Gamekeeping Sub-collection

History of the sub-collection

The Gamekeeping Sub-collection is the largest sub-collection of the Museum of Forestry, Hunting and Fishing at the Ohrada hunting lodge in Hluboká nad Vltavou. The oldest part of the sub-collection is the original Ohrada fund, which has been collected at the hunting lodge since 1842, when the public Schwarzenberg Museum of Forestry and Hunting was founded here. It is a collection of dermoplastic specimens of mammals and birds made by the museum’s first administrator, Václav Špatný. Over the following years, funds of a gamekeeping nature were systematically supplemented particularly with zoological collections, hunting trophies, hunting weapons and rarities originating from the Schwarzenberg estate or from the gamekeeping activities of members of families within the Czech lands and in Central Europe (particularly hunting trophies). The ambition of the museum’s administrator was to create a zoological collection mapping Central-European fauna, not only game animals. In 1961, the Ohrada fund was acquired by the Museum of Agriculture. The gamekeeping collection of the Museum of Agriculture originates from active, passive or salvaged collections and its own production. A range of valuable items (hunting weapons and artificial objects) entered the collections of the Museum of Agriculture after the Second World War through the activities of the National Cultural Commission (gatherings from Bohemian and Moravian château collections). Combining the funds of Ohrada and the Museum of Agriculture created a unique collection documenting the history of Czech and Central-European gamekeeping, whose significance considerably exceeds the national scope.
 

Significant Collection Items

A former world deer trophy, the last Czech bear (1856), the last Czech wolf (1874), 19th-century antler furniture, historical hunting weapons, and paintings by Jiří Židlický and Zdeňek Burian.