The Historical Medieval Huntsman

[Music] hello and welcome back to another Parry this video today we've got exciting new content to bring you we're uh dressed up as you might be able to tell in something that is not my regular attire and we are out in the field quite literally cuz we're actually standing in a field and we're going to be talking about a historical topic that is of great interest to me personally and should be of relatively good interest to you and so if you want to comment something right now go ahead and guess what I'm supposed to be dressed as as if the title and thumbnail didn't give that away but if you haven't guessed it already today we are talking about the historical archetype of the medieval Huntsman the medieval Huntsman often times mistaken for the fantasy counterpart of the Ranger uh which is not actually a real historical precedent at least in most cases there might be sometimes where you would have a military Scout and there would be Crossover with some sort of an Outdoorsman but in real life medieval history the Huntsman was very common and this was a role that was appointed by the nobility or the royalty depending on the region in which we're talking and this was a profession so it was typically something that was a earned office based on knowledge and ability and also political appointments so if you were friendly with the nobility it was more likely that you were going to get appointments like this but it did require a lot of great specialized knowledge about hunting tracking woodsmanship forestry and uh law enforcement which we'll get into later typically members of this class would be part of the Gentry sometimes although rarely they could be chosen from the Y omry and in specific circumstances they might even be chosen from the nobility but like I said it was an appointed office and so a lot of that had to do with who you know not so much what you know now the outfit I have on and we'll get into the specific pieces of this uh but this is an accurate representation of what you would see very frequently in the medieval period specifically between the 1200s to the mid-1400s for uh what a huntsman and or Forester might wear now the medieval period isn't uniform so if we look at Art which is our main indication for historical clothing in the medieval period uh a lot of times you'll see vibrant colors and that will change depending on the era that you're looking at there's a lot of Reds and blues but typically when you're looking at anything as a group that is a hunt and not the hunt so a hunt is something that would be guided by the local Huntsmen or whatever they were called in the area uh and that would be the nobility taking their friends and buddies Along on a hunt and they'd be looking for a stag or a boar or something like that and the Huntsman part of their job was to know where these animals would be located so you see a lot of these artistic renderings where there's people tramping through the woods in these very large groups in colorful clothing that was an event that is not indicative of the average clothing that You' see a medieval Huntsman wear throughout all of the medieval period when we look at artistic renderings although we will have examples like that the most common theme is dark Woody colors Browns and greens very common for a medieval Huntsman duties of a medieval Huntsman uh would include things like obviously hunting which shouldn't be that surprising and that could be whatever regionally would be local and it was for the nobility's table and or Larder so part of the operation would be providing that wild game that the nobility needed they would often times have rights granted to them which would include harvesting for their own table now these were not Universal and they weren't unlimited typically it would be you'd be allowed to harvest a certain amount of a certain type of animal for your own table so it was a perk that most people in the medieval period were not allowed but the reason why you got such a good perk as uh as well as a residence provided for you and typically a pretty good monthly salary was because the medieval Huntsman was a very busy person this was not a do nothing job it wasn't playing around in the woods like modern Hunters you were constantly busy so like I already said the most obvious role was supplying meat for the nobleman's table but there were a lot of other roles for the medieval hun patrolling the local Woods typically any of the forests within the fief that they were assigned to uh or were working for depending on what terminology you want to use they had to be aware of where animals were so they could lead nobility on hunts when they were going they also had to be aware of any dangerous predators in the area and they were responsible for controlling them so if you had wolves slaughtering sheep or killing people or if you had a wild boar that was getting particularly dangerous often times that would be the huntsman's responsibility to take care of them so they had to be experts at not just hunting prey but also taking out Predators but in addition to those obvious things supplying meat to the table taking care of predators and leading the nobility on hunts they also had things that a lot of people might not think about one of their main jobs was actually policing the forest a major problem in the medieval period was poaching and the Huntsman was the person who dealt with long enforcement in that regard they had to enforce the king's or the Lord's laws about who could take what and now this is a complicated job that required a lot of specialized