Editor’s Note: Today’s feature was sent to the Wires by the USFWS.

It seems odd to say this, but Ohioan Joseph List may have lived much of his adult life without ever seeing a white-tailed deer. This first-generation American, born in 1860, experienced his spring of life at the dawn of the Civil War. This son of German immigrants was Everyman from Anytown, USA—and he was a hunter.

He called Sardinia home, a small town a short distance from the Ohio River, nestled amid the gentle hummocks and hills left behind by retreating mile-thick glaciers many millennia ago. It was then as it is now, a small town servicing agriculture.