Meshach Browning (1781 – 19 November 1859) was an early backwoodsman, hunter and explorer of the watersheds of the North Branch Potomac and Youghiogheny Rivers. His memoir is Forty-Four Years of the Life of a Hunter (1859). He has been celebrated as Maryland's most famous frontier hunter.Browning's memoir of his "hunting-fever" years (1795–1839) and other activities was originally penned with a turkey quill. Half backwoods history, half heroic adventure story, it recounts his hunting expeditions and life-threatening encounters while stalking game and records details of life in early frontier America, western Maryland folkways and early settlement life.