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Angelique Fuentes at Apr 30, 2020 07:05 PM

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MISS LILLIAN T. SMITH,
The California Girl, and Champion Rifle Shot,

Was born at Coleville, Mono County, Cal., in the fall of 1871; is, consequently, only past her sixteenth year. Born in a county where game was plenty, and good marksmanship as highly thought of as excellence in any particular accomplishment in the older localities of our variously-constituted country, her childhood was passed amid an atmosphere well calculated to develop that precocious skill that has astonished the Pacific coast, and rendered her famous throughout the land. Horsemanship there being so nearly allied to the cradle- in fact, having been often carried in babyhood on the pommel of the saddle- it is little to be wondered at that she commenced horseback-riding as soon as she could sit one, and while on foot still "a toddler," mounted she was an infantile expert. At six years of age she had a bow-gun, and would kill birds easily, and at seven expressed herself as dissatisfied with "dolls," and wanted a "little rifle." When nine years old her father bought her a Ballard rifle, twenty-two calibre, weight seven pounds (which she uses yet), with which, after a little practice and instruction, she, on her first foray, mounted on her little pony, bagged two cotton-tails, three jack-rabbits, and two quails. From this out her enthusiasm was such, that after her studies were over, she spent her leisure time with horse, dog, and gun, on the surrounding ranges hunting, and generally bringing home a plentiful supply of game. On her father accompanying her to a lagoon near the San Joaquin River in Merced County, when ducks were plentiful, he was greatly astonished by her killing forty redheads and mallards, mostly on the wing. On another occasion, when on a camping excursion in Santa Cruz County, hearing her dog bark in a canon, and thinking he had "treed a squirrel, sure," she mounted her mustang, and on her return amazed the campers and surprised her mother by depositing at her feet a very large wildcat tha she had shot on the limb of a high redwood tree, hitting it squarely in the heart. The admiring campers on their return proclaimed through publications her remarkable feats, and at a party given in her honor christened her the champion "California Huntress." Her fame spread throughout the "Golden State,"

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MISS LILLIAN T. SMITH,
The California Girl, and Champion Rifle Shot,

Was born at Coleville, Mono County, Cal., in the fall of 1871; is, consequently, only past her sixteenth year. Born in a county where game was plenty, and good marksmanship as highly thought of as excellence in any particular accomplishment in the older localities of our variously-constituted country, her childhood was passed amid an atmosphere well calculated to develop that precocious skill that has astonished the Pacific coast, and rendered her famous throughout the land. Horsemanship there being so nearly allied to the cradle- in fact, having been often carried in babyhooding