BUFFALO. 37 



the incredible decimation in the ranks of the buffalo within the past 

 few years, every cruel and cowardly device is now resorted to, to 

 accomplish their destruction. Herds are sometimes kept days from 

 water by the hunters in some sections, notably that south of the 

 Platte, where the precious and necessary fluid is comparatively 

 scarce, and the rivers few and far between. ' The animals at last, 

 from sheer desperation, rush to the water, and are met by the death- 

 dealing bullet, preferring an end in this way to the slow pangs of 

 an all torturing thirst. At night, fires are built along the streams 

 to keep them off, and the poor beasts are in one way and another 

 kept from the water and killed off until herd after herd disappear- 



The desire to kill seems to blind many men to all other consid- 

 erations. Animals are shot down and left, with the exception of 

 the tongue perhaps, entire, to rot unskinned, merely because the 

 hunter wishes to kill as many as possible before they get off. In 

 his recent work, Colonel Dodge gives some startling computations 

 of the appalling and useless slaughter of the Bison within the last 

 six years. He gives it as his opinion that one skin in market rep- 

 resents from four to six beasts killed, and we think these figures 

 not too large. Still hunting should be resorted to only when a 

 camp is in pressing need of fresh meat. Still it is always difficult 

 to curb the ardor of the young tyro, whose sole desire seems to be to 

 kill as many buffaloes as possible for no other reason than that he 

 may relate his stories to admiring friends, on his return to the settle- 

 ments. The still hunter, if he be an adept and understands the 

 habits of the game he pursues, may very soon wipe out of exist- 

 ence a moderately large herd of buffaloes. 



He will take into consideration the direction of the wind, the 

 lay of the land, and other minor points ; he will use creek bottoms, 

 gulches and ravine approaches in his stalking. When within 

 shooting distance he commences to kill off the herd one by one at 

 his ease, meanwhile, keeping himself entirely concealed from view. 

 The Bison stupidly watch their comrades stagger and fall, but do 

 not offer to run. They are startled by the rifle report, but are un- 

 aware in which direction to look for an enemy. The skin hunter 

 strips the animals of their hides, and leaves the carcasses to decay 

 or become the food of wolf and jackal. The mortality of the buf- 

 falo from the slaughter of Indians, but more particularly white 



