96 Fun Facts About Hunting

The Pittman-Robertson Act of 1937 funds state wildlife programmes through a tax on what?

The act taxes guns, ammunition and archery gear (11% excise, 10% on handguns); signed by FDR, it has funded much of America's wildlife recovery.

To receive Pittman-Robertson money, a state must promise never to divert what to other uses?

Hunters' licence fees must stay with the state wildlife agency under the 1937 act, which then repays up to three-quarters of the cost of each approved project.

The first Federal Duck Stamp, drawn in 1934 by cartoonist 'Ding' Darling, showed a pair of which ducks landing?

Mallards, a pair about to land on a marsh pond, were drawn by a Pulitzer-winning newspaper cartoonist who that same year became head of the federal Biological Survey.

Money from Federal Duck Stamp sales goes where?

Proceeds go into the Migratory Bird Conservation Fund, which buys and leases wetland for the National Wildlife Refuge System; the stamps have raised more than $1 billion since 1934.

Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell founded which hunting-conservation group in 1887?

The Boone and Crockett Club, founded by Roosevelt and Grinnell in 1887, codified the 'fair chase' ethic and keeps the North American big-game records book.

In hunting regulations, what does a 'bag limit' restrict?

Animals taken per hunter, per day or per season: a bag limit keeps the harvest within what the population can sustain, and exceeding it counts as poaching.

Which bird, once North America's most abundant at up to five billion, was extinct by 1914?

The passenger pigeon, shot and netted by market hunters and shipped by the barrel, was gone by 1914; Martha, the last, died at Cincinnati Zoo on September 1, 1914.

The Lacey Act of 1900 made it a federal crime to do what?

It became a federal offence to ship poached game across state lines when William McKinley signed Iowa congressman John Lacey's bill; a 2008 amendment stretched the same law to cover timber.

Which forester and hunter, author of A Sand County Almanac, is called the founder of wildlife management?

Aldo Leopold held the first professorship in game management, at Wisconsin; he died of a heart attack in 1948 while helping neighbours fight a grass fire, a year before A Sand County Almanac appeared.

In the essay 'Thinking Like a Mountain', a young hunter shoots which predator and comes to regret it?

A wolf: the author watched a 'fierce green fire' die in the old she-wolf's eyes, and later argued that a mountain stripped of its wolves is soon stripped bare by deer.

Holless Wilbur Allen invented the compound bow in 1966 by fitting what to a recurve?

Pulleys: chasing a faster arrow, Allen cut the curved tips off a bow and mounted pulleys and extra cables in their place, applying for a patent in 1966 and receiving it in 1969.

What does a compound bow's 'let-off' describe?

Let-off is the drop in holding force at full draw: a 70-pound bow with 80% let-off holds at about 14 pounds, so bowhunters can wait for a shot.

Which bowhunting pioneer moved his archery company from Detroit to Grayling, Michigan, in 1947?

Fred Bear started the firm in Detroit in 1933, moved it to Grayling in 1947 and sold it in 1968 but stayed on to lead it; Ted Nugent's song 'Fred Bear' is a tribute to him.

How is a shotgun's gauge defined?

Bore-sized lead balls per pound: the gauge is the number of lead balls fitting the barrel that together weigh one pound, which is why a smaller gauge number means a bigger bore.

Which shotgun gauge has long been the most widely used?

The 12-gauge, with a bore of roughly 0.729 inches, is by far the most popular; the smaller the gauge number, the bigger the bore.

What is the most hunted native big-game species in the Americas?

The white-tailed deer is hunted more than any other big game in the Americas; the US herd rebounded from about 300,000 in 1930 to some 30 million by 2005.

When do white-tailed bucks shed their antlers each year?

In winter, after the rut: once the does have been bred the bucks cast their antlers, then grow a new set through the following spring and summer.

A whitetail flares and raises its tail, showing the white underside, when it does what?

Flees from danger: studies suggest the white flag is aimed less at other deer than at the predator, perhaps as a sign that this deer is too fast to be worth chasing.

How low did the US wild turkey population fall by the late 1930s?

About 30,000 wild turkeys remained in the late 1930s; trap-and-transfer restocking raised the population to 1.3 million by 1973 and past 6 million by the 2000s.

In turkey-hunting terms, what is a 'jake'?

A juvenile male, or jake, gives himself away when he fans his tail: the central feathers stand longer than the rest, while a mature tom's fan forms an even half-circle.

A male wild turkey's 'beard' is what?

