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Iowa News from across the
Country
- 1865 -
New York Times
New York, New York
August 27, 1865
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.
[transcribed by S.F., November 2007]