Can you imagine going your whole life in the Ozarks without ever seeing a white-tailed deer?
That was a real possibility around here at one time. 
I find it interesting how different the plant and animal landscape – both wild and domestic – was back in, let’s say, the time of our War Between the States (1861-1865).
When I say different, I mostly mean different in the small ways – except in cases like the white-tailed deer and the wild turkey, which had both been largely hunted out in Southwest Missouri by the mid-19th century.
I would call that a big difference between then and now, when modern conservation efforts have restored our game population.
So when those guys during the Civil War were shooting at each other in Newton and McDonald counties, they probably weren’t scaring off many deer with their gunshots.
There simply weren’t many deer around here to scare off. The woods were all but empty. Can you imagine that?
