Summer was a time of gardening; it was also the time when the vast array of marine resources was exploited. In addition, summer brought an abundance of shore birds. Planting involved two crops, with people sometimes moving from a house by an early field to one by a later field in the middle of the summer.
Deer were hunted in the fall; men moved away to the forest to catch the migrating animals. Sometimes women and children would be included in the hunting expedition, if the distance to be traveled was not too far from their summer home. But some people stayed in their summer residences through the hunting season, probably to harvest the last crop. Hunting sometimes lasted until the snow was too deep to move in.
After hunting season the fall and summer encampments were abandoned, and people moved inland, joining with other summer village groups to take up winter quarters in what Williams describes as “thick warme vallies”. There was greater protection from the weather away from the shore, and the warm weather food resources were gone—even the fish moved offshore into deeper waters. From December or January until April, Indians occupied these winter camps and lived on food they had stored during summer and fall and on what could be caught through the ice or trapped during the winter. With the return of spring, they would once again congregate at their fishing places.[27]
Collecting: A number of wild plants were utilized by the Wampanoags for food. These included wild peas, strawberries, gooseberries, raspberries, currants, chestnuts, acorns, walnuts, ground nuts, and the Jerusalem artichoke.[28] Doubtless other nuts, roots, and berries not specifically named by the early observers were also collected.[29] The ground nut (Apios tuberosa) was one of the most important of the wild roots that the Indians used for food.[30] It also helped the Pilgrims keep away starvation during the winter of 1623.
A part of the inventory of collected foods consisted of shellfish. Clams were dug by the women at low tide. Also noted specifically were: horseshoe crab, lobster, oyster, crab, soft-shelled clam, and mussel.[31] The following passage tells of the troublesome quest for lobsters:
This is an every dayes walke, be the weather cold or hot, the waters rough or calme, they must dive sometimes over head and eares for a Lobster, which often shakes them by their hands with a churlish nippe, and bids them adiew. The tide being spent, they trudge home two or three miles, with a hundred weight of Lobsters at their backs, and if none, a hundred scoulds meete them at home, and a hungry belly for two dayes after.[32]
Fowling: The various types of fowl that were taken included turkeys, ducks, geese, pigeons, cormorants, and cranes.[32] This is only a partial list (again the kinds cited specifically by contemporary sources) of the kinds of birds that were actually hunted; there was an abundance of both shore and land birds to be taken at various seasons.[33] Turkeys seem to have been particularly numerous.[34] Pigeons were abundant in Worchester County, so much so that Williams describes it as having been called “Pigeon Countrie”. They were attracted by ripe strawberries and the old garden plots of the Indians, and they were eaten in great numbers because they were well-liked and easy to kill.[35]
The techniques of taking fowl were various. Shooting with bow and arrow was one method, and Indians were very anxious to get guns and shot from the English for the same purpose.[36] Williams says that hunting involved enduring the weather, “... wading, lying, and creeping on the ground, &C.”[37] The method of getting cormorants was to sneak up on them at night as they slept on the rocks along the shore.[38] Netting birds at their feeding places was another way of capture.[39]
Hunting and Trapping: Among the animals hunted or trapped were deer, moose, beaver, bear, wolf, wild cat, racoon, otter, muskrat, and fox.[40] While all of these were eaten, the importance of the smaller animals lay mainly in their pelts. Deer seem to have been the most important of the animals that were hunted.[41] Moose and bear were also of major importance in New England, according to the evaluation of William Wood.[42] Probably the deer was more important to southern New England groups like the Wampanoags, with the frequency and relative importance of moose rising as one traveled northward.
Techniques for taking deer fall into three categories: stalking and shooting, the use of snares, and the use of drives.[43] The stalking method calls to mind the familiar image of an Indian stealthily pursuing a deer through the forest with great skill and patience, using bow and arrow as his weapons. No less important, however, was the use of snares. A snare for deer was made by bending a springy sapling down, fastening it in place, and affixing some sort of noose that would catch the deer by the leg when he, by stepping into it, released the fastening that held the tree down. Acorns were used to bait the snare. Wood tells us that the traps were “... so strong as it will tos a horse if hee be caught in it....”[44] When the Pilgrims went exploring on Cape Cod they encountered such a device: