Did Buffalo Hunters and Indians really wipe out the Buffalo?

[Bill]

If it was disease, then a. evil guns, and b. evil white men with guns can't be blamed as an example of the long history of oppressing the native people and animals.

[Landrover]

If it was disease, then a. evil guns, and b. evil white men with guns can't be blamed as an example of the long history of oppressing the native people and animals.

"IF"..........is the operative word Bill! It is zero mystery that a handful of EVIL whatever color individuals did have a government policy to attempt to eradicate humans by eradicating what sustained them for eon's.
That is un-excusable and I trust the Lord has dealt with their eternal souls accordingly!

[jerp]

I always just took the "hunters killed them all" story at face value. This story of eradication by disease has never occurred to me before - but it makes sense. In 1870 the entire population of the U.S was only about 35 million and only a tiny fraction of them lived in - or passed through - the range of the buffalo. Even if every one of those people were really mad at the buffalo and killed every one they saw, I don't see any way they "wiped them out" - the numbers don't add up. I'm sure there were people who would have liked to wipe out the buffalo in order to wipe out the Indians but I don't see how it could have been possible.

The attempt to control the Texas hog population is similar in some ways and much different in others. There are about 750,000 wild hogs killed (by all methods) in Texas every year and that is not enough to shrink the population. There are not 60 million hogs - like there were buffalo - but buffalo don't have multiple litters each year. I'm going to read a little more about this before I come to a conclusion, but at first blush the disease theory rings true. I guess we never heard about it because it did not fit the narrative most historians wanted to tell about settlers destroying the serene wilderness of the West.

[Possum Fat]

I do wish he could have included more details. He fails to mention the role of fences in the demise of the buffalo. Buffalo are entrapped by barbed wire

We used to raise buffalo. Barbed wire fences may slow down the first 2 that plow thru it. They can also stand flat footed and jump over one. We had to rebuild with 8' fencing after my first 6 months.

[mikemorvan]

Interesting information

[Mister Bubba's bulletman]

I know it's hard to believe that humans decimated the Bison population but they did.

Bill Cody won a shooting contest once by shooting 69. Can't say how many second place got. If I recall the article correctly it was a one day event.

This was going on all day everyday by hundreds of railroad meat hunters for years till the railroad reached the west coast.

Use your imagination and ask yourself how long cattle would last is you went out everyday and rode around on horseback and shot everyone you saw.

I can shoot several hundred by the end of the week. And so could most of you if you got paid good money by the head.

Now multiply that by thousand of hunters.

Within a few years there wont be enough left to bother going to go look for them.

Like what someone said about Whitetail can be applied to Elk and Bison. There wern't any tags, seasons or limits.

They just couldn't eat and breed fast enough to keep up.

[bpa556]

The "White Man" killed A LOT of Buffalo with rifles. He DECIMATED the buffalo by introducing livestock bearing diseases that the buffalo had no immunity to.

The idea that a healthy breeding population of roughly 60 MOLLION animals, spread over most of North America, was shot off in less than a half century is a tad naieve (and silly). Most killing was done at the behest of the railroads. There were not enough rail lines to come anywhere close to covering the Buffalo range. The meat had to be shot relatively close to the tracks because there was no way to transport large volumes of raw meat very far before it spoiled.

The Government shooters killed a paltry few compared to what was killed by the RR hunters. With single shot rifles and no modern road system,reliably swift means of following the herds, the few people populating the West just did not have the capability to exterminate a continually reproducing population of 60 million animals.

The understanding of pathology was very limited in those days. People heard stories of great slaughters, and those with money were able to witness some of them on train rides. Few people ventured far enough to see the plains covered, from horizon to horizon, in the carcases of Buffalo killed by disease. As a result, the papers and tabloids printed the stories of slaughter. As we know, if something is repeated often enough, it becomes "the truth".

I know, I know. Your junior high history teacher was right. 60 million Buffalo were shot off by white people for fun.

[acearrow]

Well, the hunting of buffalo did not occur for just a few years. Buffalo were hunted(if you can call what some of those shooters did hunting) for the better part of the 1800s. There was some 70 years of decimating the buffalo population. Hunters did not have to stay close to the railroad because they were not keeping the meat. Camps were set up that did nothing but process hides. There was even an incident in Texas history where the Apache attacked one of these camps right here in northern Texas. If you check everywhere, I think you can conclude that both guns and disease killed off the buffalo. No matter which it was, man was the cause. I think the initial idea behind this post from the original poster was maybe we shouldn't crucify the hunter for the loss of the buffalo and keep in mind that there was more at hand that just evil animal killers.

[Keg]

Interesting read............

[tkuehn5410]

Good to see the differing conclusions from the hunters on the board regarding the buffalo decline. I'm not sure what side to believe, but I must say that it's hard for me to believe a herd of buffalo would allow 20 hunters to shoot at them repetitively all day until they were all killed and there were a total of 84,000 buffalo on the ground....

[Cam-Mac]

My grandfather had some buffalo... They dont care much about a barbed wire fence. I dont put much stock in the ranchers' barbed wire holding those wild herds in back in the day. Maybe it happened, i dont know for sure. But after seeing them run through a fence like it wasnt even there- i have serious doubts. Just my .02...

[txtrophy85]

Well, the hunting of buffalo did not occur for just a few years. Buffalo were hunted(if you can call what some of those shooters did hunting) for the better part of the 1800s. There was some 70 years of decimating the buffalo population. Hunters did not have to stay close to the railroad because they were not keeping the meat. Camps were set up that did nothing but process hides. There was even an incident in Texas history where the Apache attacked one of these camps right here in northern Texas. If you check everywhere, I think you can conclude that both guns and disease killed off the buffalo. No matter which it was, man was the cause. I think the initial idea behind this post from the original poster was maybe we shouldn't crucify the hunter for the loss of the buffalo and keep in mind that there was more at hand that just evil animal killers.

it takes awhile to skin a buffalo. you can only drop so many before your overloaded with work. Also, they were hunted for their hides (supposedly) so you could only do this during certain times of the year, if the hides got too hot, you couldn't skin them in time and the hair would slip,making the hide worthless.

the more and more you learn about "history" that we were taught by our wonderful education system, you quickly find out that history as its commonly known is a bunch of b.s.

I don't think that people shot off all the buffalo any more than I think Lee Harvey was the lone gunman or that we landed on the moon in 1969

[txtrophy85]

I know it's hard to believe that humans decimated the Bison population but they did.

Bill Cody won a shooting contest once by shooting 69. Can't say how many second place got. If I recall the article correctly it was a one day event.

This was going on all day everyday by hundreds of railroad meat hunters for years till the railroad reached the west coast.

Use your imagination and ask yourself how long cattle would last is you went out everyday and rode around on horseback and shot everyone you saw.

I can shoot several hundred by the end of the week. And so could most of you if you got paid good money by the head.

Now multiply that by thousand of hunters.

Within a few years there wont be enough left to bother going to go look for them.

Like what someone said about Whitetail can be applied to Elk and Bison. There wern't any tags, seasons or limits.

They just couldn't eat and breed fast enough to keep up.

you need to read the article

[AndyRealtree]

Definitely an interesting read. Thanks for sharing

[Thumper]

The buffalo were killed in fighting the Indians, I think most were shot like cattle in a pen.

The Passenger Pigeon nested in dense clusters low to the ground. Most were killed by using cane poles to knock the adult size young out of their nests after the location of nest clusters went out over the telegraph wire.