100 Years of Texas Waterfowl Hunting

By R.K. Sawyer, Hardcover 2012  The Decoys, Guides, Clubs, and Places, 1870s to 1970s Texas holds a prominent place in the history of America’s waterfowl market and recreational hunting industries. Aboriginal Indians followed by the Spanish, French, and Mexicans harvested waterfowl for sustenance or barter long before arrival of the Anglo-Americans. The Anglo’s were, however, the first to look upon nature as a commodity, finding a place for it initially in local then later national economies. Those who made their living by killing and selling waterfowl for profit were at first called huntsmen, and later market hunters.  The foundation of Texas market hunting was laid by privateer Jean Lafitte in the late 1810s and Stephen F. Austin’s colonists in the early 1820s, their survival, in part, dependent on oysters, fish, native game, and migratory flocks of ducks, geese, swans, and cranes. Waterfowl also fed armies, from the Texas Revolution to the Civil War. Post-Civil War railroad expansio