happy hunting grounds

Noun

happy hunting ground (plural happy hunting grounds)

1. (in plural, often) A Native American idea of the afterlife, conceived of as a paradise in which hunting is plentiful and game unlimited.
   • “Hawk-eye! my fathers call me to the happy hunting-grounds. The path is clear, and the eyes of Mohegan grow young.[…]”1823, [James Fenimore Cooper], The Pioneers, or The Sources of the Susquehanna; […], volume II, New York, N.Y.: Charles Wiley; […], →OCLC, page 282
2. (broadly) A land of plenty.
   • Most of the Americans who had used up their credit at home and those whose incomes were insufficient for their wants, immediately migrated to these happy hunting grounds, where life was inexpensive and credit unlimited.1898, Eliot Gregory, “A Conquest of Europe”, in Worldly Ways & Byways, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons