What do Western novelists mean by “light a shuck?”
Michael J. Graves
Belen, New Mexico
The phrase means to depart in haste for another location, especially in the dead of night. It is derived from the use of corn shucks as convenient torches for lighting the way home.

June 2011
In This Issue:
Western Books & Movies
- Hearts Aglow
- The Golden West: Fifty Years of Bison Books
- West of Here
- Doc
- Child of the Fighting Tenth
- David Crockett: The Lion of the West
- Bloody Bill Longley
- Captain John R. Hughes: Lone Star Ranger
- Kit Carson: The Life of an American Border Man
- The Last Gunfight
- 1958’s Terror in a Texas Town
- Dinos in the West
- True Grit
- Stars in My Crown
- Ambush
- Tim Holt Western Classics
- Home on the Rango
More In This Issue
- Indian Fare
- Worms, Lice and Nothing Nice
- Cowgirls in the Sand
- The Bronco Busters
- The Kid’s First Kill
- The Battle of Battle Flat
- Friends of the James Farm Bash
- What do Western novelists mean by “light a shuck?”
- Could a Western gunfighter really shoot accurately without using the sight on the revolver?
- What does “hook and a draw” mean in the Johnny Yuma TV theme song?
- What was the “Dodge City Gang?”
- Did Civil War veterans wear military surplus items?
- Why did cowboys wear vests?
- What do you know about the Bella Union Opera House in Tombstone, Arizona?
- Who filled up the watering troughs for horses in frontier towns?
- Lynn Anderson
- Pocatello, Idaho
- Frontier Fort Favorite
- Skirts and Spurs
- Scattergun Sidekicks Reunite
- Forts of the Northern Plains
- Cuchillo Crusader
- Mrs. Custer at the Movies