I've really wondered in the past on whether food shortages during World War Two impacted the amount of hunting during the war.
That is, I've wondered if there was more of it. As in this thread:
Lex Anteinternet: So you're living in Wyoming (or the West in genera...So what about World War Two?
The Rocky Mountain News for this day in 1946 provides some interesting insight, although not about World War Two, but just after it.
Lex Anteinternet: Tuesday, October 22, 1946. Operation Osoaviakhim : Operation Osoaviakhim was carried about by Soviet authorities in Germany. The Soviets rounded up over 2,500 German scientists, engineers an...
Tuesday, October 22, 1946. Operation Osoaviakhim
Operation Osoaviakhim was carried about by Soviet authorities in Germany. The Soviets rounded up over 2,500 German scientists, engineers and technicians, who had worked on German advanced technological matters, some of whom were attending a Soviet party in their honor, to be shipped to the USSR. The last of them would be returned to Germany in 1953.
HMS Saumarez and HMS Volage struck mines in the Straits of Corfu where they were demonstrating in opposition to Albanian intentions.
Answering a question I had earlier on this topic, there were in fact a lot more hunters in the field in 1946 due to the ongoing meat shortage.
The same front page recalls how cattle were once shipped by rail, instead of truck as they are today.
Last edition:
Monday, October 21, 1946. Law for the Special Establishment of Independent Cultivators
Labels: 1890s, 1895, 1940s, 1945, 1946, Agrarianism, Agriculture, Chiang Kai-shek, China, Chinese Civil War, Distributism, Japan, Japanese Empire, Occupation of Japan, Qing Dynasty, Taiwan
Ten times the regular number.
Now, that does indicate a number of things. The meat shortages of 1946 caused a ten fold jump in 1945. 1945, of course, was the last year of the Second World War. How did license issuances figure from 1940 to 1945? Was it higher than 1939?
We don't know the answer to that definitively, but we do know that at least some of that must have occured. It was a running 1945 gag in the cartoon Out Our Way, for instance.
Having said that, gasoline was rationed in World War Two December 1, 1942 until August 18, 1945 on a nationwide basis, and actually on a regional basis before that. The inability to buy gasoline would have cut against hunters being able to get out for big game, particularly for something like elk. Meat was rationed starting in 1943, but in the case of the US that was really a price control matter. In the UK, which we're not addressing, oddly enough food rationing was brought in as the British public suddenly had a lot more cash than they'd had before and were able to buy a lot more food than before, which is what brought in wartime rationing, rather than actual shortages.
Anyhow, in 1946 there was more hunting than usual, and, as the Rocky Mountain News allowed, for the "pot".
