Citations:make a killing

Etymology

 * 1907, John R. Cook, The Border and the Buffalo, Citadel Press (1967), page 118 (describing events occurring in the 1870s)
 * The old gent said there were ten thousand in sight, this minute, not counting those in the gulches and ravines that we could not see. After looking at them a short time we all went to camp and held a council.  Buck said if I would stay with him he would make a killing as long as it would pay to stay; said he would give me 30 cents apiece for all the buffaloes I would skin and peg out.
 * ibid, page 170
 * Charlie as a rule did the most of his killing from 8 a.m. until noon, but made some good killings in the evening, in which case the carcasses would lie all night before being skinned.
 * ibid, page 188
 * Charlie had killed eighteen head near where he had made the big killing two days before.
 * ibid, page 232
 * And here now I would make a killing. Taking the best shot that presented itself, I fired and the bullet went away to the right and kicked up a dust two hundred yards beyond them.
 * ibid, page 236
 * Charlie and I went up the creek a good half-day's ride and found fair hunting, to which we moved our camp the next day, and the day following I made the biggest killing of all my three years' hunting.
 * 1900, J.H. Cardell, Letter to the Editor, Recreation, page 36
 * I feel at times as though I should like, as the boys on the plains used to say, to take my gun and make a killing. I have in the past, as I suppose all old timers have, killed game out of season: but when I think of the buffalo, the elk, the deer, and the antelope that are now comparatively speaking gone forever, it makes me long for a law that would prohibit killing for 10 or 15 years.