Star – Clipper Supplement
Traer, Iowa, January 28, 1887
History of North Tama
By Daniel Connell

Chapter XIII
Wild Animals

In the first days of the settlement wild animals were not uncommon. Bears and buffalo were here as late as 1853. A drove of seven elk, driven by a prairie fire, crossed Wolf creek that season at a point a few rods above where is now the railroad bridge. The drove passed quite close to the cabin of Mr. Connell who was there gazing at them, then entered the timber going northwest. Elk and deer were some-what common as late as 1857. The writer, near his fathers’s cabin in the timber, has stood within ten feet of one as it rushed past pursued by dogs. Wild cats and coons were here as late as 1872, and a very large cat or lynx was shot near the residence of Mr. Washburn by a young son of Dr. Rose in 1868, and one near Buckingham in 1870 by William Brecken. During the winter of 1852-3 J. P. Wood killed a buffalo near Four Mile Grove and two at Fifteen Mile Grove.