The Turnbo Manuscripts

by Silas Claiborne Turnbo
1844-1925


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FINDING A SMALL STICK IN A DEER’S HEART
By S. C. Turnbo

Mr. Simon Herrean, son of Lewis Herrean, related to me one day in May, 1895, the following interesting item of old time hunting on Little North Fork of White River. "One day," said he, "I shot a buck and broke its back and I finished its life with my knife. While I was removing the hide I was surprised to find a scar which indicated that the buck had received a severe wound in the region of the heart. The surrounding parts and the wound had healed over. On cutting into the deer I was doubly surprised at finding a small snag in the body of the heart. The end of the stick was protruding from the heart. The immediate surrounding parts had become callous. This stick was very small and short. I knew of but one other case of this kind and that was in Morgan County, Illinois, where a man of the name of Harp killed a deer one day in the early settlement of Illinois when I was a little boy that the animal had a small stick stuck in the body of the heart. The wound on the outside where the stick had entered was healed over. Mr. Harp brought the deer’s heart to Jacksonville, the county seat of Morgan County, and hung it up where numbers of hunters and others saw and examined it and this is where I saw it," said Mr. Herrean.

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