Sheep Hunting Gear ~ oldtimers?

[CanuckShooter]

I was just reading the other thread on sheep hunting gear, and was wondering...what did the old timers use for gear/grub before the days of siltarps, portable stoves and freeze dried foods??? Any of you oldtime sheep/goat hunters care to reflect on the past and tell us how you did it???

[CanuckShooter]

Trapper Nelson backpacks...everyone had one of those.

[Tenacious Billy]

Trapper Nelson backpacks...everyone had one of those.

My dad still rocks his Trapper Nelson.....and for some reason loves it. :-D

[Devilbear]

There were no plastic campers, ATVs or tiny gensets and we had to hump our loads on TNs and other such instruments of torture. Most hunters did not even try to hunt the high alpine and many were "road hunters" who sat on their lazy asses all day and threw their beer bottles out the windows of their Jeeps.

I have hauled literally tons of supplies on TN3s, I truely hate the fuggin' things and will never, by choice, even put one on now. I hauled all my water, grub, wood and evereything else to some of my BCFS lookouts from the nearest roadend and heliport with these and they just friggen suck!

I bet CSer has NEVER backpacked with anything and "hunts" from his quad and 4x4.....the "traditional way", eh.........

[BCbillies]

Most hunters did not even try to hunt the high alpine

True . . . many of the oldtimers slept/camped below treeline and that is where you still see a lot of the old camps and gear. They simply didn't have the gear for the alpine unless they had horses. I am sure some oldtimers spent a few nights in the alpine and survived but they were tougher back then. :wink: I will have to ask a good friend how he did the alpine sheep hunting in the 60's . . . I know for November goat hunting on the Wet Coast he would spend the night on the side of the mountain with a sheet of poly and a fire and didn't even bring a soother!

[Devilbear]

I used WWII Canadian Army groundsheets and light tarps for camping when I started backpack camping in June, 1964 and you CAN make a good camp with such gear, if, you know what you are doing. We used to have brush shelters built at the upper edge of timber in various places near Nelson and there were old camps used since the first prospectors came into that country.

That said, a number of the most successful hunters in the Kootenays were friends of ours and most just siwashed under a tarp and built a little fire. Bud Mawer, of Nelson hunted all over BC and packed his gear with dogs, he is long gone now, but, despite the difference in ages, he and I were good friends and he told me of sheep hunts in the EK before WWII....tough slugging, but, he had lots of horns.

[wildcatter]

I've slept under a tarp many times, a ground sheet and a good sleeping bag and you are set. Have a small fire and a large rock or boulder behind and that's all you need to keep warm.
I still have a Trapper Nelson, but I haven't used it much, squirrells chewed up the frame but the bag is good to pack your gear in it.

[boxhitch]

Sleeping bag ? Luxury !
Top tarp for roof, saddle pads for bed and a fire = priceless

[CanuckShooter]

I bet CSer has NEVER backpacked with anything and "hunts" from his quad and 4x4.....the "traditional way", eh.........

You'd lose that bet. :-D

[6616]

I was just reading the other thread on sheep hunting gear, and was wondering...what did the old timers use for gear/grub before the days of siltarps, portable stoves and freeze dried foods??? Any of you oldtime sheep/goat hunters care to reflect on the past and tell us how you did it???

Army surplus for nearly everything including rifles and knives in many cases. Army surplus had pretty decent down mummy bags, everything packed on wooden framed Trapper Nelsons. Needed to find firewood to cook or just took food that didn't need cooked, knew one guy who used army K-rations. For late season cold weather hunting used Airforce surplus flight boots. Mackinaw or Army surplus wool pants and grey wool underwear, doeskin shirts, red checkered wool jackets, pretty basic stuff back in the 50's, 60's, and 70's..!

[CanuckShooter]

What was the caliber of choice back in the 50s 60s?? 30-30? 303? 32 special??

[todbartell]

I'd guess 270 Winchester & 30-06 in the 50's & 60's.

[Van-Isle]

My dad still rocks his Trapper Nelson.....and for some reason loves it. :-D

HAHA. Mine to. We packed a packboarded a moose out and he wouldnt stop talking about how much he wished the hat a Trapper Nelson for hours!

[willy442]

Actually back in those days it was trapper nelsons, cowboy hats, blue jeans, red and black rubber lace up miner boots, moccasin rubbers for camp, or hunting on days your other boots were wet. Wool socks that could usually stand by themselves in the corner or in the bottom of your bedroll to keep them from freezing in the cold, after you got a heater on the later hunts you could stand them around the heater and then stay close to the floor so you could breath. Bedrolls were either army and navy mummy bags with extra blankets or if you could afford something better it was woods artic 3 or 5 star down bags (remember we used to hunt until late November) it was godamn cold in them thar hills. Hunters and the cook tent had wood heaters all season, guides got them in mid October. Optics were usually whatever some hunter had left for you and most of us had a Bushnell Spacemaster II with exchangable eye pieces in various powers.

Guess if some of the old guides hadn't of stayed out in the bush for so long. They wouldn't have gotten horny, put on the cooks velcro gloves and ran down the odd ewe. Sheep hunters wouldn't exist to ask how we survived.

How many on here have had to chop shore ice off a creek so you could get your horse into the water, just so you could cross then repeat the procedure from the saddle on the other side so you could get out? Alot things were required in the early years and as guides we focused on surviving with what we had instead of looking for better equipment unless we could talk some hunter into leaving it for us as a tip. :)

[Twobucks]

Okay - not sheep/goat specifically, but check out the gear on Fred Bear:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBgydeR9I70

And if you're really interested, read about some of the early climbers in the west - guys like Conrad Kain, AO Wheeler, Fred Becky or the Mundays on the coast. Of course, there are plenty more.

