Ohio - The Great Slaughter Of 1822

Your humble scribe offers the following tale as todays melancholy fare...In an unnamed pioneer township in Ohio, wild animals, ravenous beasts of the night, were devouring the populations chickens, hogs and cows. So great were the losses that one of the bloodiest big game hunts in history was instigated.

The town's men armed themselves and posted themselves around the borders of their colony. At the cry of a horn, echoed from bugler to bugler, the men waded forward, driving game before them towards the centre of the township. When the ring had been tightened to some half mile in diameter, an order was given to fire and the men fired at will.

They shot everything that moved. After the thrashing had stopped they waded forward once again, shooting every beast they flushed from the thickets and swamps. At last the circle closed and the men faced each other over the carcasses of twenty two bears, seven wolves, one hundred and three deer, two mountain lions, one wildcat, plus turkeys and countless smaller game.

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Within five decades of the first settlers arriving in the area the following animals were extinct: elk, panther, wolf, bear, wild cat, beaver, black and yellow rattlesnakes, bald eagle.