The Squirrel Hunter.
It was once said, “To number the Bison would be like counting the leaves of the forest”—so, too, the myriads of squirrels that inhabited the unbroken forests of Ohio evidently approached in number the incalculable hosts of buffalo that in the grandeur of their numerical strength swept over the western plains.
The rabbit multiplies six times as fast as the squirrel, yet he has never appeared in such multitudes as that of his bushy-tailed cousin. Happen what may he is, however, always on hand. He loves civilization and prefers the grassy fields, standing corn and sunny hillsides to the wilds of the forests, and is always as ready to care for the waste apples in the orchard as he is to bark around the young trees. He is an annoying tenant—timid by nature and easily captured. Millions are sold in the markets every year, but can not come up in numbers with the squirrel in his palmy days. The “one day’s rabbit shooting” at Lamar, Colo., by two hundred guns, December 31, 1894, resulted in the capture of five thousand one hundred and forty-two (5,142); but compared with a squirrel hunt in Franklin county, Ohio, August 20, 1822, it does not appear so large; when a less number of guns killed nineteen thousand six hundred and sixty; and evidently not a “very good day for squirrels to be out either.”
No part of the North-west, in a state of nature, was so well adapted to the propagation and preservation of game beasts and birds as that within the geographical limits of Ohio. To show the immense amount of large game which also existed long after settlements had been made, it is but necessary to give the results of a single day’s hunt, confined to one township of five miles square, in the county of Medina, December 24, 1818, and which is authentically described by Henry Howe in his “Historical Collections of Ohio,” Vol. II, pages 463 to 467, inclusive: “The accurate enumeration of the game killed at the center (of the drive) resulted as follows: Seventeen wolves, twenty-one bears, three hundred deer, besides turkeys, coons and foxes not counted.” The wolf-scalps were good for fifteen dollars each, making a draw on the treasury for two hundred and fifty-five dollars. Many counties in Ohio were not formed nor settled for nearly a quarter of a century after becoming part of the state, and a few much later, the last being that of Noble, in 1851, making in all eighty-eight counties.
Consequently, game of all kinds remained in abundance in Henry, Hancock, Hardin, Lucas, Marion, Noble, Williams, and some others. As late as 1845 two men in Williams county made an effort to see who could kill the greater number of deer, each confining his operations to a single township of his own election. One selected Superior and the other Center township; the hunt to last sixty days.
At the expiration of the time, one had killed ninety-nine and the other sixty-five. The success of neither caused remarks of admiration among the “squirrel hunters,” a few of whom boastingly declared they could show a much greater list in the given time if they were inclined to hunt for quantity.
When the “Reports, Explorations and Surveys” were made to ascertain the most practicable and economical route for a railroad from the Mississippi river to the Pacific ocean, under the direction of the Secretary of War, in 1853 to 1856, the vast public domain was shown to be rich in herds of buffalo, elk, deer, and smaller game of both beasts and birds. It was at this time the bison swarmed over all the Western plains and hills, from the great rivers to the ocean and from Canada to the Gulf in numbers beyond the power of computation.
A Herd of Bison.