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. [Illustration: A Herd of Bison.] Of all the quadrupeds known to inhabit the earth, no one species ever marshaled such innumerable armies as that of the American bison. As late as 1871, it was estimated that south of the Union Pacific Railroad line there were between three and four million head. As soon as the road entered the territory the destruction began, and by the reports of the Smithsonian Institution, the miserable “pot-hunters” in 1872 killed over a million and a quarter; and during the first three years after the road was completed this band of thieves and murderers slaughtered over three millions of these valuable animals, taking the hides of some and tongues of others, but leaving untouched where they fell more than half of this immense number. As American game the bison exists no more. The only few remaining out of captivity are at Yellowstone Park. It is to be regretted that the policy of the government in regard to the natural wealth of the “public domain” has ever shown such a lack of wisdom, forethought, and power as to permit the immediate exhaustion leaving nothing for the legitimate heirs. And it seems singular that such a well known and immense storehouse of national wealth, as that of the buffalo, the annuity of which supported more than thirty thousand natives of the country, should have been left unprotected against those who have destroyed the forests and killed the cattle on a thousand hills.