Yes – it’s autumn in the Southern Hemisphere now. In the Northern Hemisphere the shooting season will begin in August/September.
In the winter of 1949 Ernest Hemingway wrote Across the River and into the Trees, a novel which includes a description of duck hunting in the (then) waterfowl abundant waters of the Venetian Lagoon and the Po Delta. The book describes how to be successful on a duck shoot one really needs to be prepared to get up early on cold, dark mornings. Hemingway writes that a hunter’s ‘eyes become accustomed to the gentle predawn light’ so much so that by the time ‘the burnished orb of the sun lifts itself above the horizon there’s a pile of feathered carcasses in the bottom of the boat.’ Hemingway had first learned to shoot ducks in his childhood at the family’s holiday cottage in Michigan in the 1900s. Duck shooting is often seen as an entry for children to the world of hunting.
Another North American adventurer who first learned to hunt by shooting ducks was Daniel Boone of Pennsylvania in the 1740s. He would later become famous for transgressing the King’s Proclamation Line of 1763 which forbade British settlement west of the Appalachian watershed. The land was deemed Indian territory following the conclusion of the Seven Years War by which France had ceded its enormous territories in North America such as Canada, Illinois and Louisiana to Great Britain. It was an area four time the size of the British North American colonies. Although Indian warriors had fought on both sides during the war, the French had been particularly adept at recruiting Indian allies mainly out of necessity with the French territories having far fewer European settlers compared to the British. The King’s Proclamation, therefore, was an effort to allay fears in the minds of the Indians that with the authority of the king of France now being replaced by that of the king of Great Britain, their rights would, however, not be eroded but indeed would rather be enhanced. Peace treaties signed in Paris and Royal proclamations issued in London, however, did not reflect the reality on the ground. European hunters, trappers and settlers continued to range west of the Appalachian mountains and indeed west of the Kentucky River. One such was Daniel Boone who even gave his name to the Boonesborough settlement in the Kentucky country. Subsequent friction between settlers and natives would see treaties repeatedly qualified and eroded, firstly by the British Empire and later by the United States, right across North America until the high ideals of the King’s Proclamation would be long forgotten.
Today Kentucky is known not so much for its duck hunting but for its excellent stud farms. Indeed, the Kentucky Derby takes place on the first Saturday in May. Dubbed ‘the greatest 2 minutes in sport’ (and similarly controversial as England’s Grand National due to the number of horse deaths) coincidentally today's race sees one of the runners not a mandarin duck but a Mandarin Hero.
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