By Edgar Castillo
‘Tis the holiday season for food, cheer, Christmas traditions, and festivities that tend to run the gambit. However, if you were a hunter living along the East Coast during the 19th century, you probably engaged in a friendly, yet competitive American holiday hunting custom that had emerged. It pitted families, friends, neighbors, and even communities against each other. This event brought forth important bragging rights for a year, maybe some side loot, and an untold amount of wantonly wasted dead critters—mostly gamebirds.
The practice dates to the Victorian Era in England and continental Europe and is largely based on the aristocracy and land-owning classes who needed a place to hold a hunt for the sole purpose of killing large numbers of animals during a single outing. Loosely styled stalks dubbed “side hunts,” carried over onto America’s shores where groups of mostly men and boys would gather and choose “sides” or split into teams on Christmas Day. Armed factions would go afield in the early morning hours to shoot and bag as many feathers and fur creatures as possible. Winning the laurels of the chase would be determined whichever side had the biggest haul of carcasses. The evening celebratory feasters consumed but a small portion of the gamebirds, set a few aside for later meals, and gathered the feathers to sell—most, however, spoiled.
Based on the accounts of multiple families involved, the following is a merry, jubilant picture of the blight these hunts produced.
It’s December 25th during the early 1890s in the Upper South Atlantic region of the country, and the McCormac family and close extended friends are assembled early. Thomas, the patriarch, has finished giving his rant on the importance of winning the holiday competition against the Clarkes and Griffiths. Everyone is excited and the mood is one of celebration given that it’s Christmas morning. The firing of the town’s signal cannon marks the start of the side hunt.
The entire group goes forth into the woods, fields, and waterways. Kinfolk are armed with shotguns and rifles. Some of the youngest participants are carrying makeshift clubs or “bird sticks” to whack game. They set out across the land en masse. Gamebirds and waterfowl are the favorite and preferred targets, but an untold number of song and shore birds fall victim to the festive slaughter. As for any four-legged beasts that are pushed during the drive, their fate is sealed as well. The chaotic day is full of shooting. There is a constant back and forth assembly line adding to the growing heap. At the end of the day, the appointed judge tallies up the body count and determines which side is the victor.
Here’s just some of the carnage as documented in the local town journal:
92 Bobwhite quail
101 Ducks (various species)
46 Carolina Parakeet* (EXTINCT)
72 Geese (various species)
17 Heath Hen*, a coastal prairie chicken (EXTINCT)
43 Ruffed Grouse
26 Snipe
55 Swan
37 Turkey
Sounds wasteful. It was. But remember in those days, the supply of wildlife seemed limitless. The general attitude of the day was that nature was veritably inexhaustible and therefore why not shoot everything for pure holiday entertainment. There simply was no thought of overkilling from the untold numbers of entire families that wandered the countryside shooting every bird in sight. Results from the side hunts were often published in the time’s leading sportsmen’s journals, with a word of editorial commendation for the winning sides.
However, as each Christmas came and went, some people began noticing a toll on the wildlife and declining populations on the hunting grounds. Species such as the Heath Hen, Passenger Pigeon, and Carolina Parakeet were already on the verge of extinction. Public perception of the popular Christmas side hunts that had flourished for decades was shifting across the country. Conservation was in its infancy as laws were hardly in place and even laxer in enforcement. The idea of limits on hunting was laughable. It was the Wild West and gamebirds were open for the taking. Throw the additional pressure of market hunting and the “Plume Boom” going on at the same time, and you have five million additional birds being killed for the millinery trade alone to provide feathers for women’s hats.
Christmas side hunts began to wane as pressure was put on protecting wildlife and restrictions were placed on hunting. By 1899, ornithologist Frank M. Chapman, an active shotgun-toting participant himself who used side hunts to gather specimens, saw a desperate need for a change. He proposed and convinced a scattering of 27 counters across the country to count birds for a census instead of shooting them in mass quantities. Christmas Day 1900 saw the first Christmas Bird Count (CBC). This momentum would lead to the passing of The Migratory Bird Treaty Act in 1918 and other important conservation acts and laws. The CBC continues to this day.