knowledge because depending on the area peasants were sometimes allowed to hunt or forage for acorns or bring their pigs into the forest so they could eat acorns and fatten up for the fall there were certain regions that would allow members of the yry and sometimes the peasantry to harvest small game like peasants or rabbits but certainly not deer in most cases or any other types of L game like four and so one of the main tasks of the Huntsmen was actually ironically law enforcement they would constantly be looking for poachers and this also leads to another ironic twist in the fact that what I'm wearing was not only common for Huntsmen but also common for outlaws which is where the mythology and or folk tale however you want to look at it of Robin Hood comes in typically in the traditional Tales Robin Hood was a member of The yry Who eventually turns to banditry and we get the stereotypical dress of him look looking a lot like a medieval Huntsman and that makes sense because he dealt in the woods and so when you go into the woods you wear what works in the woods and speaking of what works in the woods let's go through the items that make up my Huntsman Ensemble and so starting we're going to go with the obvious things first thing of course is a bow this would be the most common hunting Implement in the medieval period that being said sometimes a crossbow or types of throwing weapons slings would be used but the most common thing in the medieval period was a bow and we're not talking about a war bow a 110 lb English Longbow for example would be a very bad hunting bow most hunting bows looked a lot like this this is of course a modern American Longbow uh it's a traditional American Longbow but it's modern built and so it looks a little bit different than a medieval one would but this is a good approximation of what a medieval hunting bow would look like typically they were weighted right around 45 to 50 lbs for a draw weight because that is pretty much ideal for hunting most game you can easily take down a deer with 45lb bows with a Broadhead and while using a field tip you could easily take down small game like rabbits without damaging them too much or you could use blunt tips to take down birds and bird's nests to get things out of them so it was a very versatile draw weight that made more sense and since Huntsmen are more likely to hold their shots than wartime archers you didn't want something that was ridiculously powerful anyway so this for example is a 50 lb bow in addition to a bow most Huntsmen of course would have a knife of some sort because when you kill an animal you're going to need to clean it at the very least and if you were living in a poer thief where the Huntsman job might include Butchery you might also be skinning and butchering the animals but in most thiefs especially larger or richer ones that would be the job of a butcher what you would not see on a huntsman at least almost ever is any sort of sidearm so it would be extraordinarily rare to see a huntsman clanking around the woods with an arming sword on their belt this is fantasy this is not medieval reality the only time you would see some sort of a sword that a huntsman would be using is if they lived in an area where bores were predominant and those swords that they would use were called bore swords if you are a fan of the game Kingdom Come Deliverance in that game they have a class called hunting sword those are a very close approximation to what bore swords looked like they were a defensive weapon to use against bores so that's the only time where you'd see any sort of a sword being used by Huntsman so the idea being you don't want anything that's going to be making noise or grabbing any branches while you're going by the other obvious piece of equipment that you may be able to notice is quiver so a container to hold arrows which you need for your boat all this is fairly straightforward at the time wooden shafts would been most common I have bamboo again it's another modern approximation using better technology and materials for the same effect uh outside of that we have our clothing so starting from the bottom and moving up we have our soft leather boots these were ideal they didn't have buckles at the time because again we're just adding in more noise and uh anything that might reflect as something to avoid so tie up low-l boots were the most common for medieval Huntsmen during this period especially ankle high in fact these might even be a little bit too high for reality because most often it'd be about that tall uh but these would have still been used at the time just maybe not as common uh the idea there just being the more natural your foot placement can be the more silent you're able to be in the woods so there's an advantage after that we have plain britches or hosen which is what I'm wearing usually again like I said a dark color green or brown something that's going to help you in the woods after that some sort of a tunic maybe a gamson depending on the weather and I guess how dangerous your region is uh again dark colors green or brown optionally you can see I have a leather jerkin on a jerkin serves two rolls if it's of a adequate thickness they were protective and so they would help against bores and things like that that might try to gore you with their sharp tusks a stout leather jerkin could help save your life in that case uh but in other cases and more common they help against clinging briers or any other types of thorns from tearing into your clothing and flesh and most importantly and probably most commonly they provide a great deal