94 EARLY DAY STORIES. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

 Hunting Stories — Antelope — White-tail Deer — Elk. 



When the first settlers came to this county there was 

 great abundance and a great variety of game here. Ante- 

 lope and white-tail deer were more plentiful than any other 

 kinds of large animals, and elk and black-tail deer were not 

 at all uncommon. Wild geese, ducks and brants were very 

 abundant every spring and fall, curlew and plover were plen- 

 tiful in the spring and summer, this country being their 

 nesting place, and prairie chickens and sharp tail grouse 

 were at home here winter and summer in great numbers, 

 and wild turkeys were found along all the timbered streams 

 and ravines of the county. The kind of season, whether 

 wet or dry, made a good deal of difference as to the abund- 

 ance of ducks, geese and brants. If the season was dry 

 they passed over and did not alight in very great numbers ; 

 but if the wet weather ponds were filled with water, these 

 migratory birds would visit us by the tens of thousands. 



Almost every settler had a gun of some sort, either a 

 rifle or a single or double barrel shot-gun, all, of course, 

 being muzzle loaders of the old style, and nearly every set- 

 tler did more or less hunting. If any were unable to kill 

 any large game they could at least get a mess of prairie 

 chickens or ducks, as occasion required. Some also made 

 traps for catching prairie chickens, and some set small steel 

 traps, baited with corn, in the edges of the wet weather 

 ponds, for ducks and geese. Everybody had more or less 

 game, and it helped out wonderfully, especially whenever the 

 grasshoppers foreclosed their lien on our corn and gardens. 

 After the Indian raid in the late fall of 1870, fifty army 

 guns were furnished to a home military company by the 

 order of Gen. Augur in command of the Department of the 



