210 SPORTING ADVENTURES IN THE FAR WEST. 



This assertion may seem extraordinary, yet everything 

 points to it as a fact; and although buffaloes still roam in 

 millions over the Western plains, their fate is already seal- 

 ed, as the hide-hunters kill even gravid females, and leave 

 their carcasses on the prairie to feed carnivorous birds and 

 quadrupeds. 



I counted as many as thirty carcasses of cows one day 

 in Southern Nebraska, and in each case the udder was full 

 of milk. The Vandals in this heedless destruction were 

 the hide-hunters, from whom no game is safe if they can 

 only get a few pence for either the flesh or the skin. The 

 death of over five million buffaloes in four years proves 

 how successfully and assiduously these men work, and how 

 stupid the bison must be. I have seen a small herd almost 

 decimated by regular hunters before the remainder took 

 the precaution to leave, yet they saw whence the deathly 

 missiles came by the puffs of smoke. They would not 

 have fled, in .all probability, when they did, had not one of 

 the men shown himself unintentionally; but the moment 

 his head peered above the ravine in which he was station- 

 ed they swaggered away at their best pace. 



The animals which are so much afraid of man show no 

 fear of their satellites, the wolves; and this trait of their 

 nature is used to good advantage by the Indians, for they 

 sometimes dress themselves up in wolf-skins, and approach 

 an unsuspicious herd from the leeward to within arrow- 

 range, and, squatting themselves on their heels, ply their 

 bows to such good advantage that they soon have a good 

 stock of meat lying on the ground before them. They 

 prefer using their swift and noiseless primitive missiles in 

 such cases to fire-arms, as the noise of the latter is liable 

 to scare the animals and produce a stampede that may last 

 for two days. The rifle detonations are also liable to ter- 

 rify other game and clear the country of it in a short time. 



Their favorite mode of hunting now is to make a sur- 

 round on horseback, and slay right and left until they be- 

 come weary ; and if this drives the buffaloes away, they 

 follow them up as fast as the squaws can prepare the meat 



