THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
the herds reached some haven where the young grass on the prairie was 
good and sweet. Here they would stay until the cows began to bring forth 
their calves. 
Colonel R. I. Dodge, one of the best authorities on the buffalo, has 
given us many interesting details of the movements and life history of 
the great Southern herd, which he himself witnessed, before the advent of 
the railways. In “Our Wild Indians,’’ p. 283, he tells us: 
“ Early in the spring, as soon as the dry and apparently desert 
prairie had begun to change its coat of dingy brown to one of the 
palest green, the horizon would begin to be dotted with buffalo, single 
or in groups of two or three, forerunners of the coming herd. 
“ Thicker and thicker and in larger groups they came, until, by the 
time the grass is well up, the whole vast landscape appears a mass 
of buffalo, some individuals feeding, others standing, others lying 
down, but the herd moving slowly, moving evidently to the north- 
ward. . . . Some years, as in 1871, the buffalo appeared to move 
northward in one immense column, oftentimes from twenty to fifty 
miles in width, and of unknown depth from front to rear. Other years 
the northward journey was made in several parallel columns, moving 
at the same rate, and, with their numerous flankers, covering a width 
of a hundred or more miles. 
“ The line of march of this great spring migration was not always 
the same, though it was confined within certain limits. I am informed 
by old frontiersmen that it has not, within twenty -five years, crossed 
the Arkansas River east of Great Bend, north-west of Big Sand 
Greek. . . . 
“ When the food in one locality fails they go to another and, towards 
fall, when the grass of the higher prairie becomes parched by the heat 
and drought, they gradually work their way back to the south, con- 
centrating in the rich pastures of Texas and the Indian Territory, 
whence, the same instinct acting on all, they are ready to start 
together on the northward march as soon as spring starts the grass.” 
As regards the Wyoming, Dakota and Montana herds at this date most 
of these buffalo moved north in spring, leaving only a few scattered herds 
which spent the summer there. The main body went north and passed the 
summer in Manitoba and on the plains of Saskatchewan. 
Usually in April the buffalo cow produces her calf after a gestation of 
nine and a half months. Cows are, however, somewhat irregular as to their 
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