| What is in a name we asked some time ago when we called ourselves Mid-America Game Bird Association. That name reflected the four founding hunters that were quail hunters and the very start of the organization with the fundamental purpose for its existence, that to hunt game birds. In this case pheasants were lumped into quail although back then true dog hunting game bird hunters hunted quail only. Pheasants were left to other less sophisticated bird hunters.
Being a transplant to the central mid-west from a highly religious educational background of blue book test answers quite different than the multiple choice offered so much around here we were graded not only on the correctness of the answer, we were also graded on sentence structure, spelling and grammar in general. To write such common central mid-west colloquialisms well illustrated by making compound words such as whitetail, cottontail and gamebird would have made a passing grade a hard prospect. Back home upland gamebirds were called simply “game birds” leaving out the "upland" piece. In our case game birds mean to separate those that may be hunted from other birds such as song birds, yard birds (chickens – a southeastern colloquialism) or any other birds other than those that may be shot. It was my uncles 50 year ahead of me that used the words “game birds” and it appears to be my generation that uses “upland birds”. Who is correct is hard to say, as there are more upland birds than those we hunt. Game birds may be more correct as its distinction is inclusive of all birds that may be hunted and excludes all other birds that while present within a region are left to non-human predation.
Our current name, Mid-America Hunting Association, reflects our recognition that while we may never forget our roots as upland bird (game bird) hunters we do offer and in fact had long before that name change offered other hunting. That other hunting even though it included other birds such as waterfowl and turkey was not perceived as such by those reading the game bird moniker. For when it comes to game birds most will agree it means uplands and even though uplands precludes wetlands and does include wooded turkey habitat, turkey were not considered part of the game bird hunting we offered. And, of course we have deer hunting, Mule and Whitetail. For us we will remain as Mid-America Hunting Association in spite of the recent trend by some of the more costly upland bird hunting magazines touting such articles as upland game, upland game bird forecasts, on so on. Perhaps these editors are researching 50 to 75 year old articles trying to develop ever more “new” reading of a subject that has a far greater range of written word than actual reality. I can understand their motivation, for it is tough to have something of relevance in a magazine other than one more “…there I was hunting…” story for readers to consume as justification for the paid advertisers. If there is a point to this article it is that we at Mid-America Hunting Association. Throughout our history we have offered private lease land hunting for the do it yourself hunter. In this case the self guided bird dog loving upland bird or game bird hunter. We seek hunters that want to simply enjoy the hunt rather than those that seek other than the tranquility of a good day in the field. We say this line of thought many times in this website and yet we still get calls form "hunters" wanting to know how many limits they will get. To those hunters my response is zero.
|
|
|
|
