“Game was abundant on the upper Yadkin [in North Carolina]…. According to one local story, Bear Creek, near the Yadkin forks, took its name when [Daniel] Boone killed 99 bear on the creek in a single season.
“Deer were even more numerous. Boone and another hunter reportedly killed 30 deer in a single day…. Deerskin was a major part of the local economy. In 1753 over 30,000 deerskins were exported from North Carolina. As early as 1700, an average of 54,000 deerskins were being exported each year to England from southern Carolina. There was so much trade in deerskin that a ‘buck’ — a dressed skin weighing about two and a half pounds, worth about 40 cents a pound — became the synonym for a dollar in the American colonies.”
— From “Frontiersman” (2008) by Meredith Mason Brown. (Hat tip to delanceyplace.com)
Things I didn’t know (cont.):
“The saying ‘the buck stops here’ derives from the slang expression ‘pass the buck’….
“The latter expression is said to have originated with the game of poker, in which a marker or counter, frequently in frontier days a knife with a buckhorn handle, was used to indicate the person whose turn it was to deal. If the player did not wish to deal he could pass the responsibility by ‘passing the buck,’ as the counter came to be called, to the next player.”
— from “A Dictionary of Americanisms on Historical Principles”