The Turnbo Manuscripts

by Silas Claiborne Turnbo
1844-1925


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A WOMAN WHO WAS A GOOD MARKSMAN WITH A GUN
By S. C. Turnbo

The Scribnors were a noted family of people who lived in Christian and Taney Counties, Mo. Bucky Scribnor was the father of Red, Zack, Curt, Brinkly and Jane Scribnor. Jane was his only daughter and she was married to Joe Davis in Franklin County, Mo., and they lived several years on Beth’s Creek which flows into the Missouri River. Mr. Davis and wife and Bucky Scribnor and family all come to southwest Mo. in an early day and lived in the two counties just mentioned and were all noted hunters. Davis’s wife, like her father and four brothers, was an expert with the rifle. Her son, Ira J. Davis, told me one day that when he was a little fellow and his parents lived on Beth’s Creek in Franklin County they seen a deer one day feeding close to the house and my mother reached for father’s rifle and stood in the doorway of the house and shot and killed the deer and went to work and removed the hide and dressed the meat as well as any hunter could do. At another time," said Mr. Davis, "while we lived on this same creek a big gray wolf made its appearance one morning before sunrise and got over the fence into the sheep lot and killed a sheep before we could interfere and save the sheep. My father was not at home and while the wolf was busy sucking the sheep’s blood mother thought of the rifle and taking it from the rack and stepped out into the yard, but before she could aim the gun at the wolf it left the sheep and sprang for the fence and while it was in the act of climbing over the fence she shot at the wolf. When the beast reached the ground on the outside of the lot it darted out of our sight and mother supposed the ball from the gun had not touched it and gave it no more attention until on the following morning when Mr. Bly Hetherly in passing by our house discovered a gray wolf lying dead in 150 yards of the sheep lot. An investigation of the dead beast showed that it had been recently shot and it proved to be the same animal that my mother had shot at the morning previous."

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