A tuft of hair-like filaments on its chest, the beard keeps growing with age; about one hen in ten grows one too, and its length is a hunter's brag.

Which group was founded in 1937 to save drying prairie marshes?

Ducks Unlimited was started by publisher Joseph Knapp and fellow sportsmen when the Dust Bowl drought had cut waterfowl numbers to record lows; its first focus was the habitat the birds needed in Canada.

What kind of shot must US waterfowl hunters use?

Lead-free, such as steel, bismuth or tungsten: lead shot was banned for waterfowl nationwide in 1991 because ducks swallowed spent pellets from the bottom and were poisoned.

What is a hunting 'blind'?

A structure hiding the hunter, a blind keeps game from detecting people at close range; in Britain the same shelter is called a hide, a word birdwatchers use too.

What name is given to the skin covering a deer's growing antlers?

Velvet is the blood-rich skin that feeds growing antlers through summer; once they harden, bucks rub it off on saplings before the rut.

Which state has by far the most feral pigs?

Texas holds an estimated 2.6 million of the roughly 7 million feral pigs in the United States, and the state allows them to be shot from helicopters.

Which Spanish explorer introduced pigs to Florida in 1539, ancestors of today's wild hogs?

Hernando de Soto landed at Tampa Bay in 1539 with a herd of pigs to feed his expedition; escapees became the ancestors of Florida's wild hogs.

Which deer-hunting method has people walk through woods to push animals toward waiting hunters?

Tree stands, ground blinds and stalking are the alternatives; the rut in late October and November is the prime time for all of them.

The Hunting Act 2004 banned hunting most wild mammals with dogs where?

The Hunting Act 2004 covers England and Wales only: Scotland had passed its own ban two years earlier, and hunting with hounds stayed legal in Northern Ireland.

The 2004 fox-hunting ban was forced into law over which body's objections?

The House of Lords would not agree, so the Speaker of the Commons invoked the rarely used Parliament Acts to pass the ban without the peers; it took force on 18 February 2005.

What is falconry?

Falconry is hunting with a trained bird of prey that flies free on every outing; the falconer's craft is keeping it at its flying weight, fit and keen enough to hunt and come back.

The 1486 Book of St Albans sorted birds of prey according to what?

The social rank of the handler fixed the bird: a gyrfalcon for a king, a merlin for a lady and a kestrel for a knave, the line that gave the 1968 novel A Kestrel for a Knave its title.

Jim Corbett, who shot the man-eating Champawat tiger, later had what named after him?

India's first national park, set up in 1936 with Corbett's help, took his name after his death in 1955; by then the hunter of man-eaters was urging people to shoot tigers with cameras instead.

In Richard Connell's 1924 story 'The Most Dangerous Game', what quarry does General Zaroff hunt on his island?

Human beings: bored with animals, Zaroff hunts sailors shipwrecked on his island, giving each food, a knife and a three-hour start; his guest had just called the Cape buffalo the most dangerous game.

In Greek myth, Actaeon was turned into a stag and killed by his own hounds after offending which goddess?

Artemis, goddess of the hunt, turned Actaeon into a stag in the best-known telling because he had seen her bathing; his own hounds, not knowing their master, then tore him apart.

Which youthful hunter, beloved of Aphrodite, was killed by a wild boar?

Adonis, the beautiful youth loved by Aphrodite, was gored by a boar while hunting; in Ovid's telling she turned his blood into the anemone flower.

Punt guns, mounted on small boats, let 19th-century market hunters do what?

A punt gun, a huge-bore shotgun fixed to a flat punt, could kill dozens of ducks in one shot as they rested on the water; states banned the practice, and federal rules still bar punt guns for migratory birds.

'In-line' muzzleloaders are designed to resemble what?

In-lines put the primer directly behind the charge and look like modern centrefire hunting rifles, often with scopes; they still load from the muzzle, qualifying for muzzleloader seasons.

What is a person employed to manage a shooting estate and its wildlife called?

A gamekeeper manages a shooting estate's habitat, rears and protects game birds, controls predators and organises shoot days; beaters and gillies assist on the day.

Which of these animals is one of Africa's traditional Big Five game species?

The black rhinoceros, with the lion, leopard, elephant and Cape buffalo, makes up the Big Five, a term coined by hunters for the most dangerous animals to hunt on foot.

Venery, the form of hunting that includes fox hunting, uses which kind of dog?

Scent hounds such as foxhounds follow a trail by nose, usually as a pack and even when it is days old; sight hounds like greyhounds, used in coursing, chase only what they can see.

