One has to imagine the hunting was pretty good in the early to mid 40s due to the war and so many men not at home. Those that were may have been concentrating on the war effort. Any thoughts from your family about those times and lack of hunters macc?
The Little Bellingham Camp was in full bore from about the early 1930,s through about the 1960,s, like I have mentioned before the camp started in 1917, it consisted of my great grandparents, a couple cousins and that was it and it still continues today with only a couple camps and around 9 or 10 people but was at its peaks in population during the 30,s, 40,s , 50,s and 60,s. During those times there was my family along with about 5 other friends of my great grandparents along with their familys, my dad said during its hay-days there was about 15-20 camps with about 100 people(give or take) spread over about a 5 acre area, that was Little Bellingham. Yes, I do remember my dad saying that during the war years the camp was thinned out a bit, my grandpa(my dads dad) in fact was away at war along with many other of the men that were of age, many women including my dads mom were in Seattle building airplanes. I remember my dad saying that my great grandparents would bring him over to camp during those times so he could still go hunting, my dad was around 10 during the war. My dad said that a lot of the women in camp still came over to hunt even though their husbands were away at war, I told a story on here awhile back about one of those fellas, his name was Henry Luth. My dad used to tell stories of a lot of those women at camp(I posted some pictures on here a few years ago) and how tough they were, a lot of them were family members, aunts, cousins, nieces of great grandpa and grandma, they would kill, drag, gut and cut up there own deer and help anyone else who needed help. There were a few of the fellas that never made it back to deer camp, I think I remember dad saying 2 were killed in action, they were the sons of friends of grandma and grandpa. Back then they would go over to set up their camps 2 weeks prior to the opening, they would scout, hike and fish and they would break down their camps usually a week or two after the season closed, they just loved being over there, hiking and scouting. They discovered many, many migration routes and staging areas back in those early days, some of which were actually learned by the Game Department directly from my family.