Who were the Longhunters?

Most Longhunters were plain, poor men seeking relief from debt, land, and a way to feed hungry mouths.They did not care to "civilize" the west, just to make money in deer skins and fur! English explorer and Writer William Byrd remarked of the borderland North Carolinians,"The men impose all the work upon the poor women.....They lye and snore, till the sun has run one third its course......Thus they loiter away there lives, like Soloman's Sluggard, with there arms across, and at the winding of the year scarcely have bread to eat".David Barrow a Methodist Preacher warned his flock that men ensnarled in the hunter's life were"always indigent, always ignorant, always idle.(My wife would agree!!)There poverty, there whole condition, is there vice."Few got rich from hunting. James Wade said to Reverand John D. Shane,"I never knew anyone to make anything or to do well hunting. The love of the chase became a ruleing and absorbing passion. Wade swore he would never have amounted to anything if he had not sold his rifle and been forced to farm." Yet a Longhunter could, Barring calimity, earn more than $1000 a year-a big sum for the day!