Hunting prairie chickens in Delaware co., 1865

COX, HUNT

Posted By: Sharyl Ferrall (email)
Date: 10/21/2007 at 09:03:56

A Prairie-Chicken Hunt in Iowa.
The second annual chicken hunt in Delaware County, Iowa, took place Aug. 11. Two persons chose sides, the design being to have twenty marksmen on each side, but two on one side failed to come to time. At 7 A.M. thirty-eight of the best shots in Manchester and vicinity started in pursuit of game, doing their best till 11 o'clock, when they all met, with their families, for a pic-nic dinner in a grove five miles west of Manchester. They cooked about two hundred chickens, and with other dainties, made out a superb repast. At 3 1/2 P.M., the gunners went to their murderous work again, and kept it up till dark, when they all met again at Manchester for supper. On counting the chickens it was found that eight hundred and fifty-seven had been slain, and that the party numbering twenty men had nineteen chickens ahead of the eighteen men. Game was comparatively scarce, and some of the best marksmen had poor luck in finding conveys. Dr. Cox, one of the best shots in Delaware County, fired twenty-three times and killed his bird every time. Tom Hunt, another splendid shot, missed only once in fifty-three shots, killing fifty-two birds. last year, when game was more abundant, he brought down upwards of one hundred. The highest number killed this year by any person was fifty-seven; the next highest fifty-five.

~New York Times, August 27, 1865

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