Hunting season once made woods a war zone

The Maine woods used to turn into a war zone each fall during hunting season. Hunting was “a sport more dangerous than some wars,” according to the Bangor Daily News in reporting the carnage a century ago.

Attitudes were different back then: If a hunter was killed, it was more apt to be attributed to God’s will than to anyone in particular.

My father once told me how as a boy he was walking in the woods one day around 1920 when a few buckshot bounced harmlessly off his leather jacket. When he remonstrated loudly, a hunter emerged from the bush and bawled him out for being there. No hunter orange back then. My dad also could name several men from town who had killed other hunters or been killed while pursuing their sport.

This all sounded strange to me until I read the old newspapers from a century ago. The deer season ran from Oct. 1 to Dec. 15, and the moose season ran from Oct. 15 to Dec. 1. The carnage began even earlier among partridge hunters, and the news coverage was often grisly.

“Top of Head Was Blown Off,” was the main headline on a front page story on Sept. 20, 1904, in the NEWS. “Detroit, Me., Scene of First Shooting Fatality of the Hunting Season.”

Delmont Pease, 12, was killed when his friend either tripped and his gun went off or fired at a bird and hit Delmont. The newspaper had two versions of the story on two different days.

The paper was outraged at this gruesome event. “The question comes to us forcibly at this time as to what society can do to prevent a recurrence of similar catastrophes. Must we as citizens submit to what many choose to term the will of God? Or can we secure any enactment from the Legislature, which will lessen the long list of fatalities which sadden us with the arrival of every hunting season?” asked an editorial writer.

The paper suggested a $1 luxury tax on guns might have some effect. “Placing a tax on guns would enable the constables and wardens and peace officers to keep track of those who made use of fire arms, it would weed out the cheap guns that explode with dire results in case of overloading, it would serve as a safe index to the intentions of those who enter the woods in close time, it would furnish no inconsiderable revenue to the state …” the paper said.

Things only got worse in the days ahead.

“Orland Boy Shot Dead,” the newspaper announced a few days later. Walter Willings, 17, had accidentally discharged his gun while hunting near Toddy Pond.

And a few days later, the 10-year-old son of B.N. Packard, owner of the Lake Hotel on Sebec Lake, was wounded with birdshot by the hotel cook when he ran into the line of fire.

The NEWS made another editorial foray on the subject on Oct. 3 as the deer season got under way. Warning hunters to stay out of the woods for a few weeks until the leaves fell off the trees, providing better visibility, the paper noted, “The inclination to shoot first and identify the game later is strong within us.” It called again for more state regulation.

The next day, the paper announced that William Violette, 38, had died on the way to Eastern Maine General Hospital aboard a Bangor and Aroostook train after being shot near Patten by a teenage hunter who mistook him for a deer.

Later in the month the killing picked up again. On Oct. 28, H. Stanley Wilson, 18, was killed at Pushaw Pond by his brother, who mistook him for a deer. And a few days later, a well-known Glenburn farmer, David Watson, was severely wounded under the same circumstances. On Nov. 11, Fred Stuart, a Bar Harbor policeman, was mistaken for a deer and killed while hunting in Montague.

“Eleven Killed, Many Wounded,” the paper reported in a roundup story in mid-November. “Hunting Accidents to Date – A Sport More Dangerous Than Some Wars.”

It noted some additional deaths from other parts of the state including 20-year-old Jere Shannon Hall of Bath, who raised his head into the line of fire while lying in a boat hunting ducks on Merrymeeting Bay.

There was even a young woman injured that year. Miss Etta Fuller, 16, of West Gardiner was trying to dislodge a cartridge from a rifle when it went off, sending a bullet into her neck and narrowly missing her jugular vein, said the account.

A law had been passed in 1901, according to the paper, making it possible to impose penalties of up to $1,000 and 10 years in prison for shooting someone negligently while hunting. A few people had been arrested, but no one had ever been punished under the law.

Then 76-year-old David Libbey of Newport was shot to death near Chester on Dec. 7. Libbey, a Civil War veteran, was a respected outdoorsman, river driver and journalist who wrote under the name “Penobscot.” The noted author Fannie Hardy Eckstorm wrote a book about him after his death.

There were footprints leading to his body in the snow and then away. Someone had done the deed, inspected his work and fled. This was too much to take.

On Dec. 17, the paper reported that Herbert E. Griffin of Lincoln had been arrested and charged, under the law passed in 1901, with shooting Libbey. People reportedly had seen the teenager leave the woods acting suspiciously in the vicinity of where Libbey had been shot. Griffin finally confessed, saying he had mistaken Libbey for a deer and, seeing he was dead, fled in terror.

“… this is the first case to be tried under the law in this county, if not in the entire state,” said the newspaper reporter. I have yet to find its disposition.

The year 1904 was not the bloodiest year in Maine hunting history. Figures kept by the state after 1940 show there were 19 deaths in 1950 and 19 more two years later when 70 gun “incidents” in all were recorded.

Beginning in the early 1970s, the Legislature started passing some sensible safety measures including the mandatory wearing of hunter orange, probably the most important reform. In the 1980s, hunting safety courses were required.

In the past decade, there have been only six hunting-related fatalities in Maine, about half the number there were during one year a century ago.

Wayne E. Reilly has edited two books of Civil War era diaries and letters including “The Diaries of Sarah Jane and Emma Ann Foster: A Year in Maine During the Civil War.” He can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net.