Hi

I saw pictures of a central European hunting museum on another thread.

I recall visiting "Graff von Earbach's estate" in the Fatehrland last year and was allowed to visit his private hunting museum. Unfortunately no pictures were allowed. There was a hugh number of trophies but none that I have not seen in terms of measurements with the exception of oddities.

I am told he had the largest collection of roe buck trophies in the world.

Now with all the experience members on this forum, if we turn back the clock shall we say jsut after the second world war,

How different would game be as compared to game we are hunting today?

Would the trophy size be much different than what we are seeing ?

What speciies would we have seen and rarely seen today

Care to share?

I am not suggesting that some of our members were hunting at the end of the second war but you might be in pocession of pictures that we can share and discuss.

I have only been hunting for the past few years and people I have come across infequently drop comments suggesting that

"You should have started a few years ago son if you wanted a big one".................

IS THAT COMPLETELY TRUE?

Here are some old photos from Germany.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE2yHImWKvQ

My grandfather never hunted moose just shot/poached a couple for food after the war.
Moose were rather rare until about 1970.
There were lots of capercaille and black grouse, they filled sacks and salted in barrels.
Squirrels was hunted for fur with dogs.(the dogs was later trained and selected for birds and moose insted).
If a forrestworker saw a fox on his way to work he took about tree days to hunt for if instead. About two month salory for the skin.
Otter an wolf was hunted they was once almost gone but are coming back lately.
New species in northern sweden (hunted):
Roedeer
Beaver
Bisam
Mink (Mustela vison)
Mårdhund, Marderhound (2007?)
Reddeer in some locations

New in huntable numbers:
Bear
Lynx Lynx
Wolf new for hunt in 2010

Come on boys

Lets have a report from each country in Europe and to make this a true European forum

Thank you Nordic 2 to start it off.

How big are the bears in Sweeden

Can a visitor hunt one ?

CAn you recommend an outfitter ?

Well there would have been much fewer deer running around in the UK. Muntjac would not have spread anywhere near as widely as they are now.

In fact I think the expansion of big game numbers is an EU wide phenomenon if I am not mistaken.

More hedgerows though and more (wild) small game I believe.

Can someone who was around then expand on this?

Quite a lot has changed. I am not an expert so i can't tell you any hard facts, but my general observation tells me that the bigger species are gaining in number and the smaller ones are getting more and more scarce. The main quarry in the days past was hares, variuos birds and so on. Today there are so few hares around that the word "extinction" comes to mind. In contrast, there is far far Far more moose, boar, roe deer and red deer around.
For example: the hunting diary of Nikolaus von Oettinger covering years 1900-1938 states that during this time he didn't shoot a single moose and only 19 roe deer. Days with over 50 hares, 30-40 pheasants and other birds were the norm. The diary of A. Pilar von Pilchau from 1898-1914 states that he shot a single moose in 1909, and only about 20 roe deer a year.
Both of them owned several very large estates.
Today, only about 1000 hares are shot in the entire country per year. Bigger species are a lot more plentyful: in 2008. over 18000 roe deer, 4200 moose and 20000 boars were shot. Back in von Oettinger's time you would have been very lucky if you saw a single boar in your lifetime.

Almost exactly as Pric65 says here except for moose (we don't have them here).

Huge numbers of hares - hunters didn't shoot them on their way out but only on their return - geting 3 in 1/2 hour was nothing to write home about. Roes were almost non existent, not to mention red deer, boars (shot to extinction under Maria Theresia in 18th century), bears, wolves... Nowadays roes exchanged numbers with hares, red's are on a huge expansion as well as boars and up to a point wolves as well...bears are held on a sustainable scale - still many more around than 50 years ago. Hare is a high priced trophy since they are RARE...predators were kept short - fur had its price. Now many species are not huntable anymore such as capercaile, black grouse, quail, grouse....Prior WWI even big game was shot with shotguns.

P.S. Both WW's had huge impact on game numbers.

In Gertmany we have an explosion in wild boars
(Schwarzwild). Here is the boarstatistic



http://www.jagd-online.de/date...ten/jahresstrecken/?
meta_id=267


Big problems we have with Marderhund (Enok) an Coon, they get more and more (look at "Neozonen".
Partridge is very poor, hare too.

http://www.jagd-online.de/datenfakten/jahresstrecken/

I have the game books and diaries in which my grandfather and his best friend wrote down every shoot and hunt they went on from the time they were posted out to Egypt and India in the early 1920s as young officers in the British Army to the time they put up their guns in the early 1950s. They both shot tiger and leopard in India as well as a diverse gamebag of duck, snipe, black buck: game large and small.
When they came back to UK they shot red and black grouse in Wales and grey partridge was the staple game bird on all the syndicate and farmers' shoots in the south of England. A totally different hunting experience from ours and a salutary lesson in game management. They enjoyed the last of the wild game in UK and the last of the large dangerous game in India. However, they failed to conserve it and we must not make the same mistakes.