Osprey, like eagles, hawks and other raptors, were once hunted for sport, eliminated because they were deemed unwanted predators, or suffered declines from pesticides like DDT. Conservation brought them back. Today federally protected, they are among the many wildlife marvels in Greater Yellowstone and beyond. Photo courtesy RoySmith/CC BY-SA 4.0
EDITOR'S NOTE: When we look back, how are we to judge people from different earlier eras whose actions reflected the "values" of their time but which would not meet the ethical, moral and enlightened standards of decency and respect today? This is not a question posed about people labeled villains in hindsight, for obvious reasons, but as in the case of Dave Hall's ancestor below, he identified as a conservationist but who was not ecologically aware of just how thin the margins of finite nature can be. Will future generations be peering at us and asking, 'What were they [we] thinking?'—Mountain Journal
by Dave Hall
On May 22, 1854, my great, great grandfather — the sporting artist Thomas Henry Snow — shotgunned an osprey on the Back River in Topsham, Maine. It was a Monday, and it was very warm.
I know this because I have his sporting journal, passed from one generation to the next after he died in 1908.
He killed an osprey — the great fish hawk. And 14 bitterns. What were you thinking?
What were you thinking?
The previous fall, on Friday, November 11, 1853, in Lunenburg, Massachusetts, he shot a wild pigeon — a passenger pigeon.
The passenger pigeon, thought to have once numbered in the billions across North America, would be all but extinct 50 years later. The last pigeon — Martha by name — died on September 1, 1914 at the Cincinnati Zoo.
What were you thinking?
Hall's great-great grandfather Thomas H. Snow in the marshes outside Boston, late 1800s
One hundred and seventy years after these hunts — this morning in fact — a mallard exploded from her nest as I walked the banks of a legendary Greater Yellowstone river, fly rod in hand. Eight eggs. Eight perfect chalky-gray eggs. As I continued upstream, I reflected on these events and how a passion for the natural world can be passed from a Boston businessman and sportsman to his great, great grandson.
But please, Tom Snow, what were you thinking on all those nineteenth century hunts?
I’ve always rationalized this as being in a different era, a period in America when wildlife was endlessly abundant (or so it was thought), and birds were collected to be stuffed, studied, displayed, and painted. Note John James Audubon.
Later in the morning, sitting on the river’s edge longing for the mayfly hatch to begin, I wondered if my great, great granddaughter — living in a very different Bozeman or Jackson Hole in the late twenty second century, will be asking of me. And all of us:
“What were you thinking?”
“What were you thinking?”
About Dave Hall
Dave Hall is an artist best known for painting Greater Yellowstone landscapes, especially its soothing river courses. He and his wife, Becky, split their year between Salt Lake City and Last Chance, Idaho. Born and raised in New England, he has lived in the Northern Rockies since the late 70s and has had a home in Greater Yellowstone for 25 years. He is a graduate of the University of New Hampshire and Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Dave is an avid angler and is the author of Moving Water: An Artist’s Reflections on Fly Fishing, Friendship and Family. He also serves on the board of Mountain Journal. Read more about Hall and his art by clicking here.
