PROFESSIONAL HUNTERS

Usually associated with the Great Plains where they destroyed the herds of buffalo, professional hunters also operated in Iowa.

PROFESSIONAL HUNTERS. Hard winters led to deer threatening to eat farmers' valuable supplies of hay. Chicago buyers found Iowa game valuable. Such conditions are these led to a thriving business for professional hunters around Dubuque. One of the largest preparers of game in Dubuque was the company owned by Herman Brinkman. Chest-high piles frozen carcasses of deer were commonly seen ready for shipment to Chicago.

Professional hunters were also brought to the region for the timber wolves, fox, and coyotes which provided bounties. Bringing the wild animals so close to a settled area were such businessmen as that of William A. RYAN. Packing hogs on the levee resulted in sleigh loads of unusable parts which were hauled out on the frozen MISSISSIPPI RIVER and dumped. These acres of entrails lay exposed to the air until the ICE broke up in the spring and it was carried away by the floods. The smell of the rotting meat was spread by the winds for miles. It was considered dangerous for humans to attempt to cross the ice after dark. Many wolves were poisoned. At least one coyote was captured alive and kept in a cellar under a levee saloon. Placed in a ring, the wild animal stood off three bulldogs fighting in succession before it was finally killed. The contest caused such complaints that it was never repeated.

Cub-hunting of wolves and foxes provided a living for professional hunters. The female animal was tracked to her den. When attacked, she would usually flee leaving her young to be smoked, dug, or dynamited out of the ground. Knowing that the females returned to the same area to have young, hunters usually allow her to escape providing future income for them. One enterprising Wisconsin hunter found that he could manufacture wolf pelts out of groundhog skins. When finally caught, he received a three-year prison sentence. After that only live cubs or whole carcasses could be collected.

One of the well-known local hunters was a Native-American named Long John. He lived and operated his business from an open woodshed in the rear of a store on the northeast corner of 1st and Main STREETS and was always known for wearing a "swallowtail" coat and stovepipe hat and smoking a clay pipe. He trapped the sloughs in early fall and winter that lined both sides of Main Street south of 1st street to the levee. Dragging his canoe from one slough to another, he could harvest as many as 128 muskrats and occasionally a mink.

John Green was a former slave in Georgia who traveled north after the CIVIL WAR. Living on the southwest corner of 13th ad Jackson, he continued to hunt professionally. In the area of UNION PARK, Green netted pigeons using captive birds to attract the flock to grain scattered on the ground. Once caught the pigeons were expertly handled by boys who quickly killed crippled birds and tossed them into barrels. Unhurt birds were kept in crates. When the last bird's future was settled, the nets were reset. In an afternoon, Green and his crew could catch 1,500 live birds to be shipped east at ten cents cent. Two barrels of dead birds could be shipped to Chicago earning the hunter one dollar per barrel over the costs of freight and commission. Green usually kept from 2,000 to 5,000 birds on hand for gun-club shooting contests until the practice was outlawed.

Professional hunters were held in high regard by local farmers. Before the invention of seeders which sow grain and cover it in one operation, farmers had to sow fields by hand leaving the seed on the surface. Flock of pigeons attracted to the fields ate such quantities of seed that it was often necessary to sow grain 4-5 times to obtain a good yield from the crop. Pigeons were as much a threat to eastern Iowa farmers as grasshoppers were to farmers in western Iowa.

A third local hunter was John Chaloupka, a tailor by trade, who hunted for three months. He specialized in grouse, quail, ducks and woodcocks. If the flocks of ducks were strong, he would return from an afternoon of hunting with between 60 and 100. Mallards were sold in Chicago for twenty-five cents a pair. Canvasbacks earned slightly more.