Throughout American history, squirrel hunting played a significant role, with many early settlers and beyond viewing squirrels as a food source and even paying bounties for their removal due to their abundance. While squirrel populations have decreased since the 18th & 19th century, they remain a popular small game species, and squirrel hunting continues to be a popular pastime.
DID YOU KNOW? Gray squirrels were once so numerous that they were considered a nuisance by pioneering farmers, leading to the payment of bounties for their removal

Those old pictures are fun to look at. Thanks Bruce

Man, could image hanging around an open fire telling stories with these guys? Very cool !

East Texas squirrel hunters apparently.

No fat guys there......

I suspect most of the decline in squirrel numbers, compared to the Colonial Era, is related to the loss of the American Chestnut tree. That loss is what made Passenger Pigeons go extinct.

Keith

That’s a bit hard to believe.
Squirrels are super adaptive rodents. They live in such varied habitat that its really incredible.
There is plenty of squirrels today. I can’t imagine them being as thick as they claimed they were.

and every one of them with a shotgun.

trapping them for the bounty would have been productive and tasty

The Chestnut tree did not grow everywhere in the eastern US. WI never had any yet we had passenger pigeons and squirrels.
No, the reason the passenger pigeon went extinct is two fold, loss of habitat and over harvest.
Ultimately when they were killed faster than they reproduced the writing was on the wall.

I am sure the density of squirrels/acre remains the same in many places. Now days its 40 acres of woods in 1000 acres of farm field vs 1000 acres of woods with 40 acres of crop land in the past.
The same amount of squirrels/acre but thousands of acres less of woods=much less squirrels.

I agree. Habitat loss yes, but where American chestnuts grew they were everywhere. Can't imagine how that loss of a valuable food source effected every animal and humans alike

Really good post And the pictures are priceless

I recall reading once that, in colonial times, a squirrel could travel from the east coast to the Mississippi River and never touch the ground. I think it was more of a comment about the quantity of trees rather then the number of squirrels.

You can't seriously believe that losing close to 4 billion chestnut trees, producing hundreds of pounds of nuts each, has no effect on the populations of the squirrels and passenger pigeons eating them? American chestnut trees were around 25% of all trees and most of the mast producing trees in the US.

Keith

No shortage of the tree rats here these days. Can count over a hundred any given daily 1 mile metro dog walk. Often one road killed each block.

Lots of cool old side by sides in those pics. Safe gun handling wasn't much of a priority either.

My papaw told me when he was i believe 17yrs old he bought a remington single shot 22 rifle and the first year he had it he killed 300 squirrels with it. He said our country had alot of big timber in it and the woods were full of den trees and squirrels where thick. He told me of a time when he was hunting up the holler from his home place and he was sitting on a log and he heard alot of noise in the leaves and looked up the creek and squirrels were coming down the holler on the ground. He said looked to be a hundred or more like it was some kind of migration or something and said it kind of made him uneasy because he never had seen anything like it before or since. I have no doubt he was telling the truth because i never knew the man to tell a lie.

How do you know?

Shotgunners lol
Inside joke