Every so often I will post bits from my research and notes that I referred to but did not make it into my book Marsh Fen and Town, South Lincolnshire and Beyond.
I make numerous references to wildfowling with guns, nets, decoys and spring traps. In my research I encountered what is possibly the earliest printed guide to wildfowling techniques. In 1621 Gervase Markham published "Hungers Prevention Or The Whole Arte of Fowling by Water and Land"
Gervase Markham was a prolific writer of poems and prose. He was a soldier and an accomplished horseman. He wrote guides on horsemanship and hunting.
This particular book was intended as a guide to colonists coming to uninhabited places, "Especially all those that have anything to do with new plantations."
This book starts with a gushing dedication, "To the Honourable Knight Sir Edwin Sands and his much honoured and worthy friends Mr Thomas Gibbs Esquire, Mr Theodore Gulston Doctor of Physic and Mr Samuel Rotten Esquire, Adventurers and noble favourers of the blessed Plantation of Virginia."
Inside the book are described multiple techniques of hunting and trapping birds, wildfowl and waders for food. Many of the techniques are both illegal and abhorant to the modern Fowler in both America and Britain. They include flight nets, decoy pipes, spring traps and the lyming of branches to ensnare birds in a sticky trap. It includes baiting of birds and stalking with a gun inside animal skins pretending to be a horse or a cow.
No matter our modern sensibilities this book is fascinating and should be considered in it's historical context. It also needs to be considered that the title ,"Hungers Prevention" means exactly that.
The book was sponsored by Sir Edwin Sands, one of the founders of the Virginia Company of London in 1606. This Company created some of the first colonists that would later include the founding fathers of America, George Washington, John Adams and that ilk. Sir Edwin Sands did not colonise Virginia himself, but his brother Thomas Sands did and was one of the 61 survivors out of 500 that survived the "starving times" in Virginia between 1609 and 1610. I have no doubt it was his brother's experience that prompted Sir Edwin Sands to fund the publication of this fascinating book.
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