Who taught the English settlers in Plymouth how to hunt?
1 Answer
You would expect that they would hunt. Its a harder proposition than you think.
Explanation:
The pioneers got a lot of their food from trading with the Indians and importing from England. Hunting would be a good way to get something extra without too much effort. But it had problems and so may have been of limited help. Famines were common.
Hunting was a skill available in England where poaching and snaring smaller animals was common in the lower classes while hunting was sport for the upper classes. Lower classes could not afford personal firearms. Slings and snares would have been more common. Indians may have shown the colonists some local animals and birds.
Hunting with the smooth bore muskets at the time would have been difficult as they were somewhat inaccurate and the flash of the igniting power in the pan would startle your target before the gun went off. A very steady hand was needed. The smell of a burning match on a matchlock would be disturbing to a lot of game. Blunderbusses, a type of shot gun would have been popular. Rabbits, Ducks and Geese would have been common targets.
Of course if you shoot too many of them, there are less around to to shoot later. Animals move quite a bit so the game available to hunt can vary a lot.
I have heard a interesting possibility that earthworms did not exist in north America before Colonization. You wouldn't think this would make much difference but Forests at the time of Colonization had no undergrowth. No undergrowth would mean very few grazing animals in the forest. It was said that a man could ride a horse upright through the forest, a more difficult proposition today. Earthworms change the soil to promote undergrowth.
Europeans would have also had security concerns wandering about countryside with the Indians about. Relations with the local natives varied from tolerance to open warfare.
Original locations for settlements were often not the best as not to annoy the local natives. Land could be swampy of otherwise marginal. Colonists didn't expand in to prime land until after the Indians had left or died out.
