JSTUART;
Good evening to you sir, I trust this finds you and yours well.
I feel that as a born and bred stubble jumper from Saskatchewan I should perhaps put a wee bit of history into our discussion so as the gentle readers from far away shores can perhaps have a modicum of understanding as to how the good folks in the Ministry of Wildlife came up with the whole "hunting suit" scheme.
My late father told me that until the early '60's in much of the province there simply was no big game left - not in the agricultural lands anyway. The moose were always in the Canadian Shield or Boreal Forest areas, as were some remnants of the elk herds and the mule deer were in the southern coulees and river bottoms. Likely the combination of agricultural based feed and no predators led to the whitetail populations booming and along with them the rise of Saskatchewan residents taking up big game hunting.
Now as I recall, hunting in the '60's and early '70's was a much different looking process than now. There was no baiting, no sitting in tree stands or blinds and for that matter no hunting for gender specific animals, much less any thought of a trophy rack. The reverse was actually true on that part of the equation as I recall a couple instances where men got in trouble from their wives for bringing home a "stinky old buck/bull"!
Anyway in our part of east central Saskatchewan the preferred hunting method was "pushing bush" where a group - typically a couple families would hunt together - would form a rough line and walk through wooded slough areas and posted shooters on the other side would shoot everything that ran out the other side.
The colored suits made it easier for the shooters to distinguish the pushers from the pushees I believe.
On that vein I should also add that rifles like the SMLE were considered a good deal because they held 10 rounds and Savage 99's and Winchester 94's were well loved because of the rapid rate of fire. My late father went from an SMLE to a 99 and finally a Winchester Model 100 with a 10 shot magazine because he, like my wife's late uncle Cy, were good enough shots that they held "shooter" positions in the group.
Interestingly the shooters would shoot for the group and the group would tag what had eventually become weighted down with enough lead that it quit running. Some guys hunted for years, never fired a shot but tagged out every season - that's how it was then.
Anyway as always I could go on for some time telling stories of folks who could shoot and those who could not - or perforated moose carcasses that looked like a harrow had fallen on them - but I will just get some morning coffee in me and stop I believe....
All the best to you all down in Australia sir.
Dwayne
