lake superior market hunting

J

Jake S

Member
Dose anyone know if market hunting happened on lake suprerior. I would think there was becouse I can't think of any reason why there wouldn't have been. I am working on a research assiment for school, any info would be great.

thanks
 
Jake,
It appears by the number of "looks" and the lack of "posts" that no one knows of any definitive information on a Lake Superior market hunting connection.

Fisheries? Logging and sawmills? Sunken ships/shipwrecks? Shooting of deer to feed lumberjacks at the camps? Trapping of fur bearers? Native and early settler construction of boats and freighter canoes? Wild rice harvesting? I am sure you'd find more information on these topics.

Not sure that the type of waters or migration paths of ducks, or the specie ducks that followed the migration paths across Lake Superior made market gunning a viable occupation. Not exactly the Chesapeake Bay with large flats of wild celery, large migrations of canvasbacks, redheads, and bluebills with booming population centers less than a day by rail from the gunning areas.

Good luck!

Mike
 
I havent found any infromation on market hunting on lake superior yet. I assumed it would have occured, there are large number of birds here, including swans. weren't they targeted during market hunting? It seems like this would have been a great area for market hunting, but perhaps the lack of nearby large population centers could have been the reason it didn't happen.
 
I know market hunting happened here on Lake Ontario on the Canadian side because my family did it so Im sure it happened on all the Great Lakes,,,Im sure you can contact the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resourses for info on our side if that helps but not sure if you are only looking for info for the U.S
 
Market hunting happened everywhere, but I would imagine that Lake Superior wasn't a big business hub. There probably wasn't train loads of ducks shipped to chicago or Minneapolis, but they were sold to local markets. Redheads and Canvasbacks sold for 2-7 dollars a pair, where most other ducks were getting .50 cents a pair maybe a dollar. So areas where redheads and Cans frequented were much bigger players in the market hunting. Places like the Dakotas. Lake Christina, Heron lake, Lake Koshkongong, Lake St Clair, obviously the Chesapeake bay among many others had well a well documented history in market gunning. They all had swarms of canvasbacks as well. But there were many other places where these ducks weren't in swarms the have documented market gunning. Lake superior could be one of them, but you will probably be the one who has to do some research on it. Your best bet is to start with you local historical society and see what you can dig up, maybe head to some of the larger towns on the lake, like duluth or superior and check there historical organizations. Then let us know what you find.
 
I agree with Bill, check out your local museum or historical society. I did some research for a talk on the open water issue in Wisconsin and went to our local museum and found documentation dating back to the 1850's. As Bill mentioned, Lake Koshkonong (Southern Wisconsin) was a big market gunning hub back then and did indeed have trains with barrels and barrels of ducks headed to Chicago hotels. One particular hunter sent 1500 ducks to the market in Chicago in 6 WEEKS one fall. An interesting aside, the first place that had a regulation on duck limits was North Dakota, where in 1878 the state imposed a limit of 25 per day.........it took decades to get to that point in the rest of the country, though self imposed or club limits were not uncommon.

Good luck with your research and please post up your results.
 
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