DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker on J. Wright Mooar tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, Scurry County has itself a claim to fame that most counties in this state — or any state, for that matter — simply cannot match.
This is the home county of J. Wright Mooar, and if you know that name, you already know we're in for a story. If you don't know that name yet, well, settle in.
In 1873, J. Wright Mooar and his brother John W. Mooar rode into the Texas Panhandle and established the first buffalo hunting camp out there.
The first. Nobody had done it before them, and they were the ones who did it. That right there would be enough for most men's legacies.
But Wright Mooar was not most men. He shot approximately twenty-two thousand buffalo over the course of his hunting days — a record the marker describes as probably unsurpassed. Twenty-two thousand.
Let that number sit with you a moment while the wind blows through the mesquite. Now here's where the story takes a turn that even a campfire storyteller couldn't improve upon. On October 7, 1876, right here in Scurry County, Wright Mooar killed a rare albino buffalo — one of only two known to have been killed in all of Texas.
Two. In the whole state. And he was standing no small distance away when he did it.
See, Wright Mooar had a gift. He could hit a vital spot from a distance of one thousand feet or farther. A thousand feet.
That kind of shooting has a way of earning respect in places where respect is not given lightly. And it did. Comanche Indian Chief Quanah Parker took notice, and in later life the two men were friends.
Then in 1877, Wright and his brother John W. Mooar put down the rifles long enough to start something more permanent — they began ranching right here in Scurry County. Wright stayed, and Scurry County claimed him, and eventually the county named him its number one citizen.
The man who walked into the Panhandle with his brother and nothing but ambition ended up with a whole county proud to call him its own. That's a life well accounted for.
What the marker says
J. Wright Mooar and his brother John W. Mooar established the first buffalo hunting camp in the Texas Panhandle in 1873. Wright killed a rare albino buffalo (one of two known killed in Texas) in Scurry county on October 7, 1876. Mooar shot about 22,000 buffalo, a record probably unsurpassed. His ability to hit a vital spot from a distance of 1,000 feet or farther won the respect of Comanche Indian Chief Quanah Parker, a friend in later life. The Mooar brothers began ranching in Scurry county in 1877 and Wright became known as Scurry county's No. 1 citizen. (1997)