“A hundred years ago, hunting was scarcely ever looked upon as a sport, or recreation. It was a necessity. The large game that we never see now, except in certain localities and remote sections, were common nearly everywhere. The settler’s sheep and pigs and calves often suffered from the nightly forays of wolves, bears and panthers, and the sturdy pioneer was often obliged to face the fierce denizens of the forest to protect his stock and many adventures and conflicts were experienced that the outside world knows not of.”

Those words were penned by Jasper T. Jennings for the December 1908 issue of Hunter Trader Trapper magazine. Jennings wrote that the early 1800s marked the golden age of hunting. He had no idea that, in 40 years, another golden age would begin as game populations flourished in places where they had been missing for decades.

When I was a kid, several old-timers passed their old hunting and fishing magazines on to me. I remember a pile of 20-year old Sports Afield, Field and Stream and Outdoor Life magazines that I carted home one day. The stories from O’Connor, Trueblood and Park smelled of mildew, but they reeked of adventure.

My friend Jim Dickerson is a collector of hunting items. He recently inherited a box of Hunter Trader Trapper magazines and brought me a stack, to help me remember.

Change was rampant in the early 1900s. Albert Einstein presented his quantum theory of light in 1908, the same year that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were (reportedly) killed and Geronimo died. And the Boy Scout movement was founded in England at the same time President Teddy Roosevelt declared parts of the Klamath Basin the first federal wildlife refuge.

Hunter Trader Trapper provided glimpses into life a century ago. At the time, the 30-06 round was only two years old and had not gained much traction among hunters. The 38-55 (a blackpowder round) was a popular cartridge. A used 1894 Winchester fetched the princely sum of $12. A 12-gauge double cost $15.85 in a time when the average U.S. worker made between $200 and $400 a year.

A sportsman could put a few dollars back in the family budget by hunting and gathering. Advertisements pled for skunk, opossum and raccoon hides and ginseng root. A hunter could buy ferrets trained to drive rabbits, or live jackrabbits to stock a preserve, or a silencer to keep from alarming the neighbors when shooting rabbits close to home. All this for 10 cents an issue.

A C.M. Holcomb from Douglas County, Oregon, wrote to report fair trapping and fine hunting with “some few elk, plenty of deer, bear, cougar and bobcats, a few wolves and coyotes, beaver, otter, mink, coon, skunk, civet cat and marten.” He went on to say that “the North Umpqua is the best trout stream in Oregon.”

HTT published letters from boys and girls as young as 10 that described their hunting and trapping efforts. Their stories reminded me of my grandfathers, one from Idaho and one from Minnesota, who probably read similar magazines.

As young boys in the 1920s and ’30s, they hunted for necessity, not sport. My dad’s dad, from the time he was old enough to keep a rifle barrel out of the dirt, spent afternoons hunting rabbits to feed his younger brothers and sisters. My maternal grandfather shot squirrels and pheasants for the table with his single-shot Stevens .22.

Neither one hunted deer. There was not enough big game in their areas to make it worthwhile. That all changed in the late 1940s and 1950s, when timber harvest, predator control, better game laws and scientific management brought back the mule deer, blacktails, whitetails, elk, antelope and wild turkey.

Times and politics change, and game populations go through cycles of abundance and scarcity. Sometimes we hunt for necessity, sometimes for sport, but we are always stewards of the resource, making use of the animal and managing for the young boys and girls that follow our footsteps. Today, the Internet keeps us up to date like never before.

The modern sportsman, young or old, can connect through sites like www.ifish.net, www.sportsmanstradingpost.com, www.nrahuntersrights.org, www.bivwak.com, www.pursuetheoutdoors.com, www.steelheader.net, www.hook.tv, www.fisheyesoup.com, www.monstermuleys.com and many others. And state game and fish agencies continually upgrade their site content.

Oregon has a new interactive map (www.dfw.state.or.us/resources/hunting/map) that features wildlife areas, refuges and lands open to hunting through the Access and Habitat programs. Each area is tagged with a bubble that provides information about the species, size of the area, access periods and special regulations. The ODFW site is a user-friendly connection, especially valuable for those new to hunting or new to the state.

Interactive maps and hunting and fishing blogs may be the latest ways for sportsmen to connect, but the concept is as old as art on a cavern wall.

Going through the stack of Hunter Trader Trappers, I found that the cover price climbed in the early 1920s. Rising transportation and printing costs drove up the per-copy price to 15 cents, then 20, then 25 cents. The more things change, the more they stay the same.