WALTER MELVIN R0SENE 
67 
THK LAST CHICKEN HUNT* 
By WALTER M. ROSENE 
I J.IASTliATIOX BY ft. BIUVE HORSt'ALL 
The first settlers to cross the Mississippi and come into Iowa found 
the flora and fauna of the great prairies so rich and abundant that 
they thought there would be no end of this great storehouse. Dotting 
the landscape were thousands of sloughs, marshes and “pot holes*’* 
Here in the dense growth of cat-tails, bulrushes and blue-flag were the 
ducks, and other dwellers of the marsh, filling the air with their lively 
chatter. The music that can come from an Iowa marsh was known 
only to those sturdy pioneers. Vast acres of blazing-star, prairie clover 
and purple cone flowers nodded gaily in the breeze. On the uplands 
the long prairie grasses bowed before the wind and waved like billows 
on a vast ocean. “Prairie Pigeons,” Golden Plovers, were plentiful, 
and wafted on the summer breeze came the sweet soft call of the 
Upland Plover and the louder call of the Long-billed Curlew. There 
was life everywhere. 
The bird of the upland prairie that filled the larder of many a 
hungry pioneer family was the Prairie Chicken. They were here in 
countless thousands. Their weird “booming” indicated that spring had 
come, and with it the mating time for the’ chickens. The males would 
then select an open spot on the prairie where they would go through 
their strutting and courtship antics while the coy females looked on 
from the nearby bunches of prairie grass. This booming, like the tolling 
of a deep-toned bell, resounded over the prairies everywhere, 
W ith the coming of the railroad in Iowa, telegraph wires were strung 
like a web across the state, and many chickens were killed by flying 
against this new and strange obstruction. The section men working 
on the railroad could always find a plentiful supply of fresh meat by 
picking up the chickens along the tracks under the wires. 
My father, being one of the early pioneers of Boone County, in 
central Iowa, used to enjoy telling me of the incidents that occurred 
then, and one of these stories concerned the last organized Prairie 
Chicken hunt in our county. My old friend, W. H. Crooks, of Boone, 
Iowa, is now the only survivor who took part in that great hunt, and 
recently I stood at his bedside in the Boone Hospital and listened to 
the same story that my father used to tell me. Far too many of the 
stories of those days have been lost and forgotten, but this one should 
live, for it deals with the Prairie Chicken, the greatest of all upland 
game birds. It also portrays what Iowa was, and what Iowa is today. 
In those early pioneer days, there was a great deal of rivalry in 
every community as to who was the best marksman and the best hunter. 
Every man and boy aspired to be the best shot in the county, and they 
had plenty of practice as there was an abundance of all kinds of game. 
It was a custom each fall to have an organized chicken hunt. The two 
best hunters would “choose up sides” and the losing side would have 
to give a banquet at the leading hotel for the winners. This was a 
great event of the year and one always anticipated with much en- 
thusiasm. 
Boonesboro was then the county seat. The small village of Montana, 
near by, was later destined to become Boone and the present county 
seat. My father worked in a harness shop in Boonesboro from 1870 to 
18(4. When he later told me these fascinating stories during my boy- 
hood days in Ogden, Iowa, he did not tell me the exact date of the last 
hunt but said that it was sometime during those four years. I asked 
-Ii. Ci ooks at the hospital and he said, “The date on the gravestone 
* lti*priuit*(l h y |)*rnii*Mf>fi of NATURE MAGAZINE, from 
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it* DeefrirWr. 1937. issue 
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