cowhunter

English

Noun

cowhunter (plural cowhunters)

1. Someone from Florida who tends free-range cattle.
   • 1996 spring, Florida Heritage, volume 4, number 2, page 4:

     The early morning fog lifted and one thousand head of cracker cattle herded by Florida cowhunters thundered across Highway 192 into Kissimmee’s Silver Spurs Arena, followed by hundreds of cowboys, cowgirls and cowchildren on horseback, buggies, covered wagons and conveyances of every description.

   • 1998, Herb Chapman, Muncy Chapman, Wiregrass Country: A Florida Pioneer Story, Sarasota, Fla.: Pineapple Press, Inc., →ISBN, page 190:

     Without Amaly near to correct him, Treff slipped into the easy vernacular of a Cracker cowhunter.

   • 2009 November/December, James Williford, “Cowhunting in Florida”, in Humanities: The Magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities, volume 30, number 6, page 45:

     In fact, in Florida, cowboys prefer not to be called cowboys at all; rather, they are “cowhunters” or “crackers.” The latter epithet, according to one of Mattson’s poems, is unfairly used as a modern racial slur: It first came from Shakespeare, who used it in King John to mean “windbag” or “braggart,” before the facile processes of folk etymology reinterpreted the word as a reference to the cracking sound made by the ten- to twelve-foot bullwhips Florida cowhunters use to guide their herds.