Stalking Horse: a person or thing that is used to conceal someone’s real intentions. I heard this phrase used to describe a tactic used by Woolworths Australia, who installed a digital mirror at some self-serve check outs. They said that they were not retaining any images, and if customers don’t like it, customers were free to use the staffed check outs instead. Then it turned out they were indeed (allegedly) retaining customer images after all. More literally: the stalking horse is a screen (traditionally made in the shape of a horse) behind which a hunter may stay concealed when stalking prey.
Georg Pencz, The Hunter Caught by the Hares, c. 1535
Slovenly Peter, or, Cheerful stories and funny pictures for good little folks illustrated by Hoffman HeinrichThe Juvenile almanack, or, Series of monthly emblems c1822-1824Schnick schnack trifles for the little-ones by Oscar Pletsch 1867 play huntingWinchester The Rifle That Will Stop Him 1909. Gun advertisements are always disturbing, I guess.National Sportsman Magazine February 1924 (cover detail). Notice he’s grabbing a tree rather than his gun, creating an optical illusion.National Sportsman Magazine September 1936Hunting & Fishing Magazine October 1938September 1934 BOYS’ LIFE MAGAZINE cover art by WILLIAM SOARENational Sportsman Magazine November 1928 by Anton Otto Fischer (February 23, 1882 – March 26, 1962) Trending INTO MAINE illustratred by N.C. Wyeth 1938Elenore Plaisted Abbott (1875 – 1935), The Monkey Resumed His Place, ca. 1914Nikolay Ustinov from the life story of the Russian journalist & naturalist, Mikhail PrishvinThe Carnaval A Book Of Poems by Sef Roman Semenovich and Leonid Roshidaev 1994
Charles James Folkard (6 April 1878 – 26 February 1963)
Cover by Thé Tjong-Khing for a Dutch edition (1960) of Daudet’s TARTARIN DE TARASCON1935 July OPEN ROAD FOR BOYS MagazineThree Jovial Huntsmen, 1974 Caldecott Honor Book, Susan JeffersBonomi Edward Warren – Sportsman and dog on a wooded pathA Walk in the Country, 1935 by Norman Rockwell
Whenever I see pheasant hunting I think of Danny The Champion of the World by Roald Dahl, an influential middle grade novel from my childhood, and unlike the other middle grade novels Dahl wrote.
Abe Birnbaum New Yorker cover pheasant
New Yorker cover hunting by Garrett Price
Illustration by A.B.Frost wood engraved for Harpers, 1883 huntingMichal Elwiro Andriolli (1836 Wilno – 1893 Naleczow) for The Last of the Mohicans 1881The Trapper (1921) Rockwell KentArthur-Fitzwilliam-Tait-The-Life-of-a-Hunter-A-Tight-Fix-bearPETER-UND-DER-WOLF-1958-Frans-Haacken-huntersmid-19th-century-plate-of-hunting-scenemid-19th-century-plate-of-hunting-scene-2Vojtěch-Kubašta-1914-1992-The-Day-Of-The-Bison-Hunt-pop-up-book-1962-4Where’s that kid going with that rifle? I’d like (not really) to see Joan Walsh Anglund depict the moment of slaughter.
Charles Edmund Brock from ‘The Knights of the Flowers’ circa 1890
Frank C. Bensing (1893-1993) c1950, ‘Three Men Hunting’House & Garden Magazine October 1930. Two men hunt for something, but who knows what? Are we supposed to think that’s a gun? The flowers in the foreground suggest instead a rake. They are probably hunting for flowers.Hunting & Fishing Magazine December 1937 Where there’s food you’ll find game, bullet advertisementHunting & Fishing Magazine March 1937 adverisement for bullets KleanboreNational Sportsman Magazine September 1936 Upland Hunting Fishing Goose advertisement for Nitro Express bullets
These bullets look disturbingly like lipsticks.
Hunting & Fishing Magazine February 1934 bullet advertisement
Header illustration: The Story of Siegfried illustrated by Howard Pyle (American, 1853-1911)
