A Southern Sportsman

Description

Tales of pursuing turkeys, deer, ducks, and partridges through the fields, forests, and swamps of South Carolina

Henry Edwards Davis (1879-1966) began his hunting adventures as a boy riding in the saddle with his father on foxhunts and deer drives in the company of Confederate cavalry veterans. Born on Hickory Grove Plantation in Williamsburg County, South Carolina, Davis developed his taste for the hunt at an early age. In later years he became a renowned sportsman and expert on sporting firearms. Published here for this first time after a four-decade-long hiatus, his collection of southern hunting tales describes his many experiences in pursuit of turkeys, deer, ducks, and partridges through the fields, forests, and swamps of South Carolina's Pee Dee region. His memoir offers a lucid firsthand account of a time before paved roads and river-spanning bridges had penetrated the rural stretches of Williamsburg and Florence counties, when hunting was still one of a southerner's chief social activities. With a sportsman's interest and a historian's curiosity, Davis intersperses his hunting narratives with tales of the region's rich history, from before the American Revolution to his times in the first half of the twentieth century.

Davis, a connoisseur of fine sporting firearms, also chronicles his personal experiences with a long line of rifles and shotguns, beginning with his first "Old Betsy," a fourteen-gauge, cap-lock muzzleloader, and later with some of the finest modern American and British shotguns. He describes as well a host of small-bore rifles, many of which he assembled himself, bedding the barrels and actions in hand-carved stocks.

Edited by retired lowcountry game warden Ben McC. Moïse and featuring a foreword by outdoor writer Jim Casada, Davis's memoir is a valuable account of hunting lore and historic firearms, as well as a record of evolving cultural attitudes and economic conditions in post-Reconstruction South Carolina and of the practices that gave rise to modern natural conservation efforts.

Sujets

• Personal Memoirs
• Sports
• Essays
• All American
• Market hunters
• Townsend Whelen
• W. W. Greener
• South Carolina Department of Natural Resources
• Big Pasture
• Westley Richards
• Game law
• Varmint rifle
• Star of the West
• All-America
• Foxhound
• Black vulture
• Darter
• Memoir
• Single-shot
• Recreation
• Chicken
• Mallard
• Accipiter
• Hunting
• Fox Hound
• Phasianidae

Informations

• Publié par: University of South Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 28 juillet 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9781611173574
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

A Southern Sportsman
Henry Edwards Davis, early 1920s
A Southern Sportsman
The Hunting Memoirs of Henry Edwards Davis
Edited by Ben McC. Mo se
Foreword by Jim Casada

The University of South Carolina Press
Published in Cooperation with the South Caroliniana Library with the Assistance of the Caroline McKissick Dial Publication Fund
2010 University of South Carolina
Introduction 2010 James A. Casada
Cloth edition published by the University of South Carolina Press, 2010
Ebook edition published in Columbia, South Carolina,
by the University of South Carolina Press, 2014
www.sc.edu/uscpress
23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The Library of Congress has cataloged the cloth edition as follows:
Davis, Henry E. (Henry Edwards), 1879-1966.
A Southern sportsman : the hunting memoirs of Henry Edwards Davis / edited by Ben McC. Mo se ; foreword by Jim Casada.
p. cm.
Published in cooperation with the South Caroliniana Library with the assistance of the Caroline McKissick Dial Publication Fund.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-57003-863-1 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Hunting-South Carolina. 2. Davis, Henry Edwards, 1879-1966.
I. Mo se, Ben McC. II. Title.
SK125.D38 2010
799.292-dc22
[B]
2009029592
FRONTISPIECE:
Henry Davis in the early 1920s, when he was a member of the Willcox and Willcox law firm of Florence, South Carolina. This portrait was used as an illustration for the biography of Davis in volume 4 of D. D. Wallace s The History of South Carolina (1934). Photograph from the collection of Jim Casada
ISBN: 978-1-61117-357-4 (ebook)
To A. M. Quattlebaum, E. M. Ervin, and F. M. Pearce, sportsmen of the finest type, this volume is dedicated as a token of esteem and friendship by the author.
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Foreword
Jim Casada
Preface
Henry E. Davis
Editor s Note
Ben McC. Mo se

1 My Native Heath
2 The Cap-Lock Muzzle-Loading Shotgun
3 The Rifles of My Youth
4 Guns of My Mature Years
5 Proficiency with a Rifle
6 Hunting Doves
7 Partridge Hunting
8 Deer Hunting in Williamsburg County, South Carolina
9 Deer Hunting in Florence County, South Carolina
10 Hunting Wild Turkeys with a Shotgun
11 Hunting Wild Turkeys with a Rifle
12 Duck Hunting
13 Squirrel Hunting
14 Wildcat Hunting
15 Crow Shooting
16 Hawk Shooting
17 Hunting the Hooters
18 Foxhunting

Index
ILLUSTRATIONS
Henry Edwards Davis, early 1920s
Lillian Erskine Davis, circa 1956
Henry and Lillian Davis, September 1956
Capt. John Watson and Emma Chandler Watson, circa 1870
James E. Davis, circa 1890
Old Betsy, Henry Davis s W. W. Greener shotgun
Webb Carroll with Henry Davis s G. E. Lewis Sons shotgun
Henry Davis with one of his rifles, circa 1950
Detail of one of Henry Davis s Winchester Model 52 rifles
Rifle target used by Henry Davis in 1956
Henry Davis, circa 1949
Gathering after a Florence County deer drive
Phil Wilkinson with original drawings from The American Wild Turkey
Trumpet yelper turkey call made by Henry Davis
Box yelper turkey call made by Henry Davis
Alex Quattlebaum Jr. with Henry Davis s custom-made W. W. Greener shotgun
E. M. Ervin of Florence
Henry Davis and James Ragsdale at Exchange Plantation
Letter from Henry Davis to Parker Whedon, 1963
Alexander McQueen Quattlebaum with guides
F. M. Pearce of Florence
Henry Davis, circa 1949
Maps
Detail from Henry Mouzon, Accurate Map of North and South Carolina (1775)
Detail from the map of Marion District, South Carolina, in Robert Mills, Atlas of South Carolina (1825)
Plat of Duck Ponds, the Pearce preserve in Florence County
FOREWORD
The name Henry Edwards Davis is one readily recognized by anyone familiar with the history and evolution of the sport of turkey hunting. This is thanks to the fact that his book, The American Wild Turkey, is generally recognized as the single finest treatment of the subject ever written. Published in 1949, it remains the cornerstone of any representative library on the sport and a source of interest and inspiration to turkey hunters at all levels of skill and experience. It is a classic in every sense of the word, knowledgeable as only a volume produced by a man with a lifetime of turkey-hunting experience could be, a pure joy to read, and a veritable gold mine of information. The original edition is a rare item cherished by collectors.
Davis was born and raised in South Carolina, and the vast majority of his hunting experiences, including those chronicled in this book, took place in the Palmetto State. His hunting interests ranged widely, and as the pages that follow reveal, he was a keen and astute student of the game he pursued as well as of the paraphernalia of sport. Davis was also a master craftsman, making fine furniture, designing tools, gunsmithing, and shaping turkey calls in which form followed function in exemplary fashion. (A trumpet yelper he made and personally used was sold a few years back for some fifty-five thousand dollars, the largest sum ever paid for an item of turkey-hunting memorabilia.)
His single greatest sporting passion, however, was unquestionably the quest for gobblers. He devoted much of his life and leisure time not only to hunting America s big game bird but also to writing about it and to investigating pioneering efforts in restocking and improving turkey habitats and related conservation efforts. Davis was a quintessential southern gentleman sportsman as well as an individual with the qualities of a Renaissance man, who ranks as one of the true giants of American turkey hunting.
Henry Edwards Davis was born on October 4, 1879, in the small crossroads town of Gourdin in Williamsburg County, South Carolina. He grew up on a plantation where cotton was still king, although the family raised cattle as well. From early boyhood he was a keen hunter and woodsman. The swamps and occasional patches of higher ground along the nearby Santee and Black rivers formed his regular haunts. It is interesting to note that the Santee was where another noteworthy Palmetto sporting scribe, Archibald Rutledge, had his hunting apprenticeship.

Henry Davis s wife, Lillian Erskine Davis, around 1956, sitting by the secretary desk he made for her. Davis constructed many pieces of fine furniture adapted from classical designs. Photograph from the collection of Webb Carroll
By the age of fourteen young Henry had completed his secondary education. For reasons that are unclear, his enrollment at Presbyterian College in Clinton, South Carolina, did not come until five years later. In the interim he worked on the family farm, but he also found ample time to hunt the game animals available in the area. During these impressionable years of adolescence he formed an attachment to the outdoors that was a hallmark of his long, extraordinarily full life.
Davis finished his undergraduate work at Presbyterian (graduating summa cum laude in 1902) and straightaway entered the University of South Carolina Law School, where he again proved to be a student of exceptional ability. On completing his studies he served as clerk to Charles Albert Woods of the South Carolina Supreme Court and then launched his own legal career. This came more or less simultaneously with his September 27, 1906, marriage to Lillian Erskine. From 1907 and for the remainder of his life he was qualified to practice law in all South Carolina state and federal courts, in the Fourth Federal Judicial District, and before the U.S. Supreme Court. In short he was an eminently qualified lawyer, and that would be his life s vocation. For the most part he worked as a corporate lawyer although he did serve a stint, from 1930 to 1934, as U.S. district attorney. Davis was also an author of considerable repute, a craftsman whose skills were truly exceptional, a scholar, a benefactor of area schools and libraries, an innovative horticulturist, and a devoted churchman.

Henry and Lillian Davis in Florence on their fiftieth wedding anniversary, September 1956. Photograph from the collection of Webb Carroll
For present purposes, though, his avocational interests linked with hunting merit the most attention. He hunted at every opportunity throughout the period from his marriage into the lean years of the Great Depression. In addition he began writing at least in part to help fund the education of his daughters, Maude Elizabeth and Virginia, both of whom studied at Winthrop College (now Winthrop University), which was at the time the South Carolina College for Women. A couple of decades ago Virginia, who is now deceased, laughingly told me that while turkey was a regular feature on the Davis family table, I never tasted a bit of tame turkey until I went away to college.
Davis and his wife settled in Florence, South Carolina, and that would be their home for the rest of their lives. A man who worked and hunted hard, Davis made a lifelong practice of being up before dawn and retiring shortly after dark. As might be expected from a lawyer, he brought painstaking care to whatever he did. Like many devoted sportsmen, he treasured fine guns and enjoyed both trading and tinkering. Among his collection at one time or another were classic British shotguns made by the likes of Purdey, Greener, and W. C. Scott. He also hunted a lot with rifles at a time when rimfires were still, in the eyes of many, the weapon of choice for turkey hunting. (They are now illegal for hunting turkeys in S