uncles.

He said all he ever used when he was younger was his voice to howl them in. He sure got a kick out of our e-callers and decoy set ups!

I don't know that they ever went out calling for sport until the '60s? My family has had hounds since the late '50s best we can tell, and before that, predation control/livestock protection was the only reason they really hunted (or rather shot at them when they saw them) coyotes at all.

Supposedly fox hunting on horseback over hounds in the US dates back to the 1650's, and in Europe back to the 1530's. I would venture this type of hunting, was a pale 2nd place to trapping, even back then, and that calling wasn't likely even heard of yet. Wolf hunting supposedly dates back as early as 46A.D., but Wikipedia doesn't hint as to how they were hunted. My guess would be with spears and clubs, haha!
 
Years ago I read that the Burnham Bros were riding in a buggy with a squeeky axle and coyotes came up to them. They then developed a call to sound like their squeeky axle. And the rest is history.
 
Your post made me dig out a couple of old time pics. Hopefully you all will enjoy these! These aren't pictures associated with calling but I still think they're pretty neat. First one here is a picture on a post card that my Great Granfather's brother sent him. Postmarked March, 1911, apparently my Great-Grandfather's brother Herman moved out to around Bartley, Nebraska for a short period of time when he was a young man before moving on to Colorado and becoming an early Rocky Mountain Parks Highway Patrolman. Photo is postmarked Bartley, Nebraska which is out near McCook, Ne where present day Hwy 34 runs through now. This was what he wrote his brother on the back:

"Well kid, how are you? This is a picture of an old fashion wolf hunt. We got one and about a thousand."

-- I'm not sure what that last sentence means? --

I see only one maybe three wolves or coyotes in the picture for sure. One to the extreme left side and another one about an inch or two from the left side of the picture. Not sure if these were coyotes and they just referred to them as "wolf" back then or if they were really hunting wolves? I would assume they were hunting wolves since there are so many guys and only one animal or two in the picture? Maybe they didn't include the animals they killed in the picture? The only two animals I think I can see in the picture appears to the size of a coyote or young wolf?

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Picture two had no writing on the card, but from what I can remember my Grandfather telling me about it, it was picture of an old fashioned coyote hunt around here. I'm sure they surrounded sections in circle hunts? Near the top of the back row in the picture, is two X's above the heads of two men. My Great Grandfather and one of his brothers. Not sure which brother it was? This picture would date back to around the time between 1910 - 1925 roughly?

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The Father of the men in these pictures (my Great-Great-Grandfather) was a government wolf hunter and trapper back after he got out of the Civil War in the 1870's out west for a time when he was young, before he moved back here to Iowa and settled down with family. The story as I've been told is that while he was doing this job, he and a hunting partner got into a shooting scrape with indians and he was shot in the encounter. Maybe that's why I like to hunt these coyotes so much? It's in my DNA apparently?

So any information on coyote or wolf populations around the turn of the century in Nebraska, or Western Iowa would be beneficial. Were coyotes really rare then for these areas? Or, for the first picture, were they really wolf hunts or did they just refer to them as wolf hunts even though they were coyotes? Also, I assume these were hunts by either horse or using a circle hunt method, surrounding pieces of ground? I doubt automobile was used but it could have been? Any info on these old fashioned type of hunts would be appreciated. Thanks!

 
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Here's a cool story from back in 1952 from here locally over in Burkes Garden which is about 30 minutes from where I live. It was the first coyote ever known to be around here and was killing sheep. Noone could kill it so they hired hunters from all the way from Arizona to come in and kill it. It's a pretty cool story worth reading...here it is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varmint_of_Burke's_Garden

 
Cool pics guys!

That story above about Burkes Garden is a good read. Reminds me a little of that movie 'The Ghost and the Darkness'.
 

I love those old photos of days gone by.

The Indians used wing-bone turkey calls. A guy I know makes them and gave me one. It's
amazing how much it sounds like a turkey. I'm equally amazed that someone (Indians)
found the proper sound, and by using two hollow turkey wing bones. It required two pieces
of bone, glued together, so it took some work and no doubt trial and error to develop the call.
It would be interesting to know a date when this call first came to be.

WingBoneTurkeyCall.jpg





My first calling begain way back in the early 60s. My Mother purchased a P.S. Olt Crow Call
for me. A few years later, my parents gave me a Burnham Brothers electronic game call for
Christmas, a record player call that was about as heavy as an anvil, made of metal. It was
loud and worked. I put a lot of crows on the ground with that call.

BurnhamBrosCall.jpg




To throw in a bit of history about Burke's Garden, it'a an amazing place, extremely beautiful,
a deep valley surrounded by mountains all around in a bowl-like shape. I can just imagine how
wild it was many years ago.

One interesting note about the place, George Vanderbilt in the late 1800's, sent out scouts
to cover America and find a perfect place to live and where he would build his mansion.
Before settling in Asheville, NC, (Biltmore House) Vanderbilt's scouts chose Burke's Garden
as one potential place. To my undertanding, they could not secure the land there, so settled in Asheville.

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Love the history stuff. My dad had a wingbone call he made. Not an easy call to use, but did sound realistic. They wasted nothing in those days. David, I remember blowing on a green and black P.S Olt predator call when I was a kid. It mostly annoyed mom and mysteriously dissapeared
sneaky2.gif
. It was some sort of rabbit distress if I remember right, which I thought was odd in later years since my dad never predator hunted.
 

Originally Posted By: cawilson826mm how bout a video of the turkey bone call in use? Very cool piece


I'm not that good with the call - yet! I'm still trying. It takes a bit of practice with it. The guy who have it to me really makes it yelp. It's an amazing call in it's simple design, and even more amazing that someone could find something as unusual as that, that would work.

If I can get it to talking just right, maybe I can post a video. I'll see.

Corey, I would love to have that old crow call and should never have let go of it. I was just a kid and had used it for some time, and a local guy persuaded me to sell it to him, so I did. Back then they were common and I didn't think twice about the nostalga end of it. I would have it encased in a nice display if I still had it. The same for the Burnham Brothers call, it went to pieces over the years - the battery part and got to where the turn table would work, so it went to the garbage heap. I would love to have it back, even if it didn't work. Again, stupidity on my part.


 


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