Citations:make a killing

English citations of 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.