of warm so they're nice to wear on your chest to keep your chest warm when you're out in the weather moving up from there you can see that I have a hood on and this brings us to that aspect of it now a cloak is again a part of fantasy when it comes to a huntsman or a Forester you would not want something long and dangling hanging off you while you're trying to make it through the woods cuz that would just catch everything uh it may be good for hiding in the shadow but it wouldn't be great for trying to stalk a deer a hood however is very practical namely again the role uh main purposes of these are providing shade for your eyes and preventing glare when you're trying to see especially in direct sunlight but also covering your head keeping you warm and keeping you dry because as the medieval Scholars would say there's no such thing as bad weather only bad clothing the only thing I'm missing or I'm not really missing but you may think I am is a hat and most people will picture a pointed feathered cap that Robin Hood would be seen wearing and that's not actually terribly inaccurate the style of hat he's wearing is most likely based on a 14th century hat known as the bycocket often times humorously referred to as a unicorn it having one point conversely comparing it to a bicorn or a tricorn hat uh but of course the real hat like I said was called the bycocket and this was worn based on medieval art at least during the hunt so I could have had that and it would have been accurate with this outfit but most of the art that I found did not feature it except for like I said in mid1 14th century uh paintings that is the full outfit and the purpose of it like I said there's a lot of variation in the medieval period you might see many different colors but this is a average approximation of what a huntsman would wear and those pictures that you'd most often see of people tramping through the woods often times in twos or threes a great example that I think of is in the first season of Game of Thrones when King Robert is on his hunt he had his Squire siston and his brother renley with him that is not a royal Hunting Party a royal Hunting Party would have dozens of people there'd be tents there'd be hounds there'd be horses it's a big Affair not a couple people walking through the woods but for a huntsman he would often hunt alone but again it wouldn't just be him tramping through the woods like I said a great deal of his responsibility was knowing where the local game was so he could lead the nobility there or he could Harvest it when they wanted wanted him to and one thing that they would do is build blinds or stands but most often blinds cuz it was something that was more possible for one person to construct and this is actually a fairly close approximation to a medieval 14th century blind now obviously there are Technologies here that would confound and befuddle them at that time like weaving boughs of course I'm mostly joking about that but that is a American Indian technique not so much a medieval Bohemian technique but this is approximately what you would have and we can go inside if you like to see essentially the goal of a blind like this was I mean in the name blind you'd think that it has something to do with hiding you and that is true when you're hunting if you know anything about hunting you'll know that the thing that moves most often is typically people's legs and so the most important part of a blind is the lower cover it hides your legs just in case you're fidgeting or twitching or moving your legs around but it's also important that it kind of shrouds you a little bit so it's nice to have uh a roof and maybe even some higher walls the roof obviously also serves a double purpose it does hide you but it also keeps you out of the weather which is an important thing for medieval Huntsmen when they didn't have advanced parkas and stuff like that they were using Woolen clothing to stay dry so if you could be under a roof or it's better one important thing though is they weren't hunting with rifles like I said some would use a crossbow but most would use a bow and so it needed to be tall enough to draw and fire a long bow now like I said this long bow here is 68 in unstung the string is 64 in so we can assume it's somewhere close to that so you can see when you have a roof that's tall enough so that you can draw and fire anywhere within it then you can actually use your bow inside it in fact up into the front of this it would be very difficult for me to shoot down from up the front but when I'm standing at the rear where we have the roof nice and tall I can fully draw and aim anywhere out the front of the window so a blind like this would provide you a great place to uh hunt any type of game that's Territorial and predictable in any sort of way like bores and deer that's the medieval Huntsman in a nutshell I tried to make this video informative and yet not too dry as sometimes topics like this can be but uh it's a particular area of interest for me as someone who spent a lot of time in the woods and of course has a love and affinity for the medieval period and of course medieval history so if uh you want to see anything like this for anything else let me know uh keep in mind it's much harder to make a video about say the average job and wear of a 15th century fully armored Knight that might be a little bit out of my range right now but with that being said like I said let me know down in the comments section if you got anything you want to see but in any case thanks for watching and have a nice day and we'll see you next time [Music]