The Turnbo Manuscripts
by Silas Claiborne Turnbo
1844-1925
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A JOLLY TIME FOLLOWING A WOUNDED DEER ON A CHRISTMAS
DAY
By S. C. Turnbo
One of the pioneer citizens of Boone County, Ark., who settled in Carrollton Hollow in the early part of 1854 is Dave Dunlap. One of his interesting stories of hunting is the following which he related to me some years ago. "I never had a great deal of experience in hunting," said he, "but I will give you a story that you may jot down if you wish to. When Christmas time of 1854 come it brought plenty of snow with it. On Saturday before Christmas day my brother Loranzo Dunlap went out in the snow to kill a deer to have fresh venison for Christmas. Near 5 miles southwest of the present site of Lead Hill he shot a big buck which fell at the report of the gun but when my brother walked up to him and plunged the blade of the knife into the fallen deer’s neck to make it bleed freely it began to struggle into life again and floundered down the hillside into the bed of the branch where it rose on its feet and staggered off out of sight. Loranzo went back home and got his dog and took it back with him and followed the deer’s trail in the snow until nearly nightfall when he left it and returned home again. On the following day which was Christmas and Sunday, too, a bunch of us agreed to go out and hunt the wounded buck. As it was Sunday we left our guns at home. My four brothers, Loranzo, Adam, Jess, and Wash Dunlap, John McCord, Jess Parish and two of Col. Wm. C. Mitchell’s sons, Bob and William, and myself constituted the party or nine men in all. We went to where my brother had quit the deer’s trail the evening previous and we followed its trail through the snow near 10 miles but it did not go straight forward but traveled in a roundabout way, and while we were passing over a blackjack flat of land we came onto a herd of deer lying down on the snow. The deer leaped up and ran in every direction making the snow fly up as they ran beyond our view. While the deer were jumping up and running it seemed that the entire flat of woods was lined with deer. The wounded buck had fell in company with them on this flat. One bed where a deer lay the snow was stained with blood indicating that it had been wounded and we supposed that it was the same deer. We were unable to count them but we all guessed at the number and our estimations ran from 150 to 250. The sight of seeing such a large number of deer together while snow lay on the ground was as surprising as it was interesting to us."
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