bear fight

Gaston Phoebus, Le Livre de la chasse, Paris ca. 1407

NY, Morgan, MS M. 1044, fol. 18v

A postcard featuring a hunter from Madagascar, circa 1904.

Hunting Knives Set

The set is composed of a machete with scabbard and three pieces of cutlery.

Hunting Sword

This richly decorated sword was made for one of the counts Hoyos-Sprinzenstein. His enameled coat of arms surmounts the lion-headed pommel. The scabbard locket is inscribed “Pioté et Köchert," the leading Viennese jewelers of the nineteenth century.

Hunting Hanger with Flintlock Pistol

The sword has a straight, single and false-edged blade with a fuller. It is engraved with a heart, a cross and floral motifs and marked with "vigilandum". On one side of the blade there’s a flintlock pistol with a two-stage, bronze barrel. The grip is made of wood and covered with mother-of-pearl and engraved with a tortoise. It has brass mounts featuring embossed hunting motifs.

Punt guns were used for duck hunting at the turn of the last century. A single shot could kill up to 50 waterfowl resting on the surface of a pond or lake. ca 1900. 

The Howdah Pistol,

When the British ruled the world a new hunting sport developed in which the hunter would hunt from the back of an elephant, especially in India and Africa.  The intrepid hunter rode in a large saddle called a “howdah”.  However, new dangers came with the new sport, as dangerous animals such as lions and tigers would attack by surprise, and the hunters rifle was useless in the close quarters of a thick, dense jungle.  Thus a large caliber sidearm was needed.

At first hunters would just saw off regular double barrel rifles, typically in .577 Snider or .577/450 Martini Henry.  Eventually companies began making actual Howdah pistols to be sold on the market.  Big game hunters loved them because of their easy to carry size yet incredible power.  Eventually the Howdaw pistol would lose popularity to revolvers such as the enfield and webley.

French Hunting Sword

An elaborate example with brass mounts in rococo style worked in relief, the pommel having a fully formed stag hoof, while the guard is heavily scrolled. The broad, lightly-curved blade bifullered with substantial back edge and etched at the forte on either side with panels containing vegetation motifs surrounding hunting dogs. Features a leather scabbard with brass mounts en suite with the hilt.

Rare English Hunting Sword

Coming with curved blade double-edged for the last third and serrated along the remainder of the back-edge, this sword is stamped with an inscription ‘Fide Sed Cuide’ within two long fullers of differing length on each face (worn), and stamped with a King’s head mark at the forte. 

It has a chiselled steel hilt, comprising a pair of flat vertically-recurved quillons with grotesque mask terminals, slightly up-turned petal-shaped shell-guards of differing size, pierced with scrolling leafy tendrils around a central rondel. Which itself it’s filled with a profile bust (areas of pitting), brass pommel chiselled as a dog’s head, decorated with scrolling monster head tendrils and a green man mask.

ca. 1860-80’s, [tintype portrait of a hunter and his dog, both sitting with a taxidermied bear looming menacingly behind], *Related: 1, 2

via Heritage Auctions

Ivory panel fragment of a hunting scene.

Iran, Iron Age III, ca. 8th-7th century B.C. 

(Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

ca. 1855-95, [carte de visite portrait of a small child with a shot gun and a dead rabbit], George W. Valleau

via the Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Carl Mautz Collection

The first evidence of Falconry in Europe comes from the sixth century when the Germanic tribes took up the sport, and by 875 AD it was practised widely through western Europe and Britain.

The period 500 AD until 1600 AD saw the peak of interest in falconry. It became a highly regulated, revered, and popular art among all the social classes in Europe.

Falconry: Book of Frederick II, 1240’s

ca. 1860-90, [tintype portrait of a market hunter from Grand Isle, Louisiana holding a large double-barreled shotgun]

via Jeffrey Kraus Antique Photographica, Tintype Collection

Research Reveals First Evidence of Hunting by Prehistoric Ohioans

CLEVELAND, March 1, 2012 — Cut marks found on Ice Age bones indicate that humans in Ohio hunted or scavenged animal meat earlier than previously known. Dr. Brian Redmond, curator of archaeology at The Cleveland Museum of Natural History, was lead author on research published in the February 22, 2012 online edition of World Archaeology.

Redmond and researchers analyzed 10 animal bones found in 1998 in the collections of the Firelands Historical Society Museum in Norwalk, Ohio. Found by society member and co-author Matthew Burr, the bones were from a Jefferson’s Ground Sloth. This large plant-eating animal became extinct at the end of the Ice Age around 10,000 years ago.

“This research provides the first scientific evidence for hunting or scavenging of Ice Age sloth in North America,” said Redmond. “The significant age of the remains makes them the oldest evidence of prehistoric human activity in Ohio, occurring in the Late Pleistocene period.” Read more.