I have a question about "foraging".

[Republican Blues]

You'd think that an army moving through the country would scare up scads of deer along the way, too, but I never heard of it mentioned as a food source, either.
Is it also possible that the streams were not exactly overflowing with scaley edibles? The folks of the time were not known as conservationists and were destroying natural habitats as fast as they could find them - gold mining in particular in N GA likely destroyed the natural ecosystems in that area. The method used at the time was to wash the dirt from the hills and sluice it over mercury into the existing streams - There wouldn't be any fish in those streams today if the Government didn't stock them yearly.

Thats cause the men would be charged the cost of the cartridge.. and shooting tended to cause a party somebody might not wannna have

 

[ole]

And, one might suppose the sound of an approaching army might cause the deer to leave the area. Deer are shy, elusive and crafty. Some crafty hunter may have gone ahead of the noise of an army and bagged one, but would this have made the news?

Hey, Bobby. Follow you on Facebook.

 

[diane]

You'd think that an army moving through the country would scare up scads of deer along the way, too, but I never heard of it mentioned as a food source, either.
Is it also possible that the streams were not exactly overflowing with scaley edibles? The folks of the time were not known as conservationists and were destroying natural habitats as fast as they could find them - gold mining in particular in N GA likely destroyed the natural ecosystems in that area. The method used at the time was to wash the dirt from the hills and sluice it over mercury into the existing streams - There wouldn't be any fish in those streams today if the Government didn't stock them yearly.

When Jackson made his flank movement at Chancellorsville, the first sign of it the enemy had was the game bounding out of the woods! Deer, rabbits, you name it came bolting past the 11th Corps - some men tried to catch some of them. What struck me as strange about that was nobody seemed to think about why these critters were doing this! For aquatic game, I don't know but what a large army or cavalry crossing a stream would disturb the wildlife up and down enough so that there would be little to catch. True enough the observation about mining and farming - not environmentally minded, those folks!

 

[Booner]

The 1st Mo Infantry (CSA) captured a small fort held by the 17th Iowa infantry which contained a sutler's tent. One of the Mo infantry soldier's saw a large open trunk, and thinking that there had to something of value left to be had, dived into the trunk with both hands. He secured a handful of fish hooks, which took him several hours to get all of them dislodged from his hands.

So sutlers (at least the northern sutlers), did carry the item for sale.