Buffalo Hunting

Dust in your nostrils, wind in your face, thunder in your ears, rifle in your hand.

There is no doubt but that the frontiersmen loved running buffalo.  When a herd appeared, buffalo hunters mounted their fastest horses and grabbed whatever armament they had available – sometimes pistols, sometimes blackpowder rifles of .50 caliber or better – and raced for the herd.  A fleet horse was much faster and more agile than a buffalo, so before long the hunter was among the galloping beasts.  Francis Parkman, who traveled the Oregon Trail and wrote about it afterward, said that a hunter could ride alongside a buffalo and place his hand on the coarse hair of a running buffalo’s back.  If the buffalo were fresh, Parkman related, there was little danger in riding so close that one could touch the buffalo.  But if the buffalo was tired, with its tongue lolling out and froth at its mouth, the buffalo became dangerous – it might try to sideswipe the horse, and when the horse lept aside, the rider could fall.  A rider who fell in the middle of a buffalo stampede never rode again.

A buffalo hunter would mix his horse into a stampeding herd.  He heard nothing but the thunder of hooves and the rasp of the animals’ breath.  The tawny dust pounded loose from the prairie rose into the rider’s eyes, obscuring all but the dark outlines of the buffalo nearest him.  Still he pressed his horse forward.  The smell of sweat, musk and manure filled his nostrils.  He rode through the herd, selecting a target.  Finding what he wanted, the rider maneuvered his horse toward the animal, rifle in one hand, reins in the other, gripping his horse with both knees lest he should fall and his body be churned into dust in the prairie below.  A tired buffalo sideswiping at the rider’s horse could throw him, or the herd could gallop through a ravine that neither the buffalo nor the buffalo hunter saw coming.  Either would be fatal.  The rider pulled abreast of the animal he had selected and pointed his rifle at his target.  He watched the buffalo’s body heave as it ran, and aimed for a bald spot behind the animal’s front shoulder visible when the foreleg was extended.  The hunter fired.  An accomplished buffalo hunter, Parkman writes, could kill five or six animals in a single hunt, reloading his single-shot muzzleloader at a full gallop in the midst of the herd.

When hit, a buffalo normally didn’t react immediately.  If well struck, however, within a few seconds the galloping buffalo began to slow.  It lost its place in the herd.  It slowed to a walk, then stopped.  It stood on the prairie, still for a moment, glazing eyes staring over the dusty expanse.  It tottered, then fell.  The hunters might take the buffalo’s tongue and hump ribs, then move on.  Or a hunter might take only the buffalo’s tail as a trophy.  Or he might leave the whole buffalo in the dust.

In such a way was the American bison nearly exterminated.

American buffalo -- called a bison, really -- in Yellowstone National Park.