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Allyn played no part in WWI, owing, he once mentioned fleetingly, to a visual problem. This condition would account for his early interest in riflescopes – although for one suffering impaired vision, he reported many impressive accounts of good shooting on moving targets with aperture sights. (Ordinary open sights he derided as worthless.) Possibly the birth of Allyn’s first child, Allyn, Jr., in 1917 also had something to do with his escape from the trenches. Bolivar, Jr., followed in 1920, and both boys became “featured players” and frequent photographic subjects in their father’s articles of the ‘20s and ‘30s. Finally, in 1921, Allyn returned to Colorado to stay, having obtained the job of Arapaho County Agricultural Agent. He settled his family in the county seat of Littleton, a peaceful ranching community some ten miles south of Denver.

Although Allyn never brought up his career or professional duties in his own writing, “An Agricultural History of Littleton,” published by that city, paints a picture of an energetic young man full of ideas new to this community. As “the new agent from the college in Ft. Collins,” he “tried to persuade farmers that only through livestock could they succeed. This paid off...and in the 1920s Littleton was considered ‘The Pure-Bred Livestock Center of the West.’” The position of County Agent presumably meshed very nicely with the interests of a sportsman, for Allyn was probably a welcome guest at every farm and ranch within his district. The job, however, brought little financial satisfaction, if his complaints of penury were true. Discussing reloading in 1923, he remarked that he had done so for years without a powder scale, using only an Ideal powder measure, because “$10 is a lot of money to have sitting on a shelf, for me at least.” Though an early proponent of telescopic sights, he lamented in 1927 that he had been “without one for years simply because I couldn’t afford one.” A thoughtful reader is tempted to suspect such comments were actually references to his early post-college, prairie dog-eating years, not his late ‘20s circumstances, but even if true, it seems clear his college education never provided him with the financial means of his father, who lived until 1937.