What is the hand-held lever that Ice Age hunters used to hurl spears called?

The atlatl, or spear-thrower, is a rod or board with a hook at the rear that lengthens the arm's lever and launches a dart far faster; the word is Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs.

Wooden hunting spears, among the oldest weapons ever found, were dug from a coal mine at Schöningen in which country?

Germany's Schöningen spears lay among the butchered bones of wild horses, evidence that early humans hundreds of thousands of years ago were already skilled, organised hunters.

Which deer, hunted across Ice Age Europe, has been called the most important species in the anthropology of hunting?

Reindeer and caribou are one species; late Ice Age hunters in France relied on them so heavily that archaeologists first named the period the Age of the Reindeer.

Which antlered Celtic god is named on the Pillar of the Boatmen found under Notre-Dame?

Cernunnos is clearly named only on that one carved block, found in 1710; everything else about the antlered god is inferred from unlabelled images such as the Gundestrup cauldron.

Raymond Dart's 'killer ape' theory is acted out in the opening of which Kubrick film?

2001: A Space Odyssey opens with an ape-man learning to kill with a bone; Kubrick drew on Robert Ardrey's African Genesis, which spread Dart's idea, though the theory was later refuted.

Which fastener did Swiss engineer George de Mestral invent after burrs stuck to his dog on an Alpine hunting trip?

Velcro copies the hundreds of tiny hooks de Mestral saw when he put the burrs under a microscope. Its name blends two words, velours and crochet, the second meaning hook.

Which reference book was born after Sir Hugh Beaver missed a golden plover on a 1951 Irish shooting party?

Guinness World Records grew from the brewery boss's failure to look up whether the plover was Europe's fastest game bird. He wanted a book to settle pub arguments, and it first appeared in 1955.

The teddy bear was named after Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot a tied bear while hunting in which Southern state?

Mississippi hosted the 1902 hunt, where guides clubbed an exhausted black bear and tied it to a willow tree for the president. He called shooting it unsportsmanlike, and a newspaper cartoon made the moment famous.

Dachshunds were bred long and low so hunters could send them underground after which animal, the Dachs of their name?

Badgers gave the dachshund its name, which is German for badger dog. Early 18th-century books called the breed a badger crawler or a badger warrior.

Which German herbal liqueur, created by a keen hunter, carries a stag with a glowing cross on its label?

Jägermeister means master hunter, and its creator Curt Mast was an enthusiastic one. Its label recalls two patron saints of hunters, each said to have converted after seeing a cross between a stag's antlers.

Which Maine outdoor retailer began in 1912 with one product, a waterproof hunting boot that customers mostly sent back?

L.L.Bean saw 90 percent of that first production run returned with defects. Founder Leon Leonwood Bean honoured his money-back guarantee, corrected the design and kept selling.

Which Looney Tunes hunter keeps stalking Bugs Bunny through rabbit season but usually ends up hurting only himself?

Elmer Fudd is the cartoon series' most prominent human character. He stars in Chuck Jones's Hunting Trilogy, three shorts built on the argument over whether it is rabbit season or duck season.

Which fictional detective is usually drawn in a deerstalker, a deer-hunting cap the original stories never name?

Sherlock Holmes owes the cap to illustrator Sidney Paget, who drew him in one for The Strand Magazine and favoured a deerstalker himself.

Which Wild West showman earned his nickname supplying meat to Kansas Pacific Railroad workers in the 1860s?

Buffalo Bill, born William Cody, is said to have killed 4,282 bison in eighteen months to feed the railroad crews.

Which 1942 Disney film, based on a Felix Salten novel, shows a fawn's mother shot by an unseen hunter called Man?

Bambi keeps the hunter entirely off-screen, yet the unseen Man still ranks 20th on the American Film Institute list of the greatest screen villains.

Which US vice president accidentally shot lawyer Harry Whittington while hunting quail on a ranch in 2006?

Dick Cheney swung on a flushed bird and hit his 78-year-old companion in the face and neck. Three days later a pellet lodged near the heart gave Whittington a heart attack, which he survived.

Which heroine of The Hunger Games hunts with a bow to feed her family after her father dies in a mine?

Katniss Everdeen was eleven when the explosion killed her father. Author Suzanne Collins drew on her own father, who had been forced to hunt to stretch a scanty food supply.

Which arrogant hunter, created for Disney's Beauty and the Beast and absent from the fairy tale, leads the castle mob?

Gaston was first drafted as a foppish aristocrat before Disney's writers rebuilt him as a strong, vain hunter obsessed with marrying Belle.

In Nintendo's light-gun game Duck Hunt, which animal pops out of the grass to laugh at a player who misses?

A dog does the mocking, smugly laughing whenever the ducks escape. In the arcade version's bonus stage the animal could be shot, but console releases made it untouchable to keep the game family-friendly.

Which giant huntsman of Greek myth was placed among the stars as a constellation known for a three-star belt?

Orion even keeps a companion in the sky: the Iliad of Homer names the bright star Sirius as the dog of the huntsman.

Which Roman goddess, patroness of hunters, wildlife and the Moon, was said to be the twin sister of Apollo?

Diana was also a guardian of childbirth and crossroads, and Roman tradition gave her a birthplace on the island of Delos.

Which sharpshooter paid off the mortgage on her mother's Ohio farm at fifteen by selling game she had hunted?

Annie Oakley began trapping before she was seven and was shooting by eight to support her siblings and widowed mother. Local shopkeepers in Greenville bought what she brought in.

Which woodland linked to Robin Hood was made a royal hunting ground by William the Conqueror after his 1066 invasion?

Sherwood Forest still holds more than a thousand ancient oaks over 500 years old, including the Major Oak, which is about twice that age.

The word safari, tied to East African big-game hunting, comes from a Swahili word with which everyday meaning?

Journey is all the Swahili word means, and it covers an ordinary bus or ferry trip. It came from Arabic and reached English in the 1850s through the explorer Richard Francis Burton.

Which craft of mounting animal skins, prized by trophy hunters, is named from Greek words for arrangement and skin?

Taxidermy had its golden age in the Victorian era, when one fashion clothed mounted animals as people and posed them in human scenes.

Which curly show dog was first used by wildfowl hunters to retrieve from water, hence its closely clipped haircut?

Poodle comes from a Low German word meaning to splash. The famous clip stopped the coat weighing a swimming dog down while leaving its joints and vital organs covered.

Which dog breed from southern Africa was developed to harass lions and hold them at bay until the hunter arrived?

Rhodesian Ridgeback dogs were bred not to attack outright. They darted in and out with quick snaps, confusing the big cat until the hunter could shoot it.

Which domesticated relative of the polecat is sent into warrens to chase rabbits out into hunters' waiting nets?

Ferret comes from a Late Latin word meaning little thief, probably for the animal's habit of hiding small objects. Old illustrations show muzzled ones chasing rabbits out of their warrens.

Which big cats did the Mughal emperor Akbar reputedly keep by the thousand and train for hunting?

Cheetahs were a passion of the emperor, who reputedly trained many himself. The species tames so readily that it was once known as the hunting leopard.

Which animal, the tallest and heaviest living deer species, is known as an elk in British English?

Moose is the North American name, while Americans use elk for a completely different deer. Among the continent's land animals, only the bison outweighs it.

Which Western game animal, often wrongly called an antelope, is the fastest land mammal in the Americas?

Pronghorn can reach about 55 mph, far faster than any living North American predator. One theory is that the speed evolved to escape big cats that are now extinct.

Which slender North American game bird, whose wings whistle on take-off, is shot by the tens of millions each year?

Mourning dove numbers can absorb it: the species is one of the continent's most abundant birds, with a US population estimated in the hundreds of millions.

Which colourful game bird, native to Asia and released worldwide for hunting, is the state bird of South Dakota?

Pheasant, in its ring-necked form, is not native to the United States, which makes it a rare imported choice of state bird. It is also among the most hunted birds in the world.

Which military term began with British soldiers in 1770s India who could hit an elusive, zigzagging wading bird?

Sniper comes from the snipe, a game bird so alert and erratic in flight that officers wrote home about going sniping as a test of patience and skill.

Which antlered rabbit of American folklore can be hunted in Douglas, Wyoming, only on the nonexistent date of June 31?

Jackalope licences are sold to tourists by the town's Chamber of Commerce and run from midnight to 2 a.m. The craze began in the 1930s, when two local hunters grafted antlers onto a jackrabbit.

Which name for the mating season of deer, sheep and bison comes from a Latin word meaning to roar?

The rut brings a surge of testosterone in males, which makes them more aggressive and far more interested in females.

The ghillie suit, the leafy camouflage of Highland deer stalkers, was first worn in war by which Scottish regiment?

Lovat Scouts were recruited from Highland estate workers, especially professional deer stalkers, who took their camouflage with them to the Second Boer War.

Which coiled brass instrument descends from hoop-shaped hunting signal trumpets once played using only the lips?

French horn is a nod to the makers of France, who led the trade in hunting instruments and gave them their circular shape. Valves and the hand in the bell came later.

Which mall clothing brand began as an elite outfitter of shotguns and tents that equipped Theodore Roosevelt's safari?

Abercrombie & Fitch was noted for expensive shotguns, fishing rods and boats decades before it sold teen fashion. It was founded in Manhattan in 1892.

The Glorious Twelfth of August opens the British shooting season for which heather-moorland game bird?

Red grouse shooting slips to 13 August whenever the twelfth falls on a Sunday, because English law bans game bird shooting on that day.

Which ancient technique, still used by San people this century, means running prey down until it collapses exhausted?

Persistence hunting suits humans, who are among the best long-distance runners in the animal kingdom despite being neither the fastest nor the strongest.

Which hunter's task, also called gralloching, removes a deer's internal organs quickly so the carcass loses heat?

Field dressing is done as soon as possible after the kill, because rapid cooling stops bacteria growing on the carcass. It also lightens the load a hunter has to carry out.

Which tapered constriction at a shotgun's muzzle shapes the spread of the pellets for nearer or farther targets?

Choke tightens the cloud of shot for better range, while a plain cylinder barrel has none and throws the widest pattern.

King William II of England was killed by an arrow in 1100 while hunting in which royal woodland of southern England?

The New Forest claimed two sons of the Conqueror: an elder brother, Richard, had already died hunting there. The earliest account says the king was shot by one of his own men.

Which Habsburg heir, a trophy hunter excessive even for a European noble, logged 272,511 game kills in his diaries?

Franz Ferdinand counted some 5,000 deer among those kills, and on a world tour he shot kangaroos and emus in Australia. His assassination in 1914 set off the First World War.

Which Spanish king lost the honorary presidency of WWF Spain after a 2012 elephant-hunting trip to Botswana?

Juan Carlos took the trip during a financial crisis in Spain, and the conservation group's members voted 226 to 13 to remove him.

Cecil, a lion studied by Oxford researchers and killed by an American trophy hunter in 2015, lived in which country?

Zimbabwe was home to Hwange National Park, where he lived. The hunter had bought a permit and was never charged, though officials said he could return only as a tourist.

Which 1961 Wilson Rawls novel follows a boy in the Ozarks who buys and trains two Redbone Coonhounds?

Where the Red Fern Grows is autobiographical fiction drawn from the author's own Ozark childhood. Its narrator looks back on the faithful dogs he owned as a boy.

Which legendary creature has been illegal to kill in Skamania County, Washington, since a 1969 ordinance?

Bigfoot slayers originally faced up to a $10,000 fine and five years in prison, softened to a misdemeanour in 1984. The law was passed on April Fools' Day but is real, and it has never been repealed.

The Kentucky rifle, the frontier hunter's long-barrelled gun, was developed by German gunsmiths in which colony?

Pennsylvania gunsmiths from Germany reworked the hunting rifles of their homeland in the early 1700s. The design later spread through the Appalachians, where it stayed in use well into the 20th century.

Which great-grandson of Noah does the Book of Genesis describe as a mighty hunter before the Lord?

Nimrod is also named as a king in the land of Shinar, and later tradition made him the builder of the Tower of Babel, though the Bible never says so.

Which huntress of Greek myth, said to have been suckled by a bear, drew first blood in the Calydonian boar hunt?

Atalanta wounded the monstrous boar with her bow before any of the men could. In the story the she-bear nursed her until hunters found the child and raised her in the mountains.

Which 5,300-year-old Alpine mummy was found with an unfinished yew longbow and a quiver of 14 arrows?

Ötzi the Iceman also carried a copper axe, and his quiver was made of roe deer hide. An arrowhead lodged in his shoulder suggests that he was killed by another person.

Which Ice Age culture of mammoth hunters is named for a New Mexico town near where its fluted points were found?

Clovis tools turned up beside the bones of Columbian mammoths at Blackwater Draw in 1929, found by a 19-year-old who had been following a nearby dig in the newspapers.

In the name of the .30-06 Springfield, a rifle cartridge still popular with hunters, what does the 06 refer to?

Its adoption year was 1906, when the round was introduced to the United States Army. It stayed the Army's main rifle and machine-gun cartridge for nearly 50 years.