The Extermination of the American BisonHornaday, William T. (William Temple)
History
The Extermination of the American Bison
Hornaday, William T. (William Temple)
American bison; Wildlife conservation -- United States -- Sources
1. _The still-hunt._--Of all the deadly methods of buffalo slaughter,
the still-hunt was the deadliest. Of all the methods that were
unsportsmanlike, unfair, ignoble, and utterly reprehensible, this was in
every respect the lowest and the worst. Destitute of nearly every
element of the buoyant excitement and spice of danger that accompanied
genuine buffalo hunting on horseback, the still-hunt was mere butchery
of the tamest and yet most cruel kind. About it there was none of the
true excitement of the chase; but there was plenty of greedy eagerness
to "down" as many "head" as possible every day, just as there is in
every slaughter-house where the killers are paid so much per head.
Judging from all accounts, it was about as exciting and dangerous work
as it would be to go out now and shoot cattle on the Texas or Montana
ranges. The probabilities are, however, that shooting Texas cattle would
be the most dangerous; for, instead of running from a man on foot, as
the buffalo used to do, range cattle usually charge down upon him, from
motives of curiosity, perhaps, and not infrequently place his life in
considerable jeopardy.
The buffalo owes his extermination very largely to his own unparalleled
stupidity; for nothing else could by any possibility have enabled the
still-hunters to accomplish what they did in such an incredibly short
time. So long as the chase on horseback was the order of the day, it
ordinarily required the united efforts of from fifteen to twenty-five
hunters to kill a thousand buffalo in a single season; but a single
still-hunter, with a long-range breech-loader, who knew how to make a
"sneak" and get "a stand on a bunch," often succeeded in killing from
one to three thousand in one season by his own unaided efforts. Capt.
Jack Brydges, of Kansas, who was one of the first to begin the final
slaughter of the southern herd, killed, by contract, one thousand one
hundred and forty-two buffaloes in six weeks.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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