Bolivar Woman, 74, Is Ardent 'Annie Oakley'

1951, Bolivar, Tuscarawsa County, Ohio

Bolivar -- Bolivar boasts having an Annie Oakley of its own in a spry grandmother who still loves to shoot.

She is Mrs. Minerva Malcuit, who was 74 last Dec. 11 and who has 33 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren, several of whom have inherited her fondness for rugged outdoor life.

And her life has been rugged, including being lost in the swamps of Florida.

"Grandma" Malcuit now limits herself mostly to squirrel hunting, having bagged three on the opening day of the season. But she is missing no chance to fish and pick mushrooms, looking ahead happily and hopefully for the arrival of spring.

She has tramped woods and fields in this section of Ohio until she knows them instinctively, and she knows where there are good fishing holes and mushroom beds, too.

"No, sir, you won't find out from me," she warned an inquisitive reporter, after revealing she sometimes walks five or six miles for them.

Mrs. Malcuit now has but one gun, a .20 caliber Stevenson rile which has been her trusty companion for 35 years on many a foray into the forest, shooting all kind of small game, from rabbits to raccoons.

"Grandma" admits rabbits now are getting too quick for her, leaping and darting away before she can get the proper bead on them as they startle her when they jump up.

It was not until she married Frank Malcuit that she took up hunting. She lived on a farm most of her life. Hunting was her husband's hobby, and she tood it up also. Mr. Malcuit died in 1945. Mrs. Malcuit is a daughter of the late Sam and Eleanor Whitmer of Navarre.

Seven of the twelve children of Mr. and Mrs. Malcuit are living. They are Mrs. Elva Laughlin of Newton Falls, Mrs. Gladys Neighbor of Canton, Mrs. Ruth Heid of Bolivar, Mrs. Ronnie Widder of Sandyville, Mrs. Iva Ferren and Mrs. Huth of Bolivar and Robert Malcuit of Canton.

Mrs. Malcuit was shot by another hunter in 1946 while she was sitting against a tree on the Malcuit farm across from the old Bolivar brickyard, now the Rust Engineering Co. warehouse.

Three squirrel tails were sticking out of the pockets of the hunting jacket which "Grandma" was wearing and the other hunter blasted away, peppering her back with shot. But the experience never dampened Mrs. Malcuit's ardor.

One time Mrs. Malcuit went hunting with her sister, Mrs. Viola Hensil, in the swamps west of Melbourne, 75 miles south of Jacksonville, Fla. She shot and killed a large swamp turtle without knocking it off a log. So what did she do but crawl out on the log and get it, only to be told later by woodsmen that the murky water was 14 feet deep where the log lay. Once she was lost and tramped 13 miles along hog trails before finding her way.

Another time Mrs. Malcuit picked up what she supposed was a wild Florida watermelon which she hung in size and was bulky to carry. So when she tripped over a low wire at a fence, she squashed her prize "melon," only to discover it was not a melon but a gourd.

"Grandma" has lived in and around Bolivar for 45 years. She now does most of her hunting, whether for squirrels or mushrooms, with a daughter, Mrs. Laughlin.