Hunting has been a fixture of North American life from long before the founding of the United States. Before and after the coming of European settlers, hunting game was an important aspect of Native American life. Jamestown founder John Smith relates the earliest recorded instance of European hunting activity: 148 wildfowl killed with three shots. We have been a nation of hunters ever since.

Hunting in the United States is usually divided into three types, based on the motive of the hunter: subsistence hunting, market hunting, and sport hunting. A hunter may have more than one motivation. For example, a subsistence hunter, focused on acquiring food, might also enjoy the sport of tracking game, and most sport hunters also eat their kills. However, a particular type of hunting tended to predominate at different points in our national history. Colonial times through the middle of the 19th century marked the heyday of subsistence hunting, especially in frontier areas. The coming of railroads in the West ushered in the main period of market hunting, which lasted until the large herds necessary for profitability were eliminated around 1900. Sport hunting in the West has been pursued from before the Civil War-era until the present, first by aristocrats and military officers, and later by the broad middle class.

The photography of hunters and hunting also arises from multiple motivations and can be examined from multiple perspectives. First, there is the distinction between personal and commercial photography. All the stereographs in this exhibit were manufactured to be sold as a commercial product. When viewing the stereographs, ask yourself why the photograph was taken and what might motivate a consumer to purchase a particular image; what makes one image commercially viable while another is not? Most of the non-stereograph images in the exhibit were taken for personal reasons, usually to commemorate a particular hunting trip, game trophy, or firearm. What is depicted in each of these photographs was important to someone. Try to figure out why a particular photograph was taken.

Second, the photographs can be viewed based on subject matter. This selection of hunting photographs reveals four main subject categories: portraits, hunters with their kills, hunting camps, and posed commercial photographs. Portraits include single and group shots with various guns and trophies, usually after a trip to the taxidermist. The images of hunters with their kills have more immediacy. Hunters, sometimes still dirty from the hunt, pose with their recently harvested game animals. Photos of hunting camps often also show dead game, but the campsite, tent, cooking arrangements, and the hunters themselves are the focus of these images. Posed commercial photographs encompass the stereographs mentioned above, but also in one instance include an image created to advertise a particular brand of ammunition.

Finally, the photographs can be examined based on format. The exhibit features a variety of photographic formats including an ambrotype, tintypes, mounted photographic prints, and several kinds of stereographs. Where appropriate, exhibition labels highlight information about these different photographic formats.