New gear has made some styles/ approaches to the outdoors possible that were not possible before. But tons of rugged, burly shite got done long before G-tex, spectra and silcoat.

The biggest difference I see between today and yesterday is time and numbers of people. Heavy stuff takes more time and energy to move. One extra pound in your pack lifted 1,000 times in a day is 1,000 extra pounds of work for that day. Now imagine five pounds, or ten. No one is tough enough to keep that up for long. But if you have a month to get where you're going, it's not so bad. But most hunters (and everyone else for that matter) have jobs they need to get back to and only have a limited number of days in the field. We need to move faster and get more done in a shorter period of time.

With more people out there, things that were acceptable in the past can;t be done anymore. If one guy craps in a big lake, it's no big deal - you can still drink out of hte lake. But if 1,000 guys crap in that same lake, many of the people who drink the water are going to get sick. We can't cut down trees for fires and shelter the way the old timers did because there are more people using the backcountry than ever before.

So after all that, I'm going to say this: the problem with too much modern gear is that it separates us from what we are really trying to do. We want to get out there and hunt, to experience the places and environments we are in. The gear becomes too much of the focus, and we lose something important.

So as much as I love schoeller pants and goretex and my primaloft sleeping bag - in some ways I'd be better off rocking the Trapper Nelson and the wool mackinaw by a fire.

[CanuckShooter]

I can remember those red & black lace up miners boots [must be on the old enough side] they were pretty good...as for the Trapper Nelson packs I've honestly never had a more painful pack on by back. The old style wool socks, made with hand spun wool were some of the best I ever had.....:-D

[Devilbear]

I still have one pair of those boots, about 30 years old, but, I much prefered the leather top/rubber bottomed pacs and have an original pair of Schnee's, the good ones with heel counters.

Much of one's gear choices are or should be dependent on where/what one is doing in the mountains/bush and how you are moving. In the West Kootenays, we had no horses and much of the best terrain was and still is roadless, so, you humped it with whatever you could get.

I have a lot of gear specifically for hunting that is over 20 years old and kept only for hunting, other gear for hiking/snowshoing and camping and a little stuff left from working in the bush. There have been SOME advances in recent years in gear, but, some of the stuff invented in the 19thC is still as useful as it was then and better than much of the latest trendy crap made in offshore sweat shops.

One thing I will not so is wear jeans in the bush and I learned this from loggers working in the Kootenays. I am not going to spend the coin to buy the latest "in" camo clothing and am not convinced that all of these camos make much real difference, but, loose-fitting quality woolen clothes and some synthetics certainly do.

I agree with the post above on hunters needing to get it done in a short period of time and the gear choices that are an aspect of that. I prefer a light woolen cruiser jacket in winter for general use, but, it will not keep me as warm as my ID Dolomite parka or my old (1974) Richard Egge down double duvet parka will. One would not use these around horses, but, when winter camping alone in January in the Kootenays, on snowshoes or skis, the heavy, bulky wool jacket is not really a practical choice and the nylon-insulated ones certainly are.

Horses for courses and all that.

[Casagrande]

Okay - not sheep/goat specifically, but check out the gear on Fred Bear:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBgydeR9I70

And if you're really interested, read about some of the early climbers in the west - guys like Conrad Kain, AO Wheeler, Fred Becky or the Mundays on the coast. Of course, there are plenty more.

New gear has made some styles/ approaches to the outdoors possible that were not possible before. But tons of rugged, burly shite got done long before G-tex, spectra and silcoat.

The biggest difference I see between today and yesterday is time and numbers of people. Heavy stuff takes more time and energy to move. One extra pound in your pack lifted 1,000 times in a day is 1,000 extra pounds of work for that day. Now imagine five pounds, or ten. No one is tough enough to keep that up for long. But if you have a month to get where you're going, it's not so bad. But most hunters (and everyone else for that matter) have jobs they need to get back to and only have a limited number of days in the field. We need to move faster and get more done in a shorter period of time.

With more people out there, things that were acceptable in the past can;t be done anymore. If one guy craps in a big lake, it's no big deal - you can still drink out of hte lake. But if 1,000 guys crap in that same lake, many of the people who drink the water are going to get sick. We can't cut down trees for fires and shelter the way the old timers did because there are more people using the backcountry than ever before.

So after all that, I'm going to say this: the problem with too much modern gear is that it separates us from what we are really trying to do. We want to get out there and hunt, to experience the places and environments we are in. The gear becomes too much of the focus, and we lose something important.

So as much as I love schoeller pants and goretex and my primaloft sleeping bag - in some ways I'd be better off rocking the Trapper Nelson and the wool mackinaw by a fire.
Beckey is still out there crawling around the hills.
This guy is a true legend.

[Twobucks]

Beckey is still out there crawling around the hills.
This guy is a true legend.

Open an alpine guidebook for anywhere in North America to a random page - you'll find Beckey's name within five pages to either side. He's logged more milage in the mountains than anyone. Period.

A friend of mine was guiding Becky this past summer in Squamish - the old guy still has the fire in his heart! It just takes him a long time on the approaches - but to be fair, he is in his late 80's.

I filled out a camping permit for him about 12 years ago when I was working for Parks Canada in the mountain parks - he gave his address as: "87 Subaru". Now that's